Government (Public Sector) vs the Private Sector
Mar
22
Category Archives: Editorial
Mar
21
TABOR Explained In 77 Seconds
Freedom Minute | Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) explained in about a minute.
Mar
13
“No One Owes You Anything”
Harry Browne, an American author and businessman, first wrote this in 1966. It’s a letter dedicated to his daughter, then nine years old. Take a look — we guarantee you’ll learn a lot.
’…It’s Christmas and I have the usual problem of deciding what to give you. I know you might enjoy many things — books, games, clothes.
But I’m very selfish. I want to give you something that will stay with you for more than a few months or years. I want to give you a gift that might remind you of me every Christmas.
If I could give you just one thing, I’d want it to be a simple truth that took me many years to learn. If you learn it now, it may enrich your life in hundreds of ways. And it may prevent you from facing many problems that have hurt people who have never learned it.
The truth is simply this:
No one owes you anything.
Significance
How could such a simple statement be important? It may not seem so, but understanding it can bless your entire life.
No one owes you anything. Continue reading
Mar
06
Yes, Colorado’s hospital fee plan is legal
Yes, Colorado’s hospital fee plan is legal
Colorado legislature should reclassify hospital provider fee
Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman. (Denver Post file)
Democrats who had accused Republican Attorney General Cynthia Coffman of undue partisanship might have to rethink their thesis after her announcement last week that it is perfectly legal to adopt a budget manuever the governor has proposed and GOP lawmakers have denounced as a violation of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
Not so fast, Coffman said in effect to doubting lawmakers. Based on the language of the constitution and various court rulings, the state could indeed legally reclassify the hospital provider fee to free up $200 million in additional spending under TABOR, her legal analysis concluded.
“The debate over whether to create a hospital provider fee enterprise can now shift back to the General Assembly,” she added.
Unfortunately, leading Republicans in the assembly are still raising dubious legal objections to the plan.
Mar
05
Republican leader: TABOR issue rides on who should decide
Rep. Brian DelGrosso,
R-Loveland
House Republican leader Brian DelGrosso of Loveland said it’s time for “honest fiscal policy” and not TABOR accounting gimmicks to pay for Colorado’s roads and bridges.
DelGrosso has penned an editorial laying out his — and presumably the Republican caucus’ — position on a Democratic plan to reclassify the state’s hospital provider fee to get it out from under a revenue cap voters approved in 1992 when they added the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to the state constitution.
The move also would negate state refunds worth between about $37 up to $111 per taxpayer next year.
“Taking more money from taxpayers without their consent will not solve our challenges,” DelGrosso writes. “We have the money and our budget is growing, but using some budget maneuver is definitely no substitute for honest fiscal policy.”
Mar
03
TABOR has marvelous ideas
TABOR has marvelous ideas
Once again, TABOR is under assault by those who only see taxpayers as an unlimited ATM (Gazette, Feb. 28, Section A, Local & State, “Town hall on budget mess cast blame on TABOR”).
Quoting from the article, “TABOR caps government revenue collections based on inflation and population growth, sets state’s tax structure and restricts government spending.” What a marvelous idea! Michael Merrifield (D, House District 18) laments that legislators “get permission from the voters to raise taxes.” Another marvelous idea.
The federal government under the current administration has expanded the U.S. debt to $17 trillion or about $50,000 per person. Considering that 47 percent of the population pays no federal taxes, we taxpayers are on the hook for much more. TABOR has kept the Colorado legislators from going on perpetual spending sprees and concomitant tax increases.
We also need TABOR legislation for the U.S. Congress.
Denny Modlin
Colorado Springs
http://gazette.com/letters-teflon-label-has-been-…/…/1571257
Mar
02
Blake: Funding transportation needs adds fuel to the fire
Blake: Funding transportation needs adds fuel to the fire
File photo: Todd Shepherd
If you are looking for an opportunity to pay higher taxes, this is your year.
