Category Archives: Colorado Legislature

Jan 12

Mayors call for ‘de-Brucing’ Colorado at DBJ State of the Cities forum

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Mayors call for ‘de-Brucing’ Colorado at DBJ State of the Cities forum

Jan 12, 2016, 2:10pm MST

Molly Armbrister Reporter Denver Business Journal

Mayors from across the Denver metro on Tuesday railed against gridlock at both the state and federal levels while discussing local and regional solutions to problems such as affordable housing and transportation, and called for the “de-Brucing” of state finances in the way many municipalities that have done already.

Five metro mayors gathered at the Denver Business Journal’s annual State of the Cities event to field questions on topics ranging from education funding to construction defects laws and the effect it’s having on construction of mid-priced condominiums

DBJ mayors

 State of the Cities 2016: Neil Westergaard, Denver Business Journal editor-in-chief introduces the mayors at Tuesday’s event.

Monica Mendoza | Denver Business Journal

Asked about proposed state-level measures including a $3.5 billion bonding effort and moving revenue from the state’s hospital provider fee to an enterprise fund, both with the goal of boosting funding for roads, mayors said that bigger, constitutional issues need to be addressed first.

“It has to be said. Before we address bonding, we need to de-Bruce. Period. And allow, without raising taxes, for the state of Colorado to take the revenue they receive and to begin to invest in important programs like transportation, roads and education,” said Denver Mayor Michael Hancock.

De-Brucing is a reference to tax activist Douglas Bruce, author of the 1992 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights constitutional amendment. TABOR placed limits on the amount of tax revenue that can be collected by governments in Colorado and mandates tax rebates in some cases when revenues exceed limits tied to population growth. Continue reading →

Jan 11

Questions about Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and Colorado enterprise funds

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Questions about Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and Colorado enterprise funds (2 letters)

 By
Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman watches as attendance is taken during a session of the legislature at the state Capitol on May 6, 2015. (Brent Lewis, Denver Post file)

Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman watches as attendance is taken during a session of the legislature at the state Capitol on May 6, 2015. (Brent Lewis, Denver Post file)

Re: “Legal memo complicates Hickenlooper’s hospital provider fee effort,” Jan. 7 news story; and “Yet more trouble for state budget,” Jan. 8 editorial.

The hair-splitting continues between the branches of state government regarding the definition of an enterprise for the purposes of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. The discussion is way down in the weeds, with one side focusing on what theoretically constitutes an enterprise and the other on the crippling result of applying the TABOR status quo.

In fiscal year 1993, the year after TABOR was passed, state enterprise fund revenues were approximately 4.5 percent of total state revenues. By fiscal year 2014, conversions had grown that to about 28.4 percent. While passing the legal test, many of the current enterprises fail the man-on-the-street “smell test.”

 

Continue reading →

Jan 11

Douglas Bruce’s Response to Mike Foote’s Editorial

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douglas bruceThe Colorado TABOR Foundation received the following response from Douglas Bruce regarding Mike Foote’s editorial:
 
In the Camera, a local politician calls the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) “A 24-year-old constitutional amendment championed by a discredited anti-government crusader and convicted tax evader…” My 2005 “offense” was giving my entire county commissioner salary to charity. I was denied time to get an attorney, a local jury trial, the right to subpoena witnesses, and many other “rights” we thought we had. The IRS audited me and said the tax deduction was lawful and I was innocent, but their testimony was not allowed. The state case awaits a federal court hearing.
 
Mike Foote uses that frame-up to urge you to vote away your right to vote on taxes–a
classic personal attack. Now you know why the case was filed.
 
TABOR cuts nothing–never has, never will. TABOR applies only to 60% of state revenue. The spending growth limit applies only to excess revenue above an automatic growth rate that provides the state hundreds of millions in new revenue yearly. We can let the state keep all revenue, as in the pot tax refund vote last November.

Continue reading →

Jan 11

Mike Foote: TABOR cuts to schools and roads are coming

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Mike Foote: TABOR cuts to schools and roads are coming

By Mike Foote

Posted:   01/09/2016 07:55:55 PM MST

A car hits a pothole on Boulder’s Canyon Boulevard last winter. State Rep. Mike Foote says TABOR is likely to cause further cuts to state funding for

A car hits a pothole on Boulder’s Canyon Boulevard last winter. State Rep. Mike Foote says TABOR is likely to cause further cuts to state funding for education and road maintenance. (Cliff Grassmick / Staff Photographer)

A 24-year-old constitutional amendment championed by a discredited anti-government crusader and convicted tax evader is now having profound effects on how your state legislators are budgeting for important areas like schools and roads. The 1992 TABOR amendment to the Colorado Constitution may require us to cut from those already under-funded areas despite your clear directions to us otherwise.

