Category Archives: Editorial

Jan 20

Roberts: Colorado can’t balance its budget by ignoring its constitution

Posted on by

“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”

Posted on by

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

 

 

 

Jan 12

Douglas Bruce’s response to “School superintendents join forces in funding rally at Colorado Capitol “

Posted on by

To Gazette reporter Debbie Kelley,

I read today’s propaganda piece for the government school Establishment’s demonstration at the Capitol. You should charge them a commission for being their loyal press agent.

Why don’t you report–

1) the actual salaries of the superintendents bleating for more money?

2) less than half of all government school employees are teachers?

3) the TOTAL spending per student in Colorado (TOTAL spending, including debt payments, buses, meals, sports, etc. divided by total average daily enrollment of full time students)?

4) they promised voters in 2000 Amendment 23 would solve their alleged problem? Continue reading →

Jan 11

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

Posted on by

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

Posted on by
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

Posted on by

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.

 

Continue reading →

Nov 21

Letter: TABOR isn’t hurting Colo. economy ‘at all’

Posted on by

Letter: TABOR isn’t hurting Colo. economy ‘at all’

Quin Roberts 2:31 p.m. MST November 20, 2015

Quinn for TABOR

(Photo: Courtesy photo)

Dick Heyman on Nov. 12 wrote that “We need to repeal the TABOR amendment completely,” because voters should not be allowed to interfere with “efficient government.”

Colorado’s TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) requires that tax increases and spending growth greater than the increase in population, plus inflation, be authorized by a vote of the people. It places no absolute limits on tax and spending increases. It simply makes our government get our permission to exceed the limit.

Mr. Heyman calls this requirement “stupid.” He is a reactionary and believes that TABOR creates an excess of democracy. Continue reading →

Oct 12

OPINION: VOTE “YES” ON 2D

Posted on by

Opinion: Vote “YES” on 2D

Posted By on Sun, Oct 11, 2015 at 9:52 AM

SHUTTERSTOCK

  • Shutterstock

Colorado Springs city government finds itself with approximately $2.1 million in excess revenue 2014. Colorado’s Tax Payers Bill of Rights (TABOR) dictates that the city must either return the money to taxpayers or ask, via a vote, to keep the money for city projects. The city has elected to put forth ballot language, measure 2D, to ask taxpayers to let them keep the money to fix local trails this November election.

Council has worked with the Colorado Springs Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services Department to identify eight trails in the city that are in dire need of repair or improvements — repairs and improvements that will be paid for if voters approve the measure. The trails noted on the ballot include Homestead trail, Palmer Mesa Trail, Pikes Peak Greenway, Rock Island Trail, Sand Creek Trail, Shooks Run Trail, Sinton Trail and Skyline Trail — the measure does not allow for any new trails.
Continue reading →

Oct 12

The attacks on TABOR continue

Posted on by

October 11, 2015

By Amy K. Frantz , Toledo Chronicle, Tama News-Herald

Do Legislators have a Constitutional right to impose taxes on citizens and to deny citizens any veto power over those actions? A group of politicians in Colorado seems to think so, and are continuing their quest to overturn the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, from the Colorado State Constitution.

In Colorado, citizens are permitted to place measures on the ballot by initiative petition, and in 1992 the TABOR Constitutional Amendment was adopted by Colorado voters. TABOR requires majority voter approval to increase tax rates, to take on new debt, or to increase spending more than the rate of inflation plus state population growth.

In the original provisions of TABOR, any revenue collected in excess of the spending limit, plus an emergency relief fund of 3 percent of fiscal year spending, had to be returned to the taxpayers in the form of rebates. However, in 2005 Colorado voters approved a measure to forego the rebates for five years, following a scare campaign conducted by the state’s big spenders.

Continue reading →