Apr 18

The Colorado Title Board & TABOR

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The April 20th Title Board Hearing has a notable 60 proposals on the agenda because it’s the last chance to get title set for the 2022 ballot. Although the list of potential ballot issues is long, many are variations with a slight tweak.  After title setting, the proponents must do the hard (or expensive) work of getting enough signatures.

Nearly a 1/3 of the proposals pertain to alcohol licensing, sales, and delivery.

Property taxes are another hot topic. Pro-taxpayer advocates are presenting relief in the form of a 2%-3% cap on property taxes.

Bigger government advocates propose a new tax on “Luxury Residential Real Property,” defined as $2 million or more. New revenues would be turned over to government to address affordable housing.  On that same theme, there’s a proposal to increase the income tax rate which would be spent on government-overseen affordable housing.

Another group wants to increase taxes from income tax by reducing deductions, putting increased taxation towards free school lunches for certain public schools – an expenditure of $60 – $140 million dollars a year.

Protecting the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights begins before a ballot issue hits the street. The public can testify at the title setting meeting to get transparent language about the financial effects. If you’ve been around Colorado long enough you know that proponents of tax increases will actually try to have the question read, “without raising taxes” if they can get away with it. As we know, if you end up with less money in your pocket because of a tax policy change, that’s a tax increase.

Currently, there’s a legal battle just filed with the Supreme Court over initiatives #62-65, called Additional Revenue to State Education Fund.  Proponents are attempting to claim the measures are not a tax increase. Any of the four variations would reduce or completely eliminate our expected rebates from the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights over the next two years. Since there is no sunset, we would give up a substantial amount of our future refunds if #62-65 moves forward.

You can find the ballot proposals at the Colorado Secretary of State website under Elections & Voting and Initiatives & Title Board. You’re looking for the section titled Awaiting Initial Hearing.

You can testify remotely. The meeting is Wednesday, April 20 starting at 9 am. https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3996912106274902539

Email the Title Setting Board at initiatives@coloradosos.gov. Emails should be sent by Tuesday midday at the latest. Otherwise, listen in remotely and chime in when it’s time. It’s going to be a long meeting.

 

Natalie Menten
TABOR Board Member

Apr 09

Conservatives file lawsuit to invalidate Colorado’s new transportation fees. Here’s what it claims.

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Senate Bill 260, passed by Democrats in 2021, enacted new fees on gasoline purchases, deliveries and Uber and Lyft rides to raise billions for transportation projects

7:23 AM MDT on Apr 8, 2022

Traffic flows along Interstate 70 west of Floyd Hill in Clear Creek County on Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)

Colorado’s new transportation fees violate the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and several other state finance laws and should be invalidated, two conservative groups and Republican state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg claim in a long-promised lawsuit filed late Thursday in Denver.

Senate Bill 260, passed by Democrats in the legislature last year, enacted a host of new transportation fees — including on gasoline purchases, deliveries and Uber and Lyft rides — to raise money for road and transit projects across the state.

To continue reading this story from the Colorado Sun, please click (HERE):
Apr 07

Kerr vs. Polis Lawsuit Update

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There was excellent news last month.  It appears the Plaintiffs have decided not to move forward with the existential threat to TABOR, ending the Kerr vs. Polis lawsuit!

The TABOR Foundation has been coordinating a national coalition of 19 freedom organizations that were ready to submit a friend-of-the-court brief to the US Supreme Court.  We won’t have to write it after all.

When the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals (sitting en banc) issued its ruling last December that was favorable to our position, you could have bet your bottom dollar that the Plaintiffs would continue the lawsuit.  Many left-of-center people and organizations have been pushing this case for over a decade.

The next step in the process would have been for Plaintiffs to petition the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari asking the Court to take up the case (for a second time).  Such a petition had to have been filed by a March 14 deadline, but was not.

The Judgment dismissed the case for failing to state a claim upon which the Court could grant relief for the remaining Plaintiffs, who consisted of a few school districts and other political subdivisions of the State of Colorado.  Originally the Plaintiffs also included individual legislators and citizens.  The individual legislators had been denied standing to sue because they only alleged institutional injuries to the government and none to themselves as legislators.  And the individual citizens did not even allege whether or how TABOR injured them personally.

With respect to the school districts and other political subdivisions, the Court ruled that the US Constitution does not provide political subdivisions with rights against their parent states.  Moreover, none of the Plaintiffs identified any other law providing them with a claim for relief to challenge TABOR.

The Court of Appeal’s dismissal was “without prejudice,” so the Plaintiffs could try a new filing.  We’ll keep watch just in case.

The heart of the Plaintiffs’ legal theory, that citizens are prohibited from placing restrictions on certain legislative powers, was extremely dangerous to the fundamental principles of limited government.

Friends of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights can breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate, for now.

 

Mar 01

Update on Colorado’s Legislative Council Staff and Proposition 116

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In 2020, Colorado voters approved Proposition 116, which reduced the state’s income tax rate from 4.63 to 4.55 percent. Due to the state’s application of certain provisions of TABOR, however, taxpayers will effectively lose out on the rate reduction for the first several years.

Naturally, voters expected that Proposition 116 would allow them to keep more of their own money. A close look at documents maintained by Legislative Council Staff (LCS), however, reveals that things did not work out how voters expected. Tax rates went down, but constitutionally mandated tax refunds — known as “TABOR refunds” — fell by the exact same amount, negating taxpayer savings from the voter-approved tax cut.

It’s a bit complicated, but here’s how it works.

