Five lawmakers who want TABOR gone put Prop NN on your ballot

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

Five Colorado lawmakers on the November ballot have campaign websites calling for the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to be ended, repealed, dismantled or abolished. 

All five signed on to a 2025 resolution that would have directed the legislature to sue over whether TABOR is constitutional. And all five voted to put Proposition NN in front of voters this fall.

Prop NN does not repeal TABOR.

It raises the amount of revenue the state may keep above the TABOR cap by an amount equal to state public K-12 education funding. The Legislative Council Staff analysis mailed to every registered voter household, the Blue Book, says the measure eliminates TABOR refunds for budget years 2026-27 and 2027-28.

Neither route came with a replacement.

The resolution would have put TABOR’s fate to a court rather than to voters. Prop NN keeps TABOR and zeroes the refunds. None of the five campaign pages reviewed proposes anything to put in its place.

Ending, repealing, dismantling, abolishing

Rep. Kyle Brown (D) of House District 12 chairs the House Appropriations Committee and sits on the Joint Budget Committee. On his campaign homepage he writes, “I support ending TABOR so Colorado can fully fund public education, improve infrastructure, expand housing opportunities, strengthen health care, and build an economy that works for everyone.”

Rep. Yara Zokaie (D) of House District 52 says she will use her “tax law background to end tax loopholes used by the wealthy and corporations.” Her issues page says “TABOR has significantly harmed our ability to properly fund our state,” and that “we must work together to repeal TABOR so the legislature can proactively respond to the concerns of Coloradans.”

Sen. Iman Jodeh (D) of Senate District 29 has a campaign jobs page that says “we must dismantle outdated fiscal restraints like TABOR and Gallagher.”

Rep. Junie Joseph (D) of House District 10 has a section headed “Revenue and Budget (TABOR).” It says “We need to get rid of TABOR if we want to make progress on issues like education, healthcare, climate resilience, transportation improvements, and housing shortages.”

The section carries no date, credits “our 2022 state legislators,” and praises a bill that “passed this year.”

Rep. Javier Mabrey (D) of House District 1 has the shortest version, written about him rather than by him. His campaign site says he will push “to abolish TABOR and end corporate welfare.”

Text from the five lawmakers’ campaign websites, as the pages appeared Sept. 27. 
Highlighting added by RMV.

The lawsuit that never happened

In March 2025 the five put their names on House Joint Resolution 25-1023. It would have directed the General Assembly’s Committee on Legal Services to hire counsel and sue in state district court.

The resolution argues TABOR violates the U.S. Constitution’s Guarantee Clause and the Enabling Act of Colorado. Its findings say Section 20 “removed necessary and essential powers of its representative institutions and so deprived the state of a republican form of government.”

Had the resolution passed and a court agreed, TABOR could have been voided without a vote of the people.

Jodeh was a prime sponsor. Brown, Joseph, Mabrey and Zokaie signed on. So did Rep. Lorena Garcia of Adams County, another prime sponsor.

It cleared House Finance 7-6 on April 7, 2025. Three days later it was laid over on third reading without a floor vote. The record lists it as lost.

Then they referred a cap increase

Senate Bill 26-135 refers Prop NN to voters. The Senate passed it 23-12 on April 27. The House passed it 42-21 on May 9, with two Republicans excused.

Brown, Zokaie, Joseph and Mabrey voted yes in the House. Jodeh voted yes in the Senate. The signed act lists Jodeh and Joseph among its sponsors.

No Republican voted for the bill on passage or repassage.

The Senate’s April 27 vote was party-line, and the chamber repassed the bill 23-12 on May 12 after a 35-0 procedural vote accepting the House amendments.

The House roll call shows every Republican present voting no, and one Democrat with them. That Democrat was Garcia, prime sponsor of the lawsuit resolution a year earlier.

Refunds go to zero

The Blue Book puts numbers on it. Prop NN is expected to reduce refunds by $329.9 million in the current budget year and $521 million in 2027-28.

Its table of estimated refunds, running from $50,000 in income up to $500,000 for single and joint filers, shows $0 in the Prop NN column at every level.

A single filer with $75,000 in adjusted gross income would get $28 next year under current law and $58 the year after. Under Prop NN, nothing.

Where that money goes

Supporters describe the money as locked to K-12. The ballot title asks voters whether “state investment in K-12 public education” should “increase two percent each year for the next ten years.”

RMV reported on Sept. 21 that the enrolled bill says something narrower.

The first claim on what the state keeps is not schools.

Starting in 2027-28, retained revenue goes first to reimburse local governments for the property tax exemptions for seniors, veterans with a disability and Gold Star surviving spouses, a reimbursement current law already requires as a TABOR refund mechanism.

The Blue Book puts that at $206.1 million in 2027-28, paid out of the revenue the state keeps rather than on top of it.

In the first year, the whole retained amount goes into the new Children’s Account. What reaches that account is then split.

For the first decade, at least half goes to K-12 and the rest to child care, preschool and other children’s programs.

After ten years, the Blue Book says a flat amount stays dedicated to K-12 for teacher pay, career and technical courses and smaller class sizes. The legislature may spend whatever remains in the account on any purpose.

The 2 percent annual increase carries its own limit.

State law defines it as the lesser of the school funding formula’s positive factor or whatever the state keeps above the cap after the homestead payments come out.

A smaller surplus means a smaller increase, and no surplus means nothing.

Repeal would strip nine subsections and need only a majority

Repeal would remove more than the refund.

The refund requirement is subsection (7) of Article X, Section 20 of the Constitution of the State of Colorado, and the amendment has nine.

Subsection (4) requires voter approval in advance for “any new tax, tax rate increase, mill levy above that for the prior year” and for multi-year debt taken on without cash reserves set aside to pay it. Subsection (8) requires any income tax change after 1992 to tax “all taxable net income” at one rate. Subsection (5) requires an emergency reserve of at least 3 percent of spending. Subsection (3) requires a mailed notice before any tax or debt election, headed “NOTICE OF ELECTION TO INCREASE TAXES” or “TO INCREASE DEBT.”

Nothing in a repeal measure would automatically keep any of it.

A ballot repeal of TABOR takes a constitutional amendment, and those normally need 55 percent of the vote.

There is an exception. 

Articles XIX and V both say the 55 percent rule “shall not apply to a constitutional amendment that is limited to repealing, in whole or in part, any provision of this constitution.”

A repeal needs a simple majority. The Blue Book says Prop NN passes with a majority vote too.

The legislature can refer one with a two-thirds vote in each chamber.

Citizens can petition one onto the ballot with signatures from 2 percent of registered voters in each of the state’s 35 senate districts and at least 5 percent of the votes cast for secretary of state statewide.

The Blue Book says Prop NN is the only measure the legislature referred this year.

The one number they cite

Joseph’s undated page carries the only hard figure of any of the five cites, claiming Colorado is “49th out of the 50 states in how much we spend on students relative to our personal incomes.”

The Census Bureau ranks the state 44th on that measure for fiscal 2024 and 28th on spending per pupil.

The shortfall figure supporters cite comes from two studies the legislature ordered in 2023. The first found a $3.5 billion gap in December 2024, the second $4.1 billion in April 2025. 

The Blue Book’s argument for Prop NN uses the $3.5 billion figure.

Neither study attributes the gap to TABOR.

No answers

RMV sent written questions to all five offices on Sept. 20, asking whether they support full repeal, how they would pursue it, how Prop NN fits that goal and what they would keep in TABOR’s place.

None had responded as of Sept. 25.

Voters decide Prop NN on Nov. 3. No repeal measure is on the ballot.

One would have needed the same simple majority Prop NN needs.