Apr 21

Threats to TABOR are threats to democracy | CALDARA

TABOR simply means voter consent.
TABOR is democracy.
Weakening TABOR is weakening democracy.

Every couple of years the spending lobby orchestrates an assault on our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. They are testing another onslaught likely for next year.

I was around for the fights to pass TABOR in the early 1990s. Then-Gov.Roy Romer famously declared if it passed, it will put a “going out of business” sign on the entrance to Colorado.

Oddly, our population has nearly doubled since then, and state spending has ballooned from just more than $6 billion to roughly $44 billion.

Read that headline again. Since TABOR, our population grew one-fold, state spending grew 7-fold. Predictable tax and spending policy helped create a boom.

The opposite of Romer’s scare is true. If we mess with our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, then we might as well put a “going out of business” sign on the entrance to Colorado.

Like telling tales of the boogeyman around the campfire to frighten children, those who feed on unconstrained spending want to scare the kids too. The young in this case are those who weren’t in Colorado before we demanded simple voter consent over our own money.

Get ready for a new batch of stories on how this Chupacabra of fiscal restraint is somehow making our lives worse, and the only way to slay the monster is to attack democracy and take away our right of consent.

Look no further than U.S. Sen. Michael Bennett’s announcement of gubernatorial aspiration.

The first thing he said was he needs to be governor of Colorado to protect us from the current, unprecedented threat to democracy, being President Donald Trump. The second thing he said was we need to attack democracy to get rid of TABOR. I’m sorry, “reform” TABOR.

He will save our democratic right to vote by taking away our democratic right to vote.

He and the rest of the taking coalition find it nauseating to ask voters for consent to commandeer and spend even more of their livelihoods. They never mention with TABOR they can still grow the size of government as large as they like! All they have to do is… wait for it, because it is so very terrifying… ask us first.

They can raise the taxes to 100% of what we earn. All they must do is ask us first. Increase debt so much our great great great grandchildren will still be paying it off. Just ask our consent.

They refuse to accept that no means no. So, they need to find a way where they no longer must ask at all.

Our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is the very expression of direct democracy. We need to be absolutely clear on what this coming assault against our right to say no is. This is an attack on democracy itself.

To continue reading the rest of this story, please click (HERE) to go to Colorado Politics

#HandsOffTABOR
#DontBeFooled
#ItsYourMoneyNotTheirs
#TABOR
#FollowTheLaw
#FeesAreTaxes
#VoteOnFees
#ReplaceThemAllForNotFollowingVotersWishes

Apr 18

Hillman: TABOR is the people’s law—Democrats want to sue it out of existence

By Mark Hillman | Colorado Politics

Lawmakers and special interests routinely ask Colorado voters to raise taxes so they can spend more of our money. Most often, voters say, “No!”

Now certain “progressive” Democrat lawmakers plan to use our own tax dollars to sue us for limiting their power to raise our taxes.

That’s disgusting even by the gutter standards of this legislature.

Having demonstrated their contempt for the rights of law-abiding Coloradans to exercise freedom of speech and to keep and bear arms as protected by the U.S. Constitution, Democrats at our State Capitol now want us to believe they care about respecting that same Constitution.

Led by Reps. Sean Camacho (D-Denver) and Lorena Garcia (D-Adams County) and Sens. Lindsay Daugherty (D-Arvada) and Iman Jodeh (D-Aurora), Democrats have proposed a resolution (HJR 1023) to order the state to initiate a lawsuit challenging the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (aka TABOR) in our state constitution.

Defending TABOR is the state’s responsibility, but no one currently holding statewide elected office publicly supports TABOR, so Colorado taxpayers have a right to believe the deck is stacked to screw us.

READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT COLORADO POLITICS

Apr 14

If you’re reading this, pause and send a letter to your CO Rep/Senator in opposition to HJR25-1023

Priscilla Rahn @RahnforDougCo

If you’re reading this, pause and send a letter to your CO Rep/Senator. Here is my letter on Res 1023 (Lawsuit to eliminate TABOR.) Can you believe Democrats want to use our public tax dollars to sue “WE THE PEOPLE?” HANDS OFF TABOR!
—-
To the Honorable Members of the Colorado General Assembly,

I write to you in opposition of House Joint Resolution 25-1023, which seeks to challenge the constitutionality of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), Article X, Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution.

This resolution proposes a lawsuit alleging that TABOR violates the Guarantee Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the Colorado Enabling Act by limiting the legislature’s authority over taxation and spending.

The claims against TABOR are constitutionally unsound and ignore both the sovereign will of the people of Colorado and foundational principles of federalism and state constitutional self-determination.

1. TABOR Is a Legitimate Exercise of Constitutional Amendment Power
The Colorado Constitution, Article V, Section 1, enshrines the power of the people to legislate through initiative and referendum, a principle established since our state’s founding. This power includes the ability to amend the Constitution directly — as was done with the adoption of TABOR in 1992.

2. The Guarantee Clause Does Not Prohibit Direct Democracy
The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently treated claims under this clause as nonjusticiable political questions. The presence of direct democracy in a state — such as ballot initiatives — has never been held to violate the republican form of government. Many states, including Colorado, have long utilized ballot measures as an enhancement to representative democracy, not a threat to it.

