Category Archives: Editorial

Feb 21

Grocery tax is well past its expiration date

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Grocery tax is well past its expiration date

Posted 
Guest column by George Teal

There was a time when our town only had two grocery stores and a handful of gas stations.

Before the redevelopment of our downtown core — before the factory outlet — and even before our state recognized the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), our town services subsisted on the grocery tax. Because we had nothing else.

We paid for our cops, built our roads, and ran a town government through the direct taxation of the milk and bread that was purchased at those two, small grocery stores.

But we aren’t that small town anymore.

With the addition of the Promenade and continued improvement in the economy, we are seeing our town coffers grow to more than $44 million in sales tax revenue in 2017 alone. In 2016, that number was $39 million.

Yet in spite of a healthy and diversified economy here in town, we continue to incorporate the most regressive sales tax imaginable.

Continue reading →

Feb 12

Constitutionality of Grand Lake fee questioned by TABOR Committee

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Constitutionality of Grand Lake fee questioned by TABOR Committee

Lance Maggart

February 8, 2018

A furor was stirred up in Grand Lake earlier this year after town officials announced the implementation of a new municipal fee, and now one state advocacy group is calling into question the fee’s legitimacy.

In late January, the Tax Payer’s Bill of Rights Committee, or TABOR, the advocacy arm of the independent TABOR Foundation, issued a letter to Grand Lake’s town government, contesting the legal basis for the recently adopted fee, which imposes an additional $100 charge on each water tap within the community. The charge has been earmarked to pay for law enforcement and emergency dispatch services as well as street lighting.

“New receipts are to be deposited to the general fund and are intended to cover expenses that are traditionally core functions of town governance, namely street lighting and safety,” read the letter from the TABOR Committee. “Although the Colorado Constitution clearly calls for citizens to vote on all new taxes, you are trying to avoid the plain language of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights by identifying the new tax as a ‘fee.'” Continue reading →

Feb 10

Grover Norquist: Republicans produce nationally, but in Colorado they betray taxpayers locally

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by Grover Norquist | 

Some Republican state legislators remind us that no one’s life is a complete waste — some simply serve as bad examples. One of those bad examples can be found in Colorado. (AP Photo/P. Solomon Banda)

Congress just proved an amazing thing happens when Republicans remember to govern as Reagan Republicans.

The most substantial tax overhaul since the Reagan years has sparked our economy. Republicans in Congress gathered the courage to face down the pro-tax media, special interests, and the opposition of every single Democrat in Congress to help families keep more of what they earn. Already tax reform has resulted in at least 285 companies announcing wage increases, bonuses, and higher 401(k) matches for 3 million workers. Utility companies are reducing rates in response to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Continue reading →

Feb 03

The Republican grand betrayal that just keeps getting worse

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By  |
PUBLISHED: 

To comprehend how that’s possible, we need to understand the largest betrayal of Republican values in Colorado political history: the tax-hiking, debt-raising, TABOR-busting Senate Bill 267, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg and enabled by the schizophrenic leadership of Senate President Kevin Grantham.

The beauty of our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is that taxes and debt can grow as high as any communist would like, all you have to do is ask the voters first. But elected officials, doing their best Bernie Madoff, don’t want to ask for consent when they know the answer is going to be “no.” They re-label taxes as “fees” and debt as “certificates of participation,” so the Colorado Supreme Court lets them take our money without our voter consent.

In 2009, without asking, the state forced an extra tax on us when we’re sick and have to go to the hospital. In their best George Orwell, the legislature named this tax “The Hospital Provider Fee,” as if hospitals, not patients, pay it. The new “fee” generated more than $650 million in 2016, pushing Colorado’s revenue over its TABOR cap.

Click (HERE) to read the rest of this story

 

 

Jan 17

Americans for Prosperity offer ‘Road to Freedom’ to Colorado lawmakers

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Americans for Prosperity offer ‘Road to Freedom’ to Colorado lawmakers

Author: Joey Bunch – January 17, 2018 – Updated: 19 hours ago

Americans for Prosperity(Courtesy of Americans for Prosperity)

You won’t find Bob Hope or Bing Crosby but Americans for Prosperity are urging Colorado lawmakers to take the “Road to Freedom,” the conservative organization’s legislative agenda.

Colorado Politics scored an early review of the AFP’s positions on energy, education, transportation and the  Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

You can read the document by clicking here.

“We made great strides in 2017 defending TABOR and advancing policies that promote economic freedom,” Jesse Mallory, AFP’s state director and the former Colorado Senate Republicans’ chief of staff, said in a statement.

