Jun 30

Water District – Wants a Blank Check!

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by  Jay Silverheels

Customers of the Eagle River Water and Sanitation District – will be asked this May 6th 2014 to Vote to give their Water District – A BLANK CHECK!

ERW&SD-Logo

Are you a customer (and voter) inside their Eagle River Water & Sanitation District?  (Click Here) to learn if this Water District includes your property.

A Blank Check?

Yes.  Here is the specific Ballot Language that the Water District is using – to try to convince you to let them avoid TABOR spending restrictions in the years to come.

ERWSD-Ballot-Issue-B-1

Your TABOR protections ARE – Article X, Section 20 of the Colorado Constitution!

Why do you think our Water District didn’t use the word TABOR in their Ballot language?

ECT recommends you vote NOT to remove your Taxpayer protections under TABOR!

http://eaglecountytimes.com/2014/03/30/water-district-wants-a-blank-check/

Apr 23

Like HAL 9000, TABOR’s programming overrides will of voters

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We disagree.  TABOR is the will of the voters.

What do you expect from Carol Hedge’s party when they can’t tax, tax, and tax some more so they can spend, spend, spend until Daddy takes the T-Bird away…. TABOR only says you can’t raise taxes without the voters approving the tax.

OPINION

Like HAL 9000, TABOR’s programming overrides will of voters

By Carol Hedges
Guest Commentary

HAL 9000, the mellow-voiced but malevolent-minded computer from "2001: A Space Odyssey." (Thinkstock)

HAL 9000, the mellow-voiced but malevolent-minded computer from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” (Thinkstock)

The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR as most Coloradans know it, is frequently acclaimed as carrying out the will of voters. But as recent events show, it’s doing the opposite.

Would Colorado voters really have approved TABOR in 1992 if they had known it could prevent their communities from accepting state emergency funds after natural disasters like wildfires and floods? Would they have voted for TABOR if they’d known that it could unexpectedly cut taxes on marijuana that voters had overwhelmingly approved in two elections?

Rather than being a tool used to express the people’s will, TABOR works more like a computer with a mind of its own that carries out its preprogrammed mission automatically, oblivious to voters and to their elected officials.

We now have a new political structure – the HAL 9000 form of governance, modeled after the mellow-voiced but malevolent-minded computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Many Coloradans know TABOR mandates tax elections. But it does so much more. Continue reading →

Apr 03

Guest Commentary: Double Down and Defend TABOR

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Dustin ZvonekBy 

There’s good news and bad news for Coloradans as the annual state budget battle looms.

The good news, if you tend to focus on the revenue side of the ledger, is that the state is relatively flush with cash at the moment.

This helps explain the extra spring in the step one notices in legislators, lobbyists and special interests swarming the capitol, as they imagine all the wonderful things they can do with that windfall.

But this can also be bad news if you tend (as I do) to take the taxpayer’s point of view, since the resulting feeding frenzy could leave little thought to socking-away savings or returning a dividend to taxpayers as required by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

You must remember TABOR, approved by voters back in the early 1990s? It’s been an invaluable ally to the state’s bill-payers ever since, which also makes it the bane of politicians and spending interests, who deeply resent the restraints it imposes on their ability to tax and spend at will.

Every budget season the debate stirs anew over whether TABOR has been good or bad for the state.  And this year that debate has taken on a new urgency for a number of reasons. Continue reading →

Mar 31

Lawsuit against TABOR

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from the April edition of the Naysayer newsletter from historian, author, and social critic Phil Goodstein.
Note a different location, La Casa de Manuel at 3158 Larimer, for the Naysayers’ meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 4.

The Democrats’ thorough contempt of voters and popular democ­racy is endless. It has surfaced again in the lawsuit filed by party lawmakers against the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). The citizenry adopted this amendment to the state constitution in 1992, partially in reaction to the extravagant handouts and giveaways of the government to private businesses and the scam of Denver International Airport.
Ever since its passage, the governing class has raged against it. This refers to the political elite. Far from seeing themselves as representa­tives of the public, designed to get the government to work for everyday people, they are essentially representatives of the government who try to impose the dictates of the bureaucracy on the populace. They particularly call for ever greater pay for public officials, seeing them­selves as the enlightened guardians of civilization while they surround public buildings with goons to defend the government from the popu­lace. Such ideologues rail against TABOR precisely beside it is designed to check the usual plunder of officeholders with their give­aways to politically well-connected donors.
While endlessly attacking TABOR, the governing class has never tried to repeal it through an open and honest referendum. Rather, as is its wont, it has employed stealth. Its latest scheme is a federal lawsuit, claiming the act is unconstitutional because it ties the hands of lawmak­ers in deciding how much they can tax the populace. In other words, rather than having the courts respect the decision of the electorate, the governing class wants sweeping judicial intervention whereby ap­pointed jurists, with no public accountability, will allow it to have its way despite the mandate of the citizenry. Precisely such policies and arrogance are what fuel the massive alienation of the citizenry from the government. For so illustrating their elitism and contempt for every­body except their cherished government, those pushing the TABOR suit are an Associate Naysayer of the Month.

http://denverdirect.blogspot.com/2014/03/lawsuit-against-tabor.html

Mar 22

A fee or a tax? Guarding TABOR against lawsuits

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By Brian Vande Krol 

Guest Commentary

TABOR author Douglas Bruce collects political signs to be placed in high traffic areas of Colorado Springs rebuffing efforts against Referendum C, amending

TABOR author Douglas Bruce collects political signs to be placed in high traffic areas of Colorado Springs rebuffing efforts against Referendum C, amending TABOR, in November 2005. (Chuck Bigger, Special to The Denver Post)

 

 

To fee, or not to fee. That is the question.

Whether ’tis Nobler in the wallet to suffer

The Fees and Enterprises of outrageous Governance,

Or to file suits against CBE,

And by opposing end them?

A Colorado organization has filed an appeal to overturn a Denver District Court finding about the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). We believe the trial court erred in finding that Colorado’s Bridge Enterprise (CBE) conforms to TABOR.

In 2010, the legislature created the CBE to repair and maintain bridges. The CBE was called an “enterprise” so it could issue debt without a vote of the people, as is otherwise required by TABOR. The CBE already has issued $300 million in debt and plans more (up to $1 billion).

An enterprise is a government-owned, self-supporting business, which is exempt from TABOR restrictions. The legislature also authorized the CBE to impose a new charge on vehicle registrations. Known as the bridge safety surcharge, it was designated for repair and maintenance of state-owned bridges. But the CBE had a problem. Because the charge is not a fee for service, it functioned like a tax, which requires a vote of the people.

Disinclined to allow Colorado’s constitution to stand in the way, the CBE called it a fee and hoped the label alone would be enough to avoid a tax election.

In 2012, the TABOR Foundation sued to reverse the tax and stop the issuance of more debt, arguing that the fee is actually a tax, and that the CBE is not a qualified enterprise and cannot issue debt without a vote of the citizens of Colorado. Continue reading →