Article X of the state constitution — commonly known as the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR — sets limits on the amount of tax revenue the state can collect each year. If revenues, including income-tax collections, surpass the TABOR limit, the excess gets refunded back to voters.

Picture state coffers as a silo and revenues as grain filling it up. In a good year, there may be more bounty than what the silo can hold. In that case, the overflow goes back to the people.

Each year, the limit — or the size of the silo — increases based on population growth and inflation, allowing government spending to grow automatically. If the state wants to collect or keep tax monies at a level higher than automatic growth permits, it must win voter consent at the ballot.

When voters reduced revenues last year, they voted to decrease the amount of grain put into the silo by a specified amount. In executing the will of the people, the state reduced the amount of grain but put it in the same, larger silo. At the lower income-tax rates, the harvest (i.e. revenues) would have to be exceptionally good to fill up the same silo and trigger a refund.

Incidentally, state revenue forecasts show very bountiful times ahead and refunds for at least four consecutive years despite all this. That means that for at least this year and the next three, smaller refunds will offset the voter-approved tax cuts unless additional reforms are adopted.

Read plainly, TABOR appears to guard against this outcome by requiring the limit to be “adjusted for revenue changes approved by voters.” LCS evidently has a different interpretation—one which has effectively stripped voters of their tax cut.

Governor Jared Polis has lauded the income tax cut on multiple occasions and even said that he supports eliminating the state income tax entirely. He can demonstrate fidelity to his own rhetoric and to the state constitution by directing the Colorado Department of Revenue to adjust the TABOR limit for the “revenue changes approved by voters” with Proposition 116.  Alternatively, the General Assembly could set a new, lower TABOR limit to reflect the new tax rate. Either solution would cause voters to receive their full refunds and benefit from the income tax reduction they adopted in 2020.

Ben Murrey, Fiscal Policy Center Director with the Independence Institute

 

 

Feb 07

State Supreme Court to consider whether paid family, medical leave violates TABOR

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Justices of the Colorado Supreme Court, 2021

 

The Colorado Supreme Court will decide whether the paid family and medical leave program that voters enacted in the 2020 election violates the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

The court announced on Monday that it will review a decision from Denver District Court that dismissed a lawsuit over Proposition 118, the Paid Family and Medical Leave Insurance Program. By a margin of 58% to 42%, voters approved a plan to impose payroll premiums, split between employers and employees, that would entitle workers to up to 12 weeks of paid leave.

Beginning on Jan. 1, 2023, payments into the program will begin. But Grand Junction-based Chronos Builders is claiming that the funding arrangement violates TABOR, the 1992 constitutional amendment that requires tax increases to be put to a vote of the electorate, among other restrictions.

“Any income tax law change,” TABOR reads, “shall also require all taxable net income to be taxed at one rate … with no added tax or surcharge.”

Click (HERE) to continue reading this story at ColoradoPolitics

Jan 31

Democrats set to kill GOP effort to make Colorado’s hospital provider charge transparent

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DENVER — Legislative Democrats are poised to kill a Republican effort to increase transparency for their constituents where fees and spending are concerned.

While Colorado Democrats and Governor Jared Polis continue to tout new state and federal regulations that went into effect Jan. 1 requiring all emergency medical costs to be disclosed before a patient is treated, an opaque charge collected on hospital stays, passed under previous Democrat legislation isn’t getting the same reception.

The fallout is leading two GOP lawmakers to call foul on their Democrat counterparts for not requiring government to follow the same transparency rules they force private industry into.

Senate Bill 22-038, the “Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Fee,” sponsored by Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling has been assigned to the State Veterans & Military Affairs Committee, where ideas that majority Democrats don’t agree with go to die.

It’s dubbed the “kill committee” because it’s where Senate leadership sends bills it doesn’t want debated among all the senators on the floor.

Click (HERE) to continue reading this story

Jan 11

AMERICANISM VS. COMMUNISM. WHICH IS IT GOING TO BE?

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AMERICANISM VS. COMMUNISM

WHICH IS IT GOING TO BE?

 

Join your fellow American Patriots

January 29, 2022

Margaret Carpenter Recreation Center

11151 Colorado Blvd, Thornton, CO 80233

9:30am to 11:30am

Guests Speakers:

  • Retired Colorado State Senator Kevin Lundberg
  • Yvonne Paez, Perspectives 101
  • Dr. Paul Prentice, Senior Fellow, Fiscal Policy Center at the Independence Institute
  • Helen Raleigh, Author and Senior Writer to the Federalist
  • Anil Mathai, Former ACRC Chairman and Chairman of the New Congressional District 8

 

A $20 dollar donation will be appreciated.

Dec 15

Federal appeals panel dismisses 10-year-old lawsuit accusing TABOR of being unconstitutional

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The lawsuit was filed in 2011 by a group of elected officials who argued that the voter-approved 1992 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights violates the U.S. Constitution

The Associated Press
2:34 PM MST on Dec 14, 2021

The Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a lawsuit challenging Colorado’s strict constitutional tax and spending limits.

Colorado Politics reports that the court dismissed the lawsuit, filed in 2011 by a group of elected officials who argued that the voter-approved 1992 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights violates the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees a republican form of government in each state where elected officials make decisions.

The constitutional amendment known as TABOR requires that tax increases be approved by voters. It also requires the state to refund tax revenue that exceeds a figure determined by a formula based on inflation and population growth.

To continue reading the rest of this story, please click (HERE) to go to the Colorado Sun.