Continue reading →

Nov 12

Opinion: The building blocks of TABOR

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(Consider where the author is sitting before you evaluate where he is standing and espousing in his editorial–editor)

Opinion: The building blocks of TABOR

By Esteban Fernandez on November 11, 2017

Say you had a box with a plant growing inside it. For reasons dark and twisted, the plant finds itself quite content to grow inside the black confines of the box. It gains inch after inch each week. Eventually, the plant runs out of room to grow but the box is a box. It can’t grow with the plant. The plant, doomed by its own prodigiousness, grows too big for its cramped home and crushes itself against the six walls of its cardboard prison.

TABOR

Courtesy of tookapic at Pixabay

So, what do plants and Colorado’s economy have in common? While I grant that it is a little melodramatic, I think it’s also an apt metaphor for the situation imposed by Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

In 1992, Colorado voters approved adding an amendment to Colorado’s constitution that put a cap on how much revenue the state is allowed to collect through taxes. It also requires the state to authorize any new taxes directly through voters by means of a referendum process. Any amount above the cap is refunded to taxpayers. This mechanism allows me to feed into an unhealthy obsession with Legos every year, as my tax return checks can be quite generous. However, at the same time Colorado’s constitution has a requirement in it that requires the state to increase education spending to keep pace with inflation.

One great way to think of both tax and spending mechanisms is to think of TABOR as the brake and Amendment 23 as the gas. TABOR limits government growth and spending while Amendment 23 keeps a steady drip of cash flowing into government expenditures.

Continue reading →

Nov 07

Reflections on 25 years of TABOR in Colorado

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Reflections on 25 years of TABOR in Colorado

Friday marked 25 years since the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution in 1992

By Julia RentschReporter-Herald Staff Writer

Posted:   11/06/2017 11:07:03 PM MST

TABOR timeline

• 1992 — Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights amends Section 20 Article X of the Colorado Constitution

• 2000 — Amendment 23 for education spending increases

• 2005 — Ballot measure Referendum C loosens some TABOR restrictions for five years

• 2006 — TABOR measures rejected by voters in Maine, Nebraska, Oregon

• 2011 — State Sen. Andy Kerr and House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst lead suit against TABOR

• 2014 — Kerr v. Hickenlooper confirms general assembly has standing to challenge the constitutionality of TABOR

• 2015 — U.S. Supreme Court returns Kerr & Hullinghorst case to 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals

• 2017 — House Bill 17-1187 to change excess state revenues cap growth factor introduced

Both Sam Mamet and Larry Sarner acutely remember the moment that the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights Act was amended to the Colorado Constitution. The difference: One man hated the amendment’s restrictions, while the other saw them as democratically vital.

Friday marked exactly 25 years since the election in which the amendment was added to the state constitution — Nov. 3, 1992. The measure took effect Dec. 31, 1992, and serves as a way to limit the growth of government by requiring increases in overall revenue from taxes not exceed the rates of inflation and population growth.

Continue reading →

Oct 17

Taxpayers Have Their Own Bill of Rights in Colorado. But Who Benefits?

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Taxpayers Have Their Own Bill of Rights in Colorado. But Who Benefits?

The unique anti-tax tool has defined spending in the state, and it may spread to more states.
BY  | OCTOBER 2017
Anti-tax advocate Douglas Bruce led the TABOR effort in 1992. “No one has had the impact on Colorado politics” that he has, according to one academic in the state. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)

The blue tag on the streetlight outside Robert Loevy’s Colorado Springs home in 2010 didn’t signal an upcoming utility project. It was a receipt to show he had paid the $100 to keep his light on for the year. The city was facing a decimating $40 million budget gap and, among many other cuts, it was turning off one-third of its streetlights. That is, unless residents could come up with the money themselves. “I could afford to pay it,” Loevy says today, “but I have to think that would have been a stretch for many lower-income people.”

Loevy, a retired Colorado College professor, says the lights-out incident — which earned Colorado Springs international infamy that year — is just one of the many instances in which Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) has only benefited those taxpayers who can afford to pay for services out of their own pocket. Loevy has been a vocal critic of the law. As he sees it, “TABOR has had its worst effects on poor people.”

TABOR was approved by Colorado voters 25 years ago next month. The constitutional amendment limits the state’s year-to-year revenue growth to a formula based on inflation plus the growth in population. If revenues exceed TABOR limits, the money has to be rebated to voters, unless they approve an increase in spending.

