Category Archives: Education

Aug 21

Why #TABOR Matters on August 21

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TABOR limits the growth of government (at all levels) by adding the rate of inflation and population growth to the baseline of the previous year’s budget. Taxpayers are guaranteed the right to vote on all tax increases – and receive a refund of any extra tax monies collected over the allowed amount. Unless they vote to allow the government to keep the extra money for a specific purpose. Proposition CC would let government always keep any extra tax money – without any further votes of the people.
 
#TABOR
#ThankGodForTABOR
#VoteNoOnPropCC
#WhyTABORMatters
#TABORYes
Aug 19

Proposition CC’s Ballot Language Is NOT Being Honest With Colorado

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Chris P. Bacon@CPBacon4CO
 

#PropCC Ballot Language **IF** the #democrats were being honest with #Colorado

 

But they’re not being honest

 
It’s not “Technically” a tax increase, but it IS permission for them to keep OverCharging your tax bills & keep it without asking
Aug 14

Why TABOR Matters on August 14

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Supporters of Prop CC say that voters will still have the right to choose HOW their tax money is spent – but only if new issues are put on the ballot asking for a tax increase. Passing Prop CC would make the need to request tax money irrelevant, because the state budget would automatically grow each year.
 
#TABOR
#VoteNoOnPropCC
#ThankGodForTABOR
#WhyTABORMatters
Jul 30

Save our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights! Donate to No on Prop CC!

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Over the next few months, the Takings Coalition, with its insatiable appetite for OUR money, will use every propaganda trick available to convince Colorado voters to give up our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) refunds – FOREVER! One vote and state government can keep all of our money – FOREVER!

That’s why we are fighting back against the ballot measure Proposition CC, and we need YOUR help today!

First, what is Prop CC? Simply, it’s a legislatively-referred ballot measure we’ll be deciding this fall. If voters say yes, then the state government will keep all of our TABOR refunds forever. It will cost Colorado taxpayers billions of dollars in perpetuity. It’s a forever tax increase on all of us, our children, and our grandchildren.

Prop CC is blank check for the legislature’s pet projects. Supporters say it will go to roads and schools, but there’s no guarantee. And we’ve seen the legislature play fast and loose with extra money from taxpayers such as Ref C dollars. Likely this money will go to backfill lost revenue from the oil and gas industry, an industry this legislature is trying to destroy.

Prop CC is a big step to total repeal of the greatest gift voters ever gave themselves and future generations – TABOR. Passed by voters in 1992, TABOR puts Coloradans, not politicians, in charge of the size and scope of government we want. It’s no wonder 71 percent of Colorado voters support TABOR.

No doubt the Prop CC proponents will claim the state is broke even though the budget will be nearly $32 billion. Since voters gave the initial thumbs up to TABOR, our budget has grown 300 percent. The state doesn’t need more of our money. The legislature needs to do its job and prioritize!

While voters love TABOR, the political elite, the professional Left, and special interests hate it. Over the last few days they’ve called TABOR and its supporters “brainwashed” “destructive” and “unconstitutional.”

After the November 5 election, they’ll be calling us winners because we will defeat Prop CC.

Lots of good people like former Governor Bill Owens, former U.S. Senator Hank Brown, CU Regent Heidi Ganahl, District Attorney George Brauchler, former State Treasurers Walker Stapleton and Mark Hillman and more all agree that Prop CC is bad for Colorado. We must get the word out to every Colorado voter! WE MUST SAVE OUR TAXPAYER’S BILL OF RIGHTS!

Will you join us? The other side will have lots of special interest money, but we have you! The No On CC issue committeeneeds $25,000 to get our digital campaign started and yard signs printed. Even $5 helps pay to print two signs!

Can we count on you to help us save TABOR now and for future generations? Can we count on you to contribute to this fight against the extremist overreaching majority at the Colorado State Legislature?

If you prefer to mail your contribution, please do so. Make the check payable to No On CC issue committee and mail to: No On CC Issue Committee, C/O Independence Institute, 727 E 16thAve, Denver, CO 80203.

For more information visit our Website VoteNoOnCC.com. Click herefor more information on our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights

Jul 26

Fields: Legislators to blame for crumbling roads, not our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights

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FEATURED, GOLD DOME, MICHAEL FIELDS, PROPOSITION CC, TABOR, TAXES, UNCATEGORIZED

Fields: Legislators to blame for crumbling roads, not our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights

July 26, 2019 By Michael Fields

As our state’s roads continue to get worse and worse, Coloradans are wondering when the legislature is finally going to make them a priority.

Earlier this month, a portion of U.S. Highway 36 collapsed, briefly shutting down the main connection between Boulder and Denver. The road was built only a couple of years ago through a public-private partnership – and the estimated cost to fix it is $20 million.

The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) has direct oversight over these road projects, and the legislature has direct oversight over CDOT.

So, it’s worthwhile to look both at CDOT’s performance, and how much focus (or lack of focus) the legislature has been putting on fixing our roads.

A newly released state performance audit looked at CDOT from 2016-17 – and the findings are quite alarming. CDOT spent 37% – $582.7 million – more than its approved budget for 2016-17. In the real world, most of us would get fired from our jobs if we overspent our budgets by 37%.

But that wasn’t CDOT’s only problem. The agency did not properly track how $1.3 billion was spent. While not finding any blatant fraud, the audit did say there was “suspicious patterns and anomalies.”

This was happening  around the same time that CDOT decided to build new offices for itself, costing taxpayers $150 million. With tone-deaf decisions like these, it’s no wonder why taxpayers continually shoot down statewide tax increases.

