DENVER – A multimillion-dollar campaign to increase taxes for schools failed to budge Colorado voters away from their anti-tax stance.
For public-school advocates, the loss of Amendment 66 is especially tough after more than $10 million in campaign spending failed to persuade voters that schools need their help.
Two years ago, Proposition 103 sought a sales and income tax increase for schools. It lost by nearly the same 2-to-1 margin as Amendment 66, even though the Prop 103 campaign raised just $600,000.
Gov. John Hickenlooper said the potential reward of smaller classes and more resources for teachers was worth the risk of asking voters for a tax increase in a tough year. He vowed to keep working on better funding for schools.
“Every great social victory in the history of this country is based on a number of failures,” Hickenlooper said.
Amendment 66 sought to raise Colorado's 4.63 percent income tax rate to 5 percent, or 5.9 percent on income above $75,000. It would have raised $1 billion a year and triggered a new formula for state support for schools.
Montezuma-Cortez schools stood to gain the most in the Four Corners from Amendment 66. The loss means they will not get a projected $1,200 extra per student.
State Sen. Michael Johnston, D-Denver, wrote the new school-funding formula, which would have helped the poorest districts and the ones with the most disadvantaged students. The formula also would have provided money to pay for a controversial new teacher-evaluation system that the Legislature passed in 2010.
Johnston said even opponents agreed about the principles of school reforms.
“What we disagreed about is how to pay for them, and that was the question – the narrow question – that was decided (Tuesday),” Johnston said.
State Treasurer Walker Stapleton campaigned against the amendment, and he blamed its defeat on uncertainty among voters as to how their tax money would help students.
“Tonight is not a night for celebration,” Stapleton said. “Tonight is a night to go back to the drawing board and bring sustainable education reform to Colorado.”
Stapleton said voters needed more assurances that their money would not be wasted or diverted to pay for retirement systems.
The Amendment 66 campaign received $2 million each from the National Education Association and its Colorado chapter. Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg each donated $1 million in the home stretch, allowing the campaign to blanket the state with more than $3 million in television advertising in the last two weeks of October.
Hickenlooper's campaign team, OnSight Public Affairs, ran the Amendment 66 campaign. The team borrowed from President Barack Obama's campaign playbook and spent much of its time and money on door-to-door campaigning, opening 18 field offices across the state.
But none of those advantages did much to change the results from 2011.
A shoestring opposition campaign funded by the right-leaning Independence Institute argued that the extra money would be sucked up by administration or retirement expenses before it found its way into classrooms. The Yes on 66 campaign tried to convince voters that the Legislature had set up safeguards to make sure voters could see the money would indeed benefit students and teachers.
La Plata County school districts briefly played a pivotal role in rewriting Johnston's school-funding formula. Testimony at the Legislature by superintendents from Durango, Bayfield and Ignacio convinced Johnston to rewrite the formula to include modest increases for Durango and Bayfield.
Turnout was low, with less than half of the people who voted in the 2012 presidential election casting a ballot this year. Even worse for Amendment 66 supporters, the wrong people stayed home.
In early voting through Monday night, Republicans – traditionally more hostile to tax increases – accounted for 40 percent of the ballots counted, while Democrats had less than 32 percent of the vote.
jhanel@durangoherald.com
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