TABOR and the 2023 legislative session
We follow the bills as best we can, but do not rate them, relying instead on the excellent and thorough Colorado Union of Taxpayer’s work and that done by others, such as the Republican Liberty Caucus. There were a few good ideas and plenty of bad ones, but we focused only on those that affect TABOR.
The General Assembly pretty much left the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights alone until the final week of the legislative session. Then, legislators dropped a big negative on Colorado with a bill to place Proposition HH on the ballot this fall.
The entire idea is bad. It is very complex and convoluted legislation that proponents tout as lowering your property taxes. It fails. The Gallagher Amendment was repealed a couple years back. That action removed the method to tamp down increases in residential property taxes. With property taxes threatened to soar next year, Proposition HH (Senate Bill 23-303) takes money owed back to the taxpayer to reduce some (perhaps half) of the property tax increase. It literally uses a big tax increase by taking your TABOR rebates in order to pay down your property tax increases! Dastardly. Sneaky. Terrible.
What is your TABOR Committee doing about it? We brought together like-minded organizations to protect TABOR by defeating this crumby, lose-lose measure, in which only the government benefits. The new coalition will function as a clearinghouse and share ideas and efforts, although no strong core has materialized as yet. Your TABOR Committee already filed to set up a statewide issue committee (a legal necessity to conform to election requirements). We funded it with seed money and secured a matching donation.
Are you torqued off yet?
Please join the fight by volunteering. Let your interest be known by emailing info@TheTaborCommittee.com or calling 303-747-7460. Please also donate to our efforts by sending a check to the TABOR Coalition at 720 Kipling, Suite 12, Lakewood 80215.
Proposition HH has more pieces to it – a hike in the State revenue and spending limitation that allows government to grow faster than the private sector and a provision about the senior exemption. One of our allies filed a lawsuit because the measure violates the single-subject rule. It has been joined by a dozen local governments!
A different measure on the fall ballot asks voters to allow the State to keep higher marijuana taxes. A provision in TABOR requires proposed tax increases to estimate the amount to be raised. In order to keep governments from monkeying with the estimate, any overage must be returned and the rate adjusted downward, unless the taxpayers in a second vote allow the higher receipts.
There was another anti-TABOR bill that adjusts some definitions on insurance premiums taxes. TABOR does not allow arguments that any higher taxes are too little to care about (de minimis). But, in a lawsuit several years ago filed by the TABOR Foundation (our sister organization), the Colorado Supreme Court errantly imposed a de minimis provision. We cannot fight the precedent set then, and the amount this year truly is small – less than $7,000.
