State legislators’ hesitance to refer to voters a measure asking to keep excess tax revenue is wholly understandable. After all, the 1992 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights enshrined in the Colorado Constitution the notion of limited government spending and direct voter input on any and all tax-related questions. Under that framework, as well as recent years of recession-induced budgetary limitations, Colorado voters have become accustomed to keeping their fingers on the state’s purse strings.
Because state revenue has grown faster than the inflation rate, plus that of population growth, the state’s economists are projecting a refund as early as this spring. It has been a decade since the state has issued TABOR refunds, though Referendum C, a temporary fix approved by voters in 2005, provided a five-year timeout on returning any surplus to voters. It was essential to keeping the state solvent but not nearly enough to cover the state’s competing essential expenses. Education, transportation, health care and corrections are among the top priorities for Colorado dollars, and none has received the funding it needs in recent years. The refund, which is as yet not quantified, though a projection for rebates in 2016 estimated the total at $137 million, or $16 per taxpayer, would not completely remedy any one of these problems – the Colorado Department of Transportation, for instance, estimates a $10.1 billion gap in its funding compared to state transportation needs over the next decade – but the money could be put to important statewide use in addressing these enduring funding challenges.
Lawmakers from both parties are reluctant to ask voters for the privilege, though. It is not difficult to see why. TABOR is built upon a fundamental mistrust of government and its ability to contain itself with respect to spending. Never mind that government’s prime function is, in fact, to collect and spend tax revenue, the Colorado mentality has for more than two decades been reluctant to ease voters’ grip on state resources. A legislative suggestion otherwise could trigger an ugly political fight writ large across the state. Why not, say lawmakers, have the request come from the ground up instead?
As Senate minority leader Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora said, “The voters are probably going to be most skeptical of anything that is originating in this building,” Carroll said. “So, any solution here is likely going to have to be grass-roots, community coalitions that are coming together.”
Doing so would certainly serve to neutralize the polarization that could infect a legislative referendum, but the need to backfill state coffers is obvious to legislators in both parties. Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio, who regained his seat in the House, is a staunch fiscal conservative who sees the glaring gaps in transportation funding as problematic. Brown would be comfortable referring a transportation-based question to voters, asking permission to use any surplus to fund road repair throughout the state. That is a bold position for Brown – or any Republican – to take and reflects the consensus that is possible around a surplus in the short- to mid-term.
Perhaps Brown and Carroll can work together – across aisles and chambers – to forge a path forward that is palatable to Colorado voters. Building grass-roots community support with legislative leadership is the best of all possible solutions, particularly if that leadership is bipartisan and bicameral. For $16, voters can have a mediocre meal or a short week’s worth of lattes. For $137 million, the state can invest in far more meaningful purchases.