3. TABOR Reinforces Accountability and Fiscal Restraint
TABOR was adopted after years of public concern over unchecked government spending and tax increases. It does not abolish the legislature’s power — it simply requires consent from voters before taxes are raised or new debt is incurred.

TABOR protects Coloradans by ensuring:
• Transparency in budgeting and taxation
• Taxpayer control over fiscal expansion
• A clear and predictable structure for government finance.

4. TABOR Reflects the Ongoing Will of the People
TABOR has survived multiple attempts at repeal or revision, and the voters have repeatedly affirmed its core protections. Any legislative attempt to sue the people’s will out of existence — without first repealing TABOR through democratic means — risks undermining public confidence in both this body and our constitutional process.

Instead of litigating against the will of the people, I urge you to honor our voices.

#HandsOffTABOR
#DontBeFooled
#ItsYourMoneyNotTheirs
#TABOR
#FollowTheLaw
#FeesAreTaxes
#VoteOnFees
#ReplaceThemAllForNotFollowingVotersWishes

https://x.com/RahnforDougCo/status/1911082221416349714

Apr 11

HJR 1023: Colorado lawmakers’ constitutional ignorance on display

HJR 1023: Colorado lawmakers’ constitutional ignorance on display

This article first appeared on April 9, 2025 in Complete Colorado.

To understand why some members of the Colorado legislature are unworthy of your trust, look no further than their current effort to take away your state tax refunds and abolish your right to vote on taxes, spending, and debt.

An astounding 44 of 100 lawmakers are sponsoring House Joint Resolution (HJR) 25-1023. This resolution would spend tax dollars on a lawsuit to void the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). Coloradans voted to add this valuable protection to the state Constitution in 1992.

I’ve listed the sponsors at the end of this column, so you can see who they are and what districts they so poorly represent. I’ve also included a link so you can see their party affiliation and email addresses and another link so you can find whether you live in any of their districts.

HJR 1023 displays both disdain and greed. But in this column. I’ll focus on two other displayed characteristics: One is deep ignorance among the sponsors. The other is a dull refusal to take even the easiest steps to cure that ignorance.

The problems in HJR 1023 begin in its preamble—a list of “Whereas” clauses. It reads in part as follows:

  • “WHEREAS, The “Enabling Act of Colorado” required the territory of Colorado to adopt and maintain a constitution that adopted the constitution of the United States and was “republican in form”; and
  • “WHEREAS, Under the Guarantee Clause of section 4 of article IV of the United States constitution, “the United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government”; and
  • “WHEREAS, The drafters of the United States constitution envisioned the guarantee of a republican form of government entailing a representative democracy in which legislative bodies determine policy by enacting laws through deliberation and compromise; and
  • “WHEREAS, [TABOR] removed fundamental legislative authority and power in matters of revenue and expenditure from the institutions of representative democracy, namely, the General Assembly and the policy-making bodies at all levels of local government, and instead subjected that authority and power to direct democracy, namely, plebiscite; and
  • “WHEREAS, [TABOR] has removed necessary and essential powers of its representative institutions and so deprived the state of a republican form of government . . . .”

The proposed resolution goes on to authorize a legislative lawsuit to void TABOR as unconstitutional.

 Legislative ignorance

The first “Whereas” clause is a harbinger of ignorance to come. While purporting to quote the name of the Colorado enabling act, it gets the name wrong. (The actual name was “An Act to enable the people of Colorado to form a constitution and State government, and for the admission of the said State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States.”)

But let that pass.

The second “Whereas” clause misunderstands the purpose and effect of the U.S. Constitution’s Guarantee Clause. The rest of the preamble claims plebiscites are inconsistent with the republican form of government.

I’ll say more about the Guarantee Clause and the meaning of “republican form” in a later column. At this point it is sufficient to note that (1) the sponsors’ claim that plebiscites are unconstitutional already has been rejected by both the U.S. and Colorado Supreme Courts, and (2) the assertion that plebiscites are un-republican is particularly bizarre because plebiscites were both invented and perfected in governments universally acknowledged to be republican.

The plebiscite (Latin: plebis scitum) was central to the Roman republic—which was, of course, the longest lived republic in recorded history (509 – 27 BCE). Plebiscites were further developed in Switzerland, a country universally termed republican.

All three kinds of plebiscite—initiative, referendum, and recall—are recognized in parts of the current Colorado Constitution, outside the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. The constitutions of 48 other states recognize one, two, or all three forms of plebiscite.

Did the sponsors of HJR 1023 bother to check into any of this?

And did they bother to check to see what the Colorado Constitution had to say about legislative control over finance when that document was formally recognized as “republican?”

Some history

The Colorado Enabling Act was a congressional statute passed on March 3, 1875. It laid out the conditions by which the territory of Colorado could become a state. It is true that the enabling act required, consistently with the U.S. Constitution, that any proposed state constitution be “republican in form.”

