In this file photo, volunteers pile up signs for backers of the 2005 ballot measures that aimed to lift some TABOR restrictions. Referendum C passed which allowed the state to retain expected refunds for five years and reset the TABOR base.
By JON CALDARA | Columnist for The Denver Post
PUBLISHED: June 28, 2019 at 2:14 pm
Come on you taxpayer-hating, consent-loathing, voter-fearing pantywaists.
Cowboy up and put a full repeal of our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights on the ballot. You know you want to. So just do it.
I’m talking to you in the Colorado Legislature who’ve been calling tax increases “fees” because you don’t trust the people who elected you to vote on their own taxes. You who want another “TABOR time out” to nibble away consent and jack up spending limits permanently.
You’ve always hated TABOR because you hate asking for permission to raise taxes. You hate asking to raise debt. You hate asking to keep excess tax revenue above the rate of population growth and inflation.
You’ve used every conceivable loophole the courts have pried open for you to keep what would have been refunded to working families.
And now you never want to have to ask again.
This filing does not contain the substance of our argument and is administrative in nature.
Don’t be intimidated that the first document is 55 pages long – it contains as an appendix the entire Order issued by the lower court which makes up the overwhelming volume of this Notice.
The Defendants also filed an appeal of Judge Buchanan’s ruling that our team has standing.
Wrong-headed, to be sure, but expected.
That filing is also attached here and also only an administrative step.
There has to be an exchange of documents before the attorneys will be informed of a schedule to submit arguments to the Court of Appeals.
That could take another seven weeks
All of this is public information but we wanted our TABOR supporters to be updated.
Penn
Click here to see the Hospital Provider Fee Notice of Appeal
Click here to see the Hospital Provider Fee Defendants Challenge of Standing by The TABOR Foundation
Another year, another legislative attempt to erode Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR).
TABOR opponents, bored with chipping away at the law’s foundations, have broken out the chainsaws. On the one hand, legislative Democrats are ignoring the plain language of TABOR and unilaterally enacting a universal income tax increase without a statewide vote, by calling it a “fee.”
And on the other hand, they are proposing a ballot referendum to waive the law’s taxation restrictions. According to TABOR, any increase in general revenue above the previous year’s plus inflation and population increase must be refunded to the people. House Bill 19-1257 would remove that restriction, allowing the state to keep any and all tax revenue, forever.
In return, the money that was kept would go to transportation, transit, public education, and higher education. Theoretically, anyway. Such a deal might seem to have some superficial appeal to Colorado voters, but recent experience strongly suggests this may be a harder sell than proponents expect.
HB 1257 is Referendum C on steroids. In 2005, voters approved a temporary “time-out” from TABOR’s spending restrictions, allowing the baseline to grow at the inflation plus population formula regardless of what revenues actually did. Referendum C has allowed the state to keep about $17 billion, including over $1.2 billion in the last fiscal year alone.
Hospital fees that have generated billions of dollars in Colorado are legal and do not violate Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights, according to a Denver District Court ruling.
The ruling is in favor of the health care policy department and the Colorado Department of the Treasury.
In 2015, the TABOR Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the fees. The hospital provider fee is a charge imposed on hospital stays that other states refer to as a “bed tax.”
Hospital fees that have generated billions of dollars in Colorado are legal and do not violate Colorado’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights, according to a Denver District Court ruling.
Colorado hospital fees do not violate TABOR, Denver District Court rules
