On November 5th, 2019 Coloradans will be voting on Proposition CC.
Read more about the ballot initiative HERE on the Secretary of State’s website.
What it asks: “Without raising taxes and to better fund public schools, higher education, and roads, bridges, and transit, within a balanced budget, may the state keep and spend all the revenue it annually collects after June 30, 2019, but is not currently allowed to keep and spend under Colorado law, with an annual independent audit to show how the retained revenues are spent?”
What it means: Proposition CC would allow the state to retain revenue it refunds under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights for education and transportation purposes. The measure would require the state auditor to hire a private entity to conduct an annual financial audit regarding use of funds as provided under the measure.
It will allow state government to keep the money it collects from existing sources annually instead of refunding some to taxpayers when annual revenue growth, which is tied to inflation and the percentage change in state population, exceeds that. Any money collected above this limit is refunded to taxpayers unless the voters allow the state to spend it.
Proposition CC would eliminate that cap allowing the state to keep and spend all future excess revenue on transportation, K-12 schools and higher education rather than refunding it to taxpayers.
The think tank, part of Colorado Christian University, says it’s opposing Propositions CC and DD because they aren’t fiscally responsible and don’t help families in the state. The state constitution’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) requires voter approval for all tax increases.
“Colorado is more free, families are stronger, and our state budget is healthier if both Proposition CC and Proposition DD are rejected,” Centennial Institute Director Jeff Hunt said.
When state government collects revenue above its spending cap, TABOR requires that money to be refunded back to taxpayers. Proposition CC asks voters to allow state government to permanently keep the occasional tax refunds.
In your upcoming mail ballot you will be asked to give the state of Colorado a blank check. Don’t be tricked into believing the initial language “without raising taxes…”
Proposition CC is a tax increase forever. Colorado taxpayers will no longer receive (forever) any of their tax rebates (refunds) of their hard earned money if Proposition CC passes.
Colorado Legislature has tricked us in the past by saying requested tax increases would fund roads, bridges, education, teacher pay, and on and on, but when our taxpayer money was spent, the Legislature decided to divert it elsewhere due to lobby and special interest groups pressure. The Legislature has consistently broken promises to Colorado voters. Recently, Colorado voters rejected 13 ballot measures at the state level by a wide margin. Because Colorado voters defeated the Colorado Legislature’s request for more funds, the Legislature now proposes to “trick” Colorado voters again.
This Proposition will “gut” the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (also known as TABOR). The Taxpayer Bill of Rights requires voter approval for any increase in taxes or debt. This is our Taxpayer Bill of Rights, not the Legislature’s, do not vote to give it away forever.
The Taxpayer Bill of Rights has been the only way voters have kept Colorado from spending taxpayer funds to the maximum, as done in California.
Proposition CC will forever remove Colorado seniors and veterans property tax exemptions. This will put seniors and veterans at risk, and place more pressure on local budgets.
Colorado communities have individually voted property tax increases to fund local schools and other services such as fire departments (we can locally determine if funds are being spent as represented), and if Proposition CC passes, those seniors and veterans on fixed incomes will have a difficulty paying local property tax bills.
Colorado has a top ranked economy. The Taxpayer Bill of Rights has contributed to Colorado’s success. Colorado has one of the lowest tax rates in the country providing a positive location for business investment and jobs.
If our Taxpayer Bill of Rights is repealed, over $1.7 billion collected over the next 3 years will not be refunded to Colorado taxpayers.
The Legislature already has a $32.5 billion budget… enough is enough! This budget automatically increases with population and inflation. The Legislature has enough of our money.
The Legislature must be held to account and budget just as we do with our personal budgets.
Mary Ann Smith
Pagosa Springs
The debate for Prop. CC involves whether to keep TABOR refunds, or send the tax dollars to three key areas: education, colleges and transportation.
POLITICS AND GOVERNMENTPRIMARY CATEGORY IN WHICH BLOG POST IS PUBLISHED
Voters will make decisions in November about two questions involving taxes that the Democratic-led state legislature put on the ballot
There’s no presidential election or U.S. Senate contest on the 2019 ballot, but the Nov. 5 election will ask Colorado voters two fiscal questions with major ramifications for the future of the state.
Proposition CC and Proposition DD pose questions related to taxes — whether to keep the tax money the state collected and whether to add a new tax on sports gambling. And the interests that will benefit are spending big money to make their case. Ballots hit the mail starting Friday.
Here’s a look at the two statewide ballot questions. (Click the links below to jump to that section.)
