By Savana Kascak | Complete Colorado
DENVER–Colorado voters are set to decide further hiking taxes on high-income earners to prop up the state’s dwindling “free” school lunch program as part of the November statewide ballot. But under a recently amended version of the measure, any excess revenues would be used to also subsidize the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), more commonly known as food stamps.
Colorado’s Healthy School Meals for All program began shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic, when the legislature fully funded “free” school meals for every kid in the public school system for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years. With funding set to end after the 2022, lawmakers asked Coloradans to approve Proposition FF, which raised taxes on Coloradans making $300,000 or more, to continue funding the program, regardless of family income.
The $100 million annually cost sold to voters to pass the measure proved to be woefully inadequate, with the program budget quickly seeing a shortfall of around $56 million, which the legislature has since scrambled to fill.
In response, Colorado lawmakers came back for a second grab at high-income wallets in the regular 2025 legislative session, referring Proposition MM (HB25-1274), to the November ballot. The tax increase asks voters to raise an additional $95 million per-year from individuals earning $300,000 or more, by reducing the maximum deduction for joint filers from $16,000 to $2,000, and $12,000 to $1,000 for single filers, thus increasing the amount of income subject to taxation.
Passed during the August special session, Senate Bill 25B-003 added a provision to Proposition MM allowing the state to keep and spend any excess revenue from the Healthy School Meals for All program on SNAP benefits, which are projected to be reduced for Colorado recipients due to new work requirements, as well as other changes to the federally-subsidized program enacted by Congress earlier this year.
850 KOA radio host Ross Kaminsky, who adamantly opposed the original Prop FF, says that “our deep-blue state of East California” is taxing Coloradans to give “middle-class and rich kids” free lunches.
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Instead, there’s just a lunch paid for by somebody else,” Kaminsky told Complete Colorado. “They funded it by stealing tax deductions from people who have good fortune. Now that the program is collapsing under its own weight, they need to steal more from Colorado’s successful people to pay for ‘free’ lunch for other reasonably successful people’s kids.”
Noting that Colorado already has programs to help low-income kids, Kaminsky says this tax increase will have long-lasting negative ripple effects.
“Taxing Colorado’s successful people so aggressively makes it more likely that we’ll end up with fewer of them, resulting not only in the collection of far less tax revenue but also in the loss of sales tax revenue, jobs, and other things that successful people support in our society.”
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