Continue reading →

Oct 02

Douglas Bruce addresses the Special Session called this week by Governor Hickenlooper

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From: Douglas Bruce <Taxcutter@msn.com>

To: “randy.baumgardner.senate@state.co.us”

<randy.baumgardner.senate@state.co.us>, “john.cooke.senate@state.co.us”

<john.cooke.senate@state.co.us>, “don.coram.senate@state.co.us”

<don.coram..senate@state.co.us>, “larry.crowder.senate@state.co.us”

<larry.crowder.senate@state.co.us>, “bob.gardner.senate@state.co.us”

<bob.gardner.senate@state.co.us>, “President Kevin J. Grantham”

<kevin.grantham.senate@state.co.us>, “owen.hill.senate@state.co.us”

<owen.hill.senate@state.co.us>, “chris.holbert.senate@state.co.us”

<chris.holbert.senate@state.co.us>, “kent.lambert.senate@state.co.us”

<kent.lambert.senate@state.co.us>, Senator Kent Lambert

<senatorlambert@comcast.net>, “kevin@kevinlundberg.com”

<kevin@kevinlundberg.com>, “kevin.lundberg.senate@state.co.us”

<kevin.lundberg.senate@state.co.us>, “vicki.marble.senate@state.co.us”

<vicki.marble.senate@state.co.us>, “beth.martinezhumenik.senate@state.co.us”

<beth.martinezhumenik.senate@state.co.us>, “tim..neville.senate@state.co.us”

<tim.neville.senate@state..co.us>, “kevin.priola.senate@state.co.us”

<kevin.priola.senate@state.co.us>, “ray.scott.senate@state.co.us”

<ray.scott.senate@state.co.us>, “jim.smallwood.senate@state.co.us”

<jim.smallwood.senate@state.co.us>, “senatorsmallwood@gmail.com”

<senatorsmallwood@gmail.com>, “senatorsonnenberg@gmail.com”

<senatorsonnenberg@gmail.com>, “jack.tate.senate@state.co.us”

<jack.tate.senate@state.co.us>

To all 18 Republican senators,

You are the only barrier to yet another TABOR violation. Just like the U. S. Senate on health insurance, we know 90% unanimity is not enough; you must be 100% united and show the public and your constituents it means something to be a Republican.

House Democrats and the governor are united in this latest effort to destroy TABOR. They will support any illegal action that puts government first and taxpayers last.

Even 17 GOP senators are not enough to prevent passing this “fix” that has already cast legislators into disrepute and ridicule. Continue reading →

Sep 19

Douglas Bruce responds to “Colorado lawmakers turn to ‘fees’ to avoid Taxpayer Bill of Rights limits”

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Editor’s note.  Here are Douglas Bruce’s comments about this article.  They have been edited for space and clarity.

A reporter writes about TABOR (Taxpayers Bill Of Rights) and won’t interview its author.

TABOR does NOT use the “national inflation” rate, but the only Colorado CPI figures, which are for Denver-Boulder-Greeley.

Rep. Dan Thurlow says TABOR makes politicians “cheat” and thinks a statute (Referendum C) can amend a constitutional formula.  That is incorrect.

Colorado State University political science professor John Straayer doesn’t understand the state can still spend money any way it wants; it just can’t take a bigger share without voter approval. That is the major change to its “fiscal authority.”

Money for transportation and higher education has NOT “eroded.” It just has not increased at Straayers’ desired rate, and the sources of funding have changed so that user pay is a preferable source.

Referendum C was supposed to “solve the problem” of revenue control, and end in five years.  It did not solve the fictional “ratchet effect” problem and, twelve years later, we are losing $1 BILLION yearly in excess revenue refunds.  The anti-TABOR sides’ solution is to try another statutory change to the constitutional formula.

The state publicly says its total spending is about $27.1 billion yearly, almost three times what it was when TABOR passed.
I just found out that amount does not as it includes “continuing appropriations” NOT made by the JBC (Joint Budget Committee) annually.
That’s another two or three BILLION or more than the Colorado budget shows.

Douglas Bruce
TABOR author

 

Colorado lawmakers turn to ‘fees’ to avoid Taxpayer Bill of Rights limits

By Michael Carroll  /   September 11, 2017

Colorado state lawmakers increasingly engage in fiscal gymnastics to get around provisions of the state’s landmark Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR), according to both supporters and critics of the state’s 25-year-old constitutional amendment. Continue reading →