Let me explain this unfortunate situation a little further: TABOR requires the state to return tax revenues if those revenues exceed an amount based upon an arbitrary equation. When the economy does well, the state must return money it could otherwise use to invest in the future. The condition of our under-funded schools and clogged roads account for nothing in the cold calculus of TABOR’s allowed revenue formula.

Colorado’s schools and roads suffered greatly when the economy and tax revenues crashed during the last recession. Now that our economy is improving and revenue has increased, the state cannot invest in those necessary areas. Tax money comes in, and then the state turns around and sends some of it back out. Meanwhile, public school systems are hurting and roads are crumbling.

 

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Jan 10

State’s school superintendents plan rally on Capitol Hill Monday to ask for more money

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January 8, 2016 4:21 PM· By Sherrie Peif
Photo credit: Todd Shepherd

Photo credit: Todd Shepherd

The education funding battle enters its next round with a new online database supporting superintendents across the state in their effort to convince legislators to spend more money on their districts.

Although schools have been calling for more money since the 2008 recession spawned the “Negative Factor,” this most recent campaign first started shortly after the November election with the superintendent of Littleton Public Schools mailing a flyer to 47,000 residents in his district.

The Negative Factor is a budgeting mechanism used by the Colorado General Assembly to restrain total spending on public education while still allowing base spending to rise by enrollment plus inflation each year. The negative factor reduces funding to school finance factors not covered by Amendment 23, which include school district size, local cost-of-living, and the number of low-income kids in a district. The Colorado Supreme Court recently ruled that the negative factor is constitutional.

The flyer, which cost the district nearly $10,000, urged residents to contact legislators and support reclassifying the Hospital Provider Fee as an enterprise fund so it falls outside the requirements of Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). The move would free up hundreds of millions of dollars under TABOR, despite the fact that many view the “fee” as a tax.

LPS Superintendent Brian Ewert told the Parent Teachers Association that he expects 168 of the state’s 178 school districts to do the same.

It now appears that the head of the state’s second-largest district has joined Ewert in the effort.

 

Continue reading →

Jan 10

Cadman: Somebody knew hospital provider fee is unconstitutional

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Cadman: Somebody knew hospital provider fee is unconstitutional

But Democrats counter that it’s up to courts to decide: ‘Lots of lawyers will have lots of different opinions’
1/6/2016

By Kara Mason

The Colorado Statesman

It only took 40 minutes for the Office of Legal Services to return Senate President Bill Cadman’s request last week for a memo on whether the Legislature can legally recast the state hospital provider fee as an enterprise fund. The short answer is no, the maneuver wouldn’t comply with the Colorado Constitution.

Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, believes someone else — a lawmaker, a state official — must have requested the same information and failed to share it.

Senate President Bill Cadman displays a memo from the Colorado Legislative Legal Services office answering whether a proposal to reclassify the state’s hospital provider fee would be constitutional at a press conference in his office on Jan. 6 at the Capitol.

Photo by Kara Mason/The Colorado Statesman

“Our guys are really good,” Cadman said. But not that good. Cadman doesn’t think legal services could crank out an opinion on the topic in under an hour.

“Somebody had it, and I wish they would have shared it with us,” he said.

Cadman broke the news to reporters Wednesday afternoon in his office, saying that more reporters — the 10 that were present for the briefing — have seen the memo than have members of his caucus.

 

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Jan 10

Legal memo upsets effort on Colorado hospital provider fee

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Dive Brief:

  • A memo from Colorado’s Office of Legislative Legal Services says it woud be unconstitutional for state legislators to exempt the current hospital provider fee program from the revenue limits of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) by turning it into an enterprise fund, state senate President Bill Cadman announced this week.
  • Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) has been pushing for the change to boost funding for transportation, to which the provider fee is tied.
  • As it stands, the fee is pushing the state above its revenue cap, which requires taxpayer refunds despite shortfalls in other budget areas, the Denver Post reports.

Continue reading →

Jan 09

Review: Building a Better Colorado

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Review: Building A Better Colorado

I attended one of the meetings put on by Building a Better Colorado (BBC). It was a thinly veiled attempt to control the narrative on several issues facing Colorado.

This was a two-hour session run by a moderator for a group of about 60 people. The time started with the moderator describing the 3 broad problems/issues (as defined by BBC) to be discussed. Then some time was spent on each issue/problem. Each issue/problem was put in front of the group with various possible responses/solutions. 10 or so minutes were given for each table of 4-8 people to discuss, and then a series of possible responses/solutions were put to a multiple choice vote for that issue/problem. Clicker devices were distributed for people to vote on their response to each response.

The three broad issues were 1) the initiative process for amendments to state law and amendments to the constitution, 2) fiscal policy and TABOR, and 3) the primary voting process.

