New Era Colorado exploits budget crisis to push higher taxes

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project

New Era Colorado Using CO’s budget crisis to push a graduated income tax.

I wanted to share a tweet I saw from Free State Colorado recently. The tweet is linked first below if you want to see the original (and/or follow them on Twitter–which you should if you’re not following them some other way).

If you don’t have twitter, the subject of the tweet is how progressive policy organization New Era Colorado is pushing for a “graduated” income tax and using current Federal policy + the state’s budget problems as justification.

Free State Colorado put up pictures of an email that New Era sent out on Aug 6th encouraging their followers to write in an email encouraging what they call a graduated income tax in Colorado. I copied the screenshots from Free State Colorado’s twitter account and attached them as screenshots 1 and 2.

New Era’s actions here are not at all surprising. Never let a crisis go to waste right?

This points to something troubling, but on the flip side of that is an opportunity. Canards like those you see in the New Era email prey on people who are ignorant (often young since the two go hand in hand — they did for me anyway) and who are struggling.

It is an attractive message: get rid of TABOR and Colorado becomes affordable again.

If the trouble here comes in people buying this tripe, the opportunity comes in your ability to share what you know given your knowledge of TABOR and your having watched politics in this state for a while.

Speak up. Talk to young people and recent transplants. Share the history of TABOR, share the history of our balanced budget amendment, share the fact that this state is where we are because of the current political structure. TABOR’s been around a long time and our state has weathered bad times and good with it being law. What’s different is the political makeup of this state and the financial wizardry they’ve put in place to spend beyond our state’s means. What’s different is that the bill for all that spending happens to be coming at a politically difficult time for those currently in power.

One last thing. If you are interested, Free State Colorado did an excellent rundown on New Era (and it was in the tweet thread attached). I included a link to that history second below.

https://x.com/FreeStateColor1/status/1955076814239588732

https://freestatecolorado.com/new-era-co/

Related:

If the name New Era was ringing bells in your brain, it was in mine too. They’re big all over Colorado.

They’re one of the many beneficiaries of the largesse of liberal policy behemoth Rose Community Foundation.

They’re also mixing in on things like state policy on rentals (and getting the Sun to erroneously call them “nonpartisan” until it’s pointed out that New Era is anything but).

READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT THE COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

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