To read the rest of this story, click (HERE):

Jul 18

TABOR Repeal Supporters Don’t Want To Call It That

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Gee, we wonder what they’re trying to hide?
Why are they being so sneaky?
Don’t lose your #TABOR Rights.
Vote NO on whatever they call it in 2020

TABOR Repeal Supporters Don’t Want To Call It That

By Nathaniel Minor

July 17, 2019

A 2013 ballot and voter blue book.Megan Verlee/CPR News
A 2013 ballot and voter blue book.

The Colorado Title Board on Wednesday approved key language for a possible 2020 ballot initiative that would repeal a highly consequential part of the state constitution.

But which part, exactly? If you ask repeal proponents, it’s Article X, Section 20. If you ask repeal opponents, it’s the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR. How the ballot question is presented to voters is just the latest high-stakes skirmish in a long war over TABOR, a controversial constitutional amendment passed in 1992 that’s limited government growth in the state.

Both sides presented arguments to the title board, a three-member panel with representatives from the Secretary of State’s office, the state Attorney General and the Office of Legislative Legal Services, that decides if ballot measures meet all requirements and how they should appear on the ballot.

The Full Story Behind TABOR: Read & Listen To The Taxman Podcast

The liberal-leaning Colorado Fiscal Institute is backing the repeal effort, which won a significant victory at the Colorado State Supreme Court last month allowing it to inch closer to the 2020 ballot. Carol Hedges, the group’s executive director, said using the specific term, “Article X, Section 20,” is the most clear, neutral way possible to refer to the amendment.

To read the rest of this story, click (HERE):

 

Jul 09

Q&A with Penn Pfiffner | On standing up for freedom, and TABOR

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Q&A with Penn Pfiffner | On standing up for freedom, and TABOR

·         Dan Njegomir, Colorado Politics

The TABOR Foundation’s Penn Pfiffner addresses the Reagan Club of Colorado earlier this year. (Photo courtesy the TABOR Foundation)

 

Even if you don’t move in Penn Pfiffner’s center-right political circles, you’re probably familiar with his name as the media’s go-to guy for comment on the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights whenever it comes up in the news. And it comes up a lot, of course. 

The groundbreaking taxing and spending limits — venerated by some and vilified by others — have been stirring debate ever since being enacted into Colorado’s Constitution by voters in 1992. Better known by its acronym TABOR, the constitutional provision has prompted lawsuits, legislation and more ballot issues by wide-ranging interests hoping to elude or at least ease its restraints on state and local budgets. 

The perennial back-and-forth over TABOR also spawned the TABOR Foundation, which, along with its advocacy counterpart the TABOR Committee, emerged with the help of Pfiffner and other resolute TABOR supporters to stand up for the policy.

Pfiffner, who served as a Republican state representative from Lakewood in the 1990s, has become as distinctive a voice for TABOR over the years as he has for the advocacy of limited government in general.

He expounds on both of those endeavors and more — as always, in his characteristically eloquent and respectful way — in today’s Q&A.

Colorado Politics: Let’s start with a recent headline. The state Supreme Court ruled June 17 that a pending ballot proposal to repeal TABOR in its entirety may proceed — despite a constitutional “single-subject” stipulation on ballot issues that was long believed to have blocked precisely such an all-in-one-shot repeal.

In a public statement from the TABOR Foundation condemning the ruling, you said, “The court has become dangerously unmoored from the clear meaning of the state constitution.” The statement also said the court ”appears to take sides.”

Recap for us what was fundamentally at issue in the case before court — and why you feel the court missed the mark.

Penn Pfiffner: The recent direction of the Colorado courts on constitutional matters should trouble any citizen. Our American system relies on an honest judicial branch to impartially interpret the law. We have seen an absolutely consistent antipathy from the courts towards the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

It’s an understatement to say that the justices from trial level to the Colorado Supreme Court have appeared to argue backwards from predetermined outcomes. Some of the arguments appeared to me to be even juvenile, like an adolescent trying too hard to argue the impossible.

The central finding in the Bridge Enterprise case that the TABOR Foundation brought is an example. Years from now, I surmise historians of Colorado’s system will be amazed and disgusted that it became so partisan during these recent years. Good, experienced attorneys today are urging the TABOR Foundation not to bring any more constitutional issues to the judicial branch — it’s that futile, and all that we end up with is setting bad precedent. In the case you raise, the court explicitly threw out a generation of precedent. It’s as if they never opened the section on TABOR to read all the different pieces in this comprehensive constitutional measure.

A dissent from the bench pointed out that some activist could now substitute Colorado’s extensive “Bill of Rights” for “Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights” (in a ballot proposal) and in one vote overturn all citizen protections. A leftist court looks ready to use its personal political views to put a thumb on the scales of justice.

Penn Pfiffner

  • Chairs the board of directors for the TABOR Foundation and the TABOR Committee, since 2009. The two entities, respectively, educate and advocate on behalf of TABOR.
  • Owner, Construction Economics LLC, since 1983; provides financial and managerial consulting to architects, engineers and contractors.
  • Senior fellow in fiscal policy at the Denver-based Independence Institute, 2001-2014.
  • Served as a Republican state representative from Jefferson County in the Colorado House, 1993-2001.
  • Current board member and past president of the Colorado Union of Taxpayers.
  • Chaired “Too Taxing for Colorado,” an issue committee to defeat the unsuccessful Proposition 103 tax increase on the 2011 statewide ballot.
  • Holds a master’s degree in finance from the University of Colorado Denver and bachelor’s degrees in economics and political science from CU Boulder.

 

CP: Give us your elevator speech on TABOR’s role, and value, in our state constitution.

To read the rest of this story, click (HERE):