Accordingly, a state constitutional convention drafted a new basic law for Colorado, and the voters ratified it. On August 1, 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant, pursuant to the authority given him by the enabling act, certified that “the fundamental conditions imposed by Congress . . . have been ratified and accepted” and that “the admission of the said State into the Union is now complete.”

This was official recognition that Colorado’s constitution as adopted in 1876 was “republican in form.” The sponsors of HJR 1023 implicitly admit this. But what they didn’t know—and didn’t bother to check—is that the document then imposed far more financial restrictions on the legislature than TABOR does. In fact, one reason TABOR was necessary was because some of the original restrictions had been weakened or abolished by amendment or by judicial error.

The financial restrictions in the 1876 Constitution were the product of hard experience. Earlier in the 19th century, state legislatures had been corrupted and had engaged in massive overspending. During the 1840s, several states even went bankrupt.

Constitutional restrains on government

Let’s look at some of the ways the Colorado Constitution then restricted what the sponsors of HJR 1025 are pleased to call the “fundamental legislative authority.”

As originally adopted, the Colorado Constitution—which, remember, everyone agreed complied with the “republican form”—contained restrictions on state taxation far more extensive than those imposed by TABOR. Specifically: Continue reading

Apr 08

Colorado Dems push resolution to sue over TABOR

FNF Colorado State Capitol, Denver, dome
Colorado State Capitol in Denver
(The Center Square) – Colorado Democrats are looking to challenge the constitutionality of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights in court again.

joint resolution introduced this week, if passed, would require the Committee on Legal Services to hire legal counsel and file a lawsuit over TABOR on behalf of the General Assembly.

TABOR, which was added to the state constitution after voters passed it in 1992, requires voter approval for all proposed tax increases. It also reins in state spending by limiting revenue growth to inflation plus the rate of population growth. Any revenue surplus must be refunded to taxpayers under the constitutional amendment.

Democrats have long pointed to TABOR for the state’s budget woes. Joint Budget Committee Chair Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, on Thursday pointed to TABOR after the Senate passed the state’s $43.9 billion budget bill and dealt with a $1.2 billion deficit.

“This is a budget that no one is happy with but that everyone can be proud of,” he said in a statement. “Thanks to the rationing equation in TABOR, the Joint Budget Committee faced difficult decisions that resulted in painful tradeoffs. But unlike Washington, we made these cuts thoughtfully, strategically and with bipartisan support. We eliminated dozens of programs and invested those savings in public education and public safety and public lands.”

“It’s not a perfect budget, but it’s responsible and responsive to our TABOR constraints while keeping our commitment to the people of Colorado,” Bridges added.

Conservative advocacy groups and defenders of TABOR point to the majority Democrats’ bloated spending as the issue.

“The problem isn’t that people are taxed too little. The problem is that state government is spending too much,” Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican on the JBC, said on the Senate floor Thursday. “It is our moral duty to justify every dollar that we spend. So the first step needs to define our priorities because if you think everything should be funded, if you think everything is a priority, you essentially have no priority.”

To continue reading the rest of this article, please click (HERE) to go to The Center Square

Apr 07

ICYMI Over The Past 31 Years, This Has Been Part Of Their Colorado Democrats Party Platform

#HandsOffTABOR
#DontBeFooled
#ItsYourMoneyNotTheirs
#TABOR
#FollowTheLaw
#FeesAreTaxes
#VoteOnFees
#ReplaceThemAllForNotFollowingVotersWishes

Apr 07

Since Enactment Of TABOR, Significant Faster Growth In Personal Income For Colorado

Colorado voters put the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) into the State Constitution back in 1992. Since then, Colorado workers have seen a “significantly faster growth in personal income”
TABOR protects us from greedy politicians!

#HandsOffTABOR
#DontBeFooled
#ItsYourMoneyNotTheirs
#TABOR
#FollowTheLaw
#FeesAreTaxes
#VoteOnFees
#ReplaceThemAllForNotFollowingVotersWishes

Apr 07

Stop Trying To Kill TABOR. No Means NO!

CALL TO ACTION: Protect TABOR Here we go again… Lawmakers are once again trying to silence Colorado voters and gut TABOR with HJR25-1023. Apparently, letting taxpayers decide on taxes is just too much democracy. We said no to Prop 66, Prop 120, and Prop HH. The courts have dismissed this exact argument once before. NO MEANS NO. The resolution will be heard in the Finance Committee on Monday. Sign up to testify against this foolish waste of our money. Sign up to testify at: leg.colorado.gov/content/commit #ProtectTABOR #HandsOffMyVote

Apr 05

Colorado without TABOR? Higher taxes. No refunds. No vote.

Colorado without TABOR? Higher taxes. No refunds. No vote. Watch video: youtu.be/4AXTCw698ew?fe The bill to overturn TABOR is Monday, April 7 in the House Finance Committee. (HJR 1023) Testify from home—no need to miss work. Sign up: leg.colorado.gov/testimony #ProtectTABOR #copolitics 

#HandsOffTABOR
#DontBeFooled
#ItsYourMoneyNotTheirs
#TABOR
#FollowTheLaw
#FeesAreTaxes
#VoteOnFees
#ReplaceThemAllForNotFollowingVotersWishes