Drive almost any highway in Colorado, and you can feel the problem in your hands. The wheel chatters over ruts, you swerve to miss potholes and you grip a little tighter on narrow, crumbling shoulders that should have been rebuilt years ago. Our roads and bridges are wearing out faster than we’re fixing them.
Colorado roads now rank among the worst in the nation overall, with the pavement condition of our rural roads ranking 47th in the country. Driving on rough roads costs the average Colorado driver $831 annually in additional vehicle operating costs – a total of $3.7 billion statewide. Infrastructure and repair issues impacting road safety contributed to the 49% increase in traffic fatalities between 2013 and 2023.
The Democratic-controlled Legislature has not only ignored the problem for years but has also siphoned transportation money to plug other budget holes. Last session alone, $100 million was stripped from transportation for other programs. It’s no wonder our state is ranked 43rd in maintenance spending per mile.
Coloradans already pay transportation-related taxes and fees every time they buy a car, replace their tires, swap out a car battery or fill up at the pump. They reasonably assume that money is used to maintain the roads and bridges they drive on every day. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Initiative 175 changes that. It requires that existing transportation revenues – the gas tax, certain sales taxes and motor vehicle fees – be used for roads and bridges so they cannot be raided for unrelated purposes.
No new tax. No new fee. No increase in what you pay.
The ballot measure dedicates only 2% of the entire state budget to repairing Colorado’s roads and bridges. It doesn’t cut funding for schools or healthcare or defund transit, rail or multimodal programs. Two cents of every state dollar for the roads that carry our workers, our children and our economy is far from radical. It’s the bare minimum of seriousness. Yet my colleagues across the aisle, after years of squandering funds on new programs and pet projects rather than fixing the roads, now claim we don’t have the money.
Instead of trying to develop a better solution, the General Assembly passed HB26-1430 in the final hours of the legislative session. The bill, which goes into effect only if and when Initiative 175 passes, is an attempt to override the will of the voters by cutting the existing revenue sources that would fund the roads, and you won’t get a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights refund. By cutting those revenues, the state can free up more general fund money to spend, at its discretion, on what would otherwise be subject to refund under TABOR.
By cutting revenue sources such as the gas tax that Initiative 175 depends on, the bill provides Coloradans with a three-year tax cut. But the fact that lawmakers had to resort to this tactic shows a bigger problem: After years of Democratic majorities diverting transportation funds to other priorities, Colorado is left with bad highways, unsafe bridges and one of the worst road systems in the country. Instead of rebuilding trust by using transportation funds for their intended purpose, we continue down the same path of single-party control over the last eight years, with the same spending habits that caused the problem.
The real issue was never that Colorado didn’t have the money to fix its roads. The problem was that Democratic majorities kept spending that money on other things. For years, transportation funding has taken a back seat to new programs and political goals, while drivers have paid more for repairs, faced unsafe roads and dealt with more traffic. Initiative 175 lets voters change these priorities and make sure transportation money is actually used for roads.
Our roads are in bad shape because of political decisions, and now voters can choose a different path.
Cleave Simpson (R-Alamosa) is Colorado’s Senate minority leader and represents Senate District 6, which includes Alamosa, Archuleta, Conejos, Costilla, Dolores, La Plata, Mineral, Montezuma, Montrose, Ouray, Rio Grande, Saguache, San Juan and San Miguel counties.