DENVER — A New York City-based organization has doubled down on getting involved in Colorado’s election this year.
More specifically, Education Reform Now Advocacy (ERNA), which initially sent the “Coloradans for Prosperity aka Yes on Prop CC” campaign committee $100,000 to push a ballot effort to permanently eliminate tax refunds under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), sent another $352,000 to the campaign, according to a Major Contributors Report filed by Yes on CC Monday.
According to the ERNA website, it believes that “every child should receive an adequate and equitable allocation of resources no matter their race, socioeconomic status, or zip code nor whether they are enrolled in a traditional district-run public school or public charter school.”
Dan Ritchie, Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Denver told a crowd of mostly Democrat law makers, teachers and students who officially kicked off the campaign last week, that they needed to beware of money from outside of Colorado being spent from the opposition, referring to Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a Washington D.C.-based organization.
According to AFPs website, it advances “policies that will help people improve their lives.” AFP Colorado recently spent nearly $500,000 on a media campaign to oppose Prop CC.
Although both AFP and ERNA have Colorado offices, the difference in the two organizations is their direct ties to the official yes and no on CC groups.
AFP is an independent group making its own decisions on how to target the No on CC message. ERNA is donating directly to the Yes on CC campaign, which will determine how to spend the money.
The additional revenue puts the Yes on CC campaign at slightly more than $2 million in donations, while No on CC has reported only $17,000 in total contributions.
Some people bemoan the lack of trust in government officials. Those people should read more. They could start by learning how many of Colorado’s officials ruthlessly manipulate ballot language to mislead voters and skew election results.
Jefferson County’s Ballot Issue 1A—up for a vote next month—is a case in point.
Issue 1A is a referendum under the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). TABOR requires officials to ask voter permission, via referendum, for several kinds of fiscal decisions. The most important are (1) raising taxes, (2) creating debt, and (3) waiving caps on government spending (which TABOR sometimes confusingly calls “revenue”).
Knowing that government officials sometimes try to manipulate elections, the TABOR drafters inserted rules governing how tax and debt issues appear on the ballot. But they omitted similar rules for elections to waive spending caps.
The reasons for the omission are not clear. Perhaps it was an oversight. Or perhaps the drafters thought rules were unnecessary, because waivers were to last a maximum of four years. If a waiver was abused, the abuse would soon be over and voters could hold the guilty officials accountable.
But in 2002, the Colorado Court of Appeals issued a case seriously misinterpreting TABOR. The court ruled that once the voters in a particular locale approve a spending cap waiver, the waiver does not necessarily expire. The waiver may specify five years, or seven, or ten. If it does not contain an ending date, the waiver lasts forever. TABOR spending caps never apply in that locale again.
October 7, 2019
There is much to like in the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), and it’s good to remember that it includes good government provisions that improve election procedures.
None of us want to put up with elected officials holding a surprise election for voter approval of a government’s action. Yet, there were times in the past in which the public was not adequately informed about an election. The elected officials would list it in a newspaper’s Public Notices section, and of course had to put the ballot measure into the government’s official record. But that was insufficient to let voters know what was going on, and by doing the minimum possible to notify voters, some governments were able to keep the elections low profile. The intent of suppressing turnout was so that only those people heavily invested in passage would participate. The normal citizen, the rank-and-file taxpayer, might miss a special election, allowing others to vote in, say, a new debt issue or increase a tax rate.
The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights corrected that situation. The constitutional measure pertains to all governments in Colorado, even small special districts that don’t command much attention.
When bringing an issue before the voters, TABOR requires that “At least 30 days before a ballot issue election, districts shall mail …. a titled notice ….. addressed to ‘All Registered Voters’ at each address of one or more active registered electors. …. Titles shall have this order of preference ‘NOTICE OF ELECTION TO INCREASE TAXES (or) TO INCREASE DEBT….’
The paragraph contains even more specifics, as it was carefully crafted to prevent elected officers from circumventing it. This important constitutional provision improves the operations of all governments in our state and protects the taxpayer in ways beyond just voting on tax rates.
The Colorado state Capitol in Denver.
Do not give politicians a blank check. They have proven unable to manage what they already have.
Colorado is not a low-tax state where politicians scrape to fund basic services. Our state did not make Kiplinger’s top-10 list of the most tax-friendly states this year, released last week, despite having a one-of-a-kind Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights in the state constitution. Weakening this protection, as Proposition CC would do, will only make things worse.