Here was the basic formula:

Premise: There’s a problem, and here’s our definition/spin on what it is.

What should we do? A. Nothing, B. Our potential Ballot Initiative, C. Our other potential Ballot Initiative.

Vote on how you feel about A.
Vote on how you feel about B.
Vote on how you feel about C.

Here are some specific examples, quoting directly from the handout used in the presentation. After talking about what a huge problem the initiative process is, 2 questions were asked. Here is question #2…

“Should we require a higher threshold for passage of amendments to the CONSTITUTION than for citizen-initiated amendments to state LAW?”

Vote on A: “Maintain current policy…” Of course, a majority of people, having just heard what a problem this is, vote that we need to do something.

Vote on B: “Make it harder to amend the constitution by requiring future amendments to be approved by a supermajority (2/3) vote, but allow fixes/changes to existing language to be approved by the same simple-majority threshold by which it was adopted initially.” People pick from 3 levels of support and 3 levels of opposition.

That’s it. No other choices. On to the next topic.

It was similar with TABOR. Continue reading →

Jan 07

CASH STRAPPED: Hickenlooper Looks for Additional Revenue, Ignores Spending Problem

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CASH STRAPPED: Hickenlooper Looks for Additional Revenue, Ignores Spending Problem

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Money IIIn a Denver Post article highlighting Americans for Prosperity’s request that Colorado legislators sign pledges to protect TABOR, Governor John Hickenlooper expressed frustration that nobody had suggested additional sources of revenue to meet the state’s ravenous budget needs. Here is what he said when asked about the TABOR pledges:

“My intention is to reach out to them and say, ‘What are the alternative plans that are going to generate the revenue we need to move this state forward?’ ” he told reporters, who were removed from a publicly noticed speech in which he previewed his legislative priorities to a prominent business group. “So far I haven’t seen a place where there is sufficient revenue to build the kind of infrastructure this state needs to compete.”

As the Peak has noted before, the state does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. Colorado spending increased $1.8 billion between fiscal years 2013 and 2014, from $28.5 billion in 2013 to $30.3 billion in 2014. During the same time, the Consumer Price Indices showed just a 1.58 percent inflation as compared to the Colorado budget increase of 6.3 percent.

Of that $28.5 billion, 26% was devoted to K-12 education and 22% was supported Medicaid, and 32.6% went to “other”, which includes pensions. It’s well worth noting that Medicaid spending has jumped over 50% since 2009.  In 2009, Medicaid spending was 14.1% of the budget, as compared to 2013 when it was 22% of the budget.

In 2015, when Hickenlooper announced his 2016 budget proposal, he asked for a seven percent increase in spending in total funds and a 9.6 percent increase in the general fund from the year prior. Human services and healthcare gobbled up a whopping 40.9 percent of the state’s total funding, with 37.2 percent from the general fund going to K-12 education. In 2013, Colorado spent a higher percentage of its budget on K-12 education than its surrounding states and only Idaho spent a greater percentage of its budget on Medicaid.

When Colorado’s education bureaucracy is ballooning and a greater percentage of population is on Medicaid, we don’t need to ask, “how can cash-strapped Coloradans pay more?”, we need to ask “how can we rein in spending?”.

http://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2016/01/06/cash-strapped-hickenlooper-looks-for-additional-revenue-ignores-spending-problem/

Jan 06

Lawmakers prep for TABOR, tort reform fights

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By: Megan Schrader
photo - DENVER, CO - JANUARY 07: Senate President, Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, speaks on opening day of the 2015 Colorado Legislative session at the State Capitol Wednesday morning, January 07, 2015. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)
DENVER, CO – JANUARY 07: Senate President, Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, speaks on opening day of the 2015 Colorado Legislative session at the State Capitol Wednesday morning, January 07, 2015. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post)

DENVER – After laying out their policies before some of Denver’s most prominent business men and women, Democrats and Republicans each scored a victory when the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce endorsed their pet projects for the 2016 legislative session.

Kelly Brough, president and CEO of the Denver chamber, urged business leaders to support the Democratic governor’s plan to keep money that otherwise would be refunded to taxpayers under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. But she also said it’s time for a Republican plan to reduce the risk of lawsuits for homebuilders to pass after three years of Democrats shooting down the measure.

The Colorado General Assembly begins Jan. 13 and those two issues – TABOR refunds and construction defects lawsuit reform – are two of the most contentious items on the agenda.

Leaders of both political parties answered questions Tuesday morning at a breakfast forum held in the Brown Palace Hotel.

House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Gunbarrel, said unless lawmakers are able to find a fix to budget woes caused by the TABOR-mandated refund of $212 million to taxpayers in the 2016-17 fiscal year “we are putting the Colorado way of life at risk.”

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