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Colorado Bill Could Undermine TABOR Protections Redirecting Billions Away From Taxpayers
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado Bill Could Undermine TABOR Protections Redirecting Billions Away From Taxpayers

By Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado Senate Bill 135, legislation that could permanently end the refund of overcollected tax dollars, as well as radically raise revenue limits under Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) amendment, just received a new fiscal note predicting an even bigger blank check for the legislature than before.  This follows the updated revenue forecast presented to the Joint Budget Committee (JBC).  Let’s see what changed.  Budget hole gets bigger Legislative analysts predict that this year’s “budget shortfall” will be approximately $1.5 billion, based on the March 2026 Economic and Revenue Forecast.   While that means a haircut to General F...
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Colorado collected $3.1 billion in marijuana taxes. Here’s how much actually reaches schools.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado collected $3.1 billion in marijuana taxes. Here’s how much actually reaches schools.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice When Colorado voters said yes to legal marijuana back in 2012, schools were a big part of the pitch. More than a decade in, the state has collected over 3.1 billion dollars in tax revenue. So where does it all go? That number still carries a certain weight. It suggests a level of impact that would be visible in classrooms across the state. But when the dollars are traced through the system, then stacked up against what it actually costs to run schools, the effect looks different. Not invisible. Just smaller than people tend to expect. A closer look at what schools receive In the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year, Colorado collected about 231.1 million dollars in marijuana tax revenue, according to the state’s nonp...
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Senate Bill 135 Raises New Questions About TABOR Limits And Taxpayer Protections
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Senate Bill 135 Raises New Questions About TABOR Limits And Taxpayer Protections

By Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado Claims that Senate Bill 26-135 could permanently eliminate the refund of overcollected revenue under Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) amendment may at first blush sound hyperbolic, but they are not. Let me explain.  Beyond handing progressive legislators a blank check to cover up their own overspending, the new TABOR revenue limit creates a perverse incentive to limit both fiscal transparency and voter consent.  TABOR working just fine  TABOR’s existing formula limits annual growth of a portion of the state budget to a combination of population growth plus inflation.  This formula allows government to reasonably grow and accounts for factors not directly wit...
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Colorado Budget Gap Nears $1.5B As Revenue Forecast Slides
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, State

Colorado Budget Gap Nears $1.5B As Revenue Forecast Slides

By: Marianne Goodland | The Denver Gazette The latest revenue forecasts from economists in both the governor’s office and the Colorado legislature show that the state’s budget predicament has worsened — by hundreds of millions of dollars more. That, in turn, means cuts programs and services in next year’s fiscal budget will go much deeper. The state’s fiscal predicament also means no refunds for Colorado residents. Economists with the Legislative Council downgraded the forecast for the 2026-27 fiscal year by another $643 million, bringing the total shortfall to nearly $1.5 billion. What’s driving the downgrade? General fund revenues — dollars that come from tax collections for individual and corporate income tax, and sales and use taxes — came in lower for fi...
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Colorado’s assault on families: TABOR, parental rights and the bills lawmakers killed
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Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s assault on families: TABOR, parental rights and the bills lawmakers killed

By Colleen Enos | Commentary, Christian Home Educators of Colorado In the United States of America, we cherish our freedoms. We have the freedom to protect our families, to practice our faith, to educate our children, and to live in safe communities. Coloradans want to experience those freedoms in our state, too, not just as an ideal in our country. We want truth, justice, and the American way. The American way of limited government and keeping our own money is at risk with the constant attack against the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR). Homeschool families' ability to educate their own children becomes increasingly difficult as the state of Colorado takes additional resources away from us. SB26-135, State Public K-12 Education Funding, wants to circumvent TABOR restrictions and proposes k...
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Framed as education, but tied to TABOR: Measure to keep surplus revenue advances
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Framed as education, but tied to TABOR: Measure to keep surplus revenue advances

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Colorado’s fight over spending limits is back at the Capitol, and this time it could end up in front of voters. The Senate Finance Committee voted 6–3 on March 12 to advance SB26-135, teeing up a 2026 vote on whether the state can keep revenue above the TABOR cap instead of sending it back as refunds. It comes down to a basic question: should that extra revenue go back to taxpayers, or stay with the state? What follows is less straightforward. How the bill works The proposal does not rewrite TABOR itself. Instead, it puts that decision to voters—whether to allow the state to keep and spend money that would otherwise be refunded. If voters sign off, the state could retain revenue above the cap, up to an amount ...
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Colorado Senate Panel Advances Bill To Redirect TABOR Refunds
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Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Colorado Senate Panel Advances Bill To Redirect TABOR Refunds

By: Savana Kascak | Complete Colorado DENVER–Couched as a state education funding effort, legislation to siphon off overcollected revenue that would otherwise be refunded to Colorado taxpayers passed out of a Democrat-controlled Senate committee on Thursday. Senate Bill 26-135, “State Public K-12 Education Funding,” refers a question to Colorado’s November ballot to increase K-12 education funding by 2% annually for the next ten years. According to the bill, the money is intended to go towards teacher pay increases and retention, lowering class sizes, and technical career programs. Along with raising education appropriations, the bill allows the state to keep and spend excess revenue collected above the limitations in the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). ...
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Democrats Push Plan to Eliminate TABOR Refunds For The Next 10 Years
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Democrats Push Plan to Eliminate TABOR Refunds For The Next 10 Years

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics Colorado voters could decide this fall whether billions of dollars that would otherwise be returned as refunds under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights should instead go to public schools under a ballot measure unveiled Thursday by Democrats. Supporters say the proposal would address chronic underfunding in K-12 education, while critics argue it takes money away from taxpayers and amounts to sidestepping the state’s constitutional spending limits. Supporters have insisted that schools are underfunded to the tune of billions of dollars, while one study says revenue and spending by schools have significantly grown in the last few years, with a noticeable shift toward non-instructional spending. Under the proposed ballot measure, the am...
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Colorado’s immigration folly: Taxpayer dollars fueling a broken system
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s immigration folly: Taxpayer dollars fueling a broken system

By Rep. Ken DeGraaf | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice As the state representative from House District 22 in Colorado Springs, I see daily how federal immigration enforcement and state policies affect families in El Paso County. President Trump’s 2024 reelection brought a secured southern border after the Biden era’s chaos, when 8 to 11 million people entered illegally—the largest surge in U.S. history.  That influx overwhelmed communities nationwide, including Colorado. While federal policy now prioritizes removing criminal aliens, Colorado Democrats have enacted legislation that rewards illegal immigration with generous taxpayer-funded benefits, all while ignoring the burden on law-abiding citizens. Deportation data from 1993 to 2022 show enforcement is bi...
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TABOR under pressure: How “think of the children” messaging is shaping Colorado’s education debate
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State, Top Stories

TABOR under pressure: How “think of the children” messaging is shaping Colorado’s education debate

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Note the “won’t someone think of the children?!” framing I don’t think there are any specifics yet, but as of last week, there were plenty of rumors about the Democrats taking another stab at TABOR, this time in conjunction with their paymasters the teacher’s unions. If you read the Sun article linked first below, you’ll see one possible form this effort could take: some way or another, tying lifting the TABOR cap to directing money into education. Doing so would obviously enable supporters to frame opposition as being cold hearted: won’t someone please think of the children? I have discussed framing before, and the best way to counter it is to be aware of the framing, presenting counter...
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