Colorado Voters To Decide Future Of TABOR Refunds In November

By Sherrie Peif | Complete Colorado

DENVER — For years, Democrats have been chipping away at Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) refunds while looking for ways to permanently disable the more than 30-year-old constitutional amendment that, among other things, limits growth of a portion of the state budge to a formula of population growth plus inflation.  Revenue collected over that limit must be refunded to taxpayers unless voters consent to forgoing refunds at the ballot box.

This year, however, they may have found the way. The late session introduction and passage of Senate Bill 135 sends a question to the voters in November essentially ending TABOR rebates.  Proponents are using using school children and teachers to tug at the heart strings of Coloradans by claiming the retained billions will go to education, a claim critics call disingenuous at best.

Sleight-of-hand

If approved by voters, the annual TABOR revenue limit would be raised in the first year by the amount equal to the previous year’s K-12 education appropriation, nearly $5 billion. A newly created education funding “positive factor” formula then compounds annually over the course of a decade, continuously raising the revenue limit and essentially dismantling the TABOR cap, thus making the refund of overcollected revenue to taxpayers a thing of the past.

However, the idea the money will go to strictly to education is an example of legislative sleight-of-hand.

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