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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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Gambling with taxpayer dollars: Colorado bill could allow nonprofits to get paid before work is done
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Approved, Colorado Accountability Project, Commentary, State

Gambling with taxpayer dollars: Colorado bill could allow nonprofits to get paid before work is done

By Cory Gaines | Colorado Accountability Project Gambling taxpayer money to bolster our nonprofit ecosystem. When you hire someone to do something for you, do you give them an advance? I’ve done it both ways: cash on delivery only and an upfront payment for, say, the materials. The bill linked at bottom makes some noteworthy changes to the way our state interacts with multiple nonprofits it pays to do its work. There are multiple directions you could go in with your speculation, but I think it’s reasonable to conclude overall that the bill bolsters the connection between our government and nonprofits, that it enriches the tightly-interconnected ecosystem of NGO’s and nonprofits in Colorado.** Under current law, prior to this bill, if a state awards a grant to a nonprofit for so...
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Colorado Voters To Decide Future Of TABOR Refunds In November
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Complete Colorado, Approved, State

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 ...
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Colorado Lawmakers Close 2026 Session With Greater Government Control And Higher Fiscal Risk
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Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Colorado Lawmakers Close 2026 Session With Greater Government Control And Higher Fiscal Risk

By Jake Fogleman | Complete Colorado The Colorado legislature officially adjourned May 13, after weighing more than 600 bills over the course of 120 days. Lawmakers entered the 2026 legislative session facing a set of familiar problems: another billion-dollar budget deficit, rising voter frustration over affordability, and growing concerns about Colorado’s economic competitiveness and business climate. Yet despite those warning signs, the Democrat-dominated legislature largely doubled down on the same governing philosophy that has increasingly defined the Capitol in recent years—more fees, more special interest tax benefits at the expense of other taxpayers, and more attempts to carve revenue streams out from under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR). To be sure, not...
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