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Colorado’s budget keeps growing. Florida just cut spending again
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado’s budget keeps growing. Florida just cut spending again

By Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado While Colorado’s majority Democrats lament the state’s persistent budget challenges, Florida’s Republican majority just celebrated reducing spending for a second consecutive year in another business-as-usual state budget.  Colorado legislators have plenty of lessons they could learn from Florida, instead, they are more likely to double down on more tax and spend, economy-wrecking policies.  How the states compare  Governor Jared Polis recently signed a $46.8 billion state budget, an almost 7 percent increase over last year’s $43.9 billion in spending, this despite legislators’ constant catastrophizing about Colorado’s “budget shortfall.”  That amounts to approximately $7,800 for every Color...
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Property taxes up, TABOR refunds nearly gone: El Paso County data reveals the real cost of Colorado’s tax system
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Property taxes up, TABOR refunds nearly gone: El Paso County data reveals the real cost of Colorado’s tax system

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice The first-half property tax payment is due every year by the end of February. The number on the front has gone up again. Somewhere near the bottom, a small credit appears: "TABOR credit."  El Paso County Assessor Mark Flutcher provided RMV with six years of certified tax data for two El Paso County properties: one in downtown Colorado Springs, one in Lorson Ranch, a newer subdivision south of the city.  The numbers show what has happened to Colorado homeowners.  The property tax bill for the downtown home rose from $1,165.61 in 2022 to $1,472.82 in 2025. The Lorson Ranch bill went from $3,369.39 to $4,933.31 over the same period.  The TABOR credit on both statements, which peaked a...
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If Polis vetoed it, maybe Colorado should take a closer look
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

If Polis vetoed it, maybe Colorado should take a closer look

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I guess we can’t say Polis never vetoes, it’s just rare. I wanted to share a couple of articles (one by Complete Colorado linked first below and the second by CPR) detailing some vetoes from Governor Polis this legislative session. I’ll leave it to you to poke around in either or both articles, but there are a couple of notable things I wanted to mention. There are some non-surprises such as modifications to the Labor Peace Act. No one figured he’d sign it; he’s been a vocal opponent of such efforts. The legislative Democrats are just biding their time for the next governor anyway. There was one that is an update to an earlier post. HB26-1418 would have put a fee on video game transactions to provide m...
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Five candidates agreed Colorado has problems. Voters must decide who owns them
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Five candidates agreed Colorado has problems. Voters must decide who owns them

By Rocky Mountain Voice Editorial Board Colorado has become so expensive that starter homes are starting to sound less like milestones and more like bucket-list items. Businesses are beginning to treat Colorado the way some retirees treat winter: nice place to visit, not entirely sure about staying. The surprising part isn't that Republicans said so. It's that Democrats did too. During this week's Republican and Democrat gubernatorial debates, candidates from both parties described a Colorado that is becoming harder to afford, harder to build in and harder to keep businesses in. Nobody on either stage stood up to argue that things are going great. A recent RMV report on Common Sense Institute data found Colorado lost a net 3,934 business establishments in 2024, ran...
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Signature Gathering Intensifies As Colorado Ballot Battles Take Shape
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Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Signature Gathering Intensifies As Colorado Ballot Battles Take Shape

By Sherrie Peif | Complete Colorado DENVER– A large-scale signature gathering effort is underway in Colorado as proponents rush to get numerous citizen-initiated ballot measures qualified for the November statewide election, with issues ranging from from a right to hunt and fish to capping the stat income tax rate. The conservative advocacy group Advance Colorado, for example, is hip-deep in the effort, with two measures already on the ballot and at least three others are in the signature gathering phase. Already on the ballot is “Penalties for Fentanyl Crimes,” a statutory change that reinstates certain penalties related to fentanyl that the Democrat-controlled legislature has weakened or removed over the years. A second measure, “Law Enforcement Reporting Requ...
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Colorado protected school funding without touching TABOR refunds. Now it wants those too.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Colorado protected school funding without touching TABOR refunds. Now it wants those too.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Last session, the Colorado General Assembly passed a bill asking voters to waive their TABOR refunds to fund education.  The ballot title calls it "without raising taxes." No rates change.  But it asks Coloradans to let the state keep money the constitution currently requires it to give back, and it comes one year after the legislature moved more than $200 million into a protected school account without touching anyone's refund at all. The two moves address the same problem. They work very differently. What the legislature did first In 2025, tucked inside HB25-1320, the School Finance Act, a Senate Appropriations Committee amendment drafted by Sen. Kolker (D) and Sen. Kirkmeyer (R), created something...
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Taxpayers on the Hook When Government Programs Cost More Than Promised
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Taxpayers on the Hook When Government Programs Cost More Than Promised

By: Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado Colorado’s state budget is structurally unsustainable, which majority Democrats say could be fixed by ending voter consent over new taxation or by increasing taxes on Colorado residents through a progressive income tax.  While those suggestions would certainly increase state revenue, they are unlikely to fix Colorado’s ongoing budget deficits.  Meanwhile, taxpayers often learn too late that programs are vastly exceeding costs; programs like Cover all Coloradans, Healthy School Meals for All, and the wolf reintroduction scheme were all revealed to be more expensive than initially advertised to voters.  Why do programs end up being so much more expensive than advertised?&n...
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Is HB26-1111 a smart ag solution or another TABOR workaround?
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Is HB26-1111 a smart ag solution or another TABOR workaround?

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project HB26-1111: a beneficial enterprise? At my last check, HB26-1111 (linked below) is awaiting either 30-day passage or the Governor’s signature. This is another enterprise-creation bill. It creates an enterprise which charges a fee on pesticide producers and applicators. The fee will, among other things, be used to create a program where pesticide applicators can dispose of leftover pesticide. Per a conversation I had with my State Senator Byron Pelton, as things stand now, prior to this bill, pesticide applicators must pay a disposal company to take leftover chemical, and that price is growing more and more each year. The enterprise created in that bill steps in with a government-run business to take ...
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Colorado Road Funding Initiative Nears November Ballot After 180,000 Signatures Submitted
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The Gazette, Approved, State

Colorado Road Funding Initiative Nears November Ballot After 180,000 Signatures Submitted

By Marissa Ventrelli | The Gazette Organizers of a proposal seeking to dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars to road construction and maintenance have submitted signatures to state election officials in their campaign to put the initiative on the ballot this November. If officials certified the signatures as sufficiently meeting the threshold — organizers need 124,000 to be valid — the battle shifts to persuading voters to embrace or reject the ballot question. The measure, Initiative No. 175, would require that all transportation-related revenue be used exclusively for building and repairing roads and bridges, improving safety, conducting transportation planning and engineering, and supporting Colorado State Patrol operations. The battle over road funding ha...
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Colorado Marijuana Lawsuit Claims State Inflated Taxes Through Market Distortions
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Approved, Colorado Politics, State

Colorado Marijuana Lawsuit Claims State Inflated Taxes Through Market Distortions

By Christopher Osher | Colorado Politics Plaintiff says state owes over $100 million in refunds This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. The regulators of Colorado’s first-in-the-nation recreational marijuana market have allowed so many sham transactions in the industry to proliferate that honest cultivators and manufacturers shoulder an unfair excise tax burden, claims a lawsuit filed on Thursday that seeks class-action status. The lawsuit, filed by a large-scale marijuana cultivator in the state, claims the state owes millions of dollars in tax refunds. It alleges failures in enforcement by the Marijuana Enforcement Division have allowed “distortions” in how the state calculates the average market rate (AMR) for unprocessed marijuana tha...
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