Category Archives: TABOR news story

Apr 26

Hospital Provider Fee Lawsuit Appeal Update

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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

Apr 25

Coloradans may face 4 spending questions this year. Will new nicotine tax measure overload the ballot?

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Michael Fields@MichaelCLFields Tweeted:
The state budget went up by $1.6B again this year. Government has enough money already.
 

Coloradans may face 4 spending questions this year. Will new nicotine tax measure overload the ballot?

The proposal, announced Wednesday by Gov. Jared Polis and Democratic state lawmakers, would set a uniform nicotine tax at 62 percent. That would lift the taxes on a package of cigarettes to $2.49 from 84 cents.

The Colorado Sun — jesse@coloradosun.com

If an 11th-hour Democratic effort to raise nicotine taxes debuted Wednesday makes it to the ballot, Coloradans could face as many as four consequential spending questions when they vote in November.

How those efforts could interact remains unknown, but discussion is already underway about the potential consequences of asking voters to make so many revenue-generating decisions at once and whether questions might counteract each other.

Also top of mind: Colorado voters in 2018 rejected tax increases aimed at paying for transportation and education, two of the most cash-poor and motivating issues in the state. So the question is, what’s different now?

“Not only are there the statewide (revenue-increase questions), but once you get into the municipalities, there are going to be even more,” said Courtney Sievers, pollster with the Republican firm Magellan Strategies.

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Apr 22

Ending Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights refunds a deservedly tough sell to voters

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Sharf: Ending Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights refunds a deservedly tough sell to voters

 By Joshua Sharf

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.”

Photo and copyright: Tony’s Takes

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.

We don’t know where Referendum C dollars go

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.

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Apr 20

Guest Opinion: Roads are the losers in 2019 Colorado Legislature

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Guest Opinion: Roads are the losers in 2019 Colorado Legislature

Opinion | April 19, 2019

Lindsey Singer
Guest Opinion

Fixing the crumbling and crowded roads across our state has been a talking point for politicians in Colorado for years, as the project backlog has grown to more than $9 billion.

Democrats who control the purse in the legislature don’t seem to feel any urgency to fix the funding issues creating the backlog. In his first address to the General Assembly, Governor Polis spent mere seconds talking about the underfunded transportation infrastructure, offering no real solution.

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