Already on Colorado’s 2016 ballot is a single-payer health plan that would boost the state income tax rate to 14.63 percent, highest in the nation.
On its heels comes a planned initiative sponsored by the Colorado Contractors Association, which wants more money to build roads and mass transit projects.
Not by increasing the state gasoline tax, now 22 cents a gallon, but by increasing the state sales tax, now 2.9 percent, by up to three-quarters of a cent.
The final figure has yet to be determined, said Bill Ray, spokesman for the planned initiative. The organizers have until March 25 to propose their final ballot language.
They are working backwards from a goal of raising $500 million to $600 million more per year, which under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) has to be listed on the ballot question. They will consider the state’s current revenue stream and then figure out how much higher the tax rate must be to raise the money.
If taxes are a must, user-pay levies are generally considered the fairest. Those who drive their cars over the roads pay their taxes at the pump. Those who don’t drive don’t have to pay.
But earlier polling by the CCA determined that an increase in the gasoline tax would be “roundly rebuffed” by voters, said Ray.
Jan
21
Johnson: Conservatives, beware of Building a Better Colorado’s spending agenda
Johnson: Conservatives, beware of Building a Better Colorado’s spending agenda
Donald E.L. Johnson
Colorado conservatives who want to control spending and taxes in the state should keep a close eye on the bipartisan Building a Better Colorado.
Its mission is pretty clear to anyone who has attended one of its some 20 “summits” that have been held around the state and has read its handouts and website.
Building a Better Colorado is intent on making it easier for politicians to increase spending and raise taxes. That is, it wants to repeal TABOR), which has helped keep spending in check in Colorado since it was passed in the early 1990s.
Further, BABC wants to make it harder to amend the state constitution by requiring a “super majority” of somewhere between a 50 percent to 66 percent majority to amend the constitution. Today, it is as easy to amend the constitution as it is to pass a referendum that creates a new law or set of laws that can be changed by the General Assembly.
Jan
20
Roberts: Colorado can’t balance its budget by ignoring its constitution
“My legislative duty includes necessarily upholding constitutional requirements.” – Senator Ellen Roberts
We’re past the ceremonial days of the 2016 legislature and the only tasks we must complete in a session, based on the state’s constitution, are to pass the budget and the school finance act. Although a short list, these two pieces of legislation require months of noodling, number-crunching and negotiations. This year will be no exception. The budget touches every essential — and many nonessential — governmental services, and will be the biggest challenge we face over the next 120 days.
In their opening speeches, Gov. John Hickenlooper and House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, both Democrats, already assigned blame to the Republicans for budget battles brewing on the horizon, saying there’s only one path to reconciling the mess and that’s with their workaround on the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Their speeches highlighted the word “compromise,” but in a way that suggested perhaps neither has read the book Getting to Yes. There’s an art to compromise, including listening and incorporating the input of others, something sorely missing here.
It’s important to note that the top 2016 challenge in all U.S. state legislatures is balancing their budgets. Unlike Colorado, more than a dozen states failed to meet their 2015 deadlines to balance their budget. So, while the spending limitations of TABOR and other constitutional requirements are hard to reconcile, it’s not TABOR causing the big squeeze, but, as experienced across the country, the very long lists of state spending that are exceeding available revenue. Continue reading
Jan
20
Guest Commentary: An unlawful swipe at TABOR on hospital provider “enterprise”
By Penn Pfiffner
Penn Pfiffner is a former Colorado legislator. He is chairman of the TABOR Committee.
Here’s a bad idea: hide a state government function off-budget and sock citizens with a big tax increase in the doing.
That’s what the Hickenlooper administration wants to do with its proposal to redefine the state’s hospital provider charge as an “enterprise.”
Colorado’s tax system is set up so that in a good economy, taxes are collected at a pace faster than growth in population and inflation. When government over-collects taxes, the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) forces it to return the surplus to taxpayers.
Click (HERE) to read the rest of this story