After 25 years, TABOR still works for the taxpayer
The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights works for you and its 25th anniversary this year is worth celebrating. Once again in 2017 you need to protect TABOR from the political elite attacking it.
TABOR belongs to you. It is how you set a broad control on government that must answer to you and your fellow citizens. It has succeeded in keeping a better balance between costly government programs and healthy family budgets.
Everyone has to live within a budget. That’s just life. Staying in budget brings stability to your family and helps you choose the most important ways to spend your money. The value of living within a budget applies not just to individuals and families, but also to government. That’s just smart — and fair.
The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights affects each level of government in Colorado — towns, special districts, school districts, counties and state government. It allows these governments the budgets they had the prior year, plus automatic increases to recognize growth in demand and cost of services. They can’t spend more than what the citizens can afford. If a government over-collects taxes, it must refund that amount to you or obtain your permission to keep the excess.
TABOR has allowed state and local governments to keep pace with spending on essentials. The latest tax study using information from the
non-political Tax Foundation, ranked Colorado 26th in combined state and local per capita spending. That’s right in the middle of national rankings. For K-12 education spending, Colorado compares favorably with other Mountain and Plains states. Comparing per-pupil revenues with neighboring states is much more fair and reasonable than using a national average, which includes immensely expensive, and failing, school districts in distant cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
TABOR forces politicians to ask the right question. Rather than promising the moon by asking “what do you want,” with TABOR in place they must ask “What do you want more,” recognizing that we can’t afford the wildest dreams of government spenders. It forces politicians to set priorities within their budgets. Governments must work to become more efficient and more effective. TABOR is silent on how money is allocated within the governments’ annual limits set by the citizens. If elected officials decide to spend more to subsidize health care, then there is less money for transportation, but that decision was not determined by TABOR. When Colorado passed an amendment to grow K-12 education spending, consequently crowding out spending on higher education, that too was outside TABOR considerations.
TABOR was well thought out. It adjusts school district revenue for enrollment rather than population, in case more families with children are moving into a district. Local spending is adjusted for changes in real estate growth, so that if more development occurs even without an increase in local population, the needed funding will be there for road maintenance and police.
No one can count the bad tax ideas that were never sent to voters because propo-
nents knew they would fail. The power of government is immense, and sometimes awful. TABOR protects you against government adding new debt without your approval or sneaking a vote on new taxes. Citizens are respected when officials must explain a tax-increase proposal. Districts must be transparent about what they will spend.
We should not allow self-serving interests to weaken any provision of TABOR. Any change should strengthen TABOR — for example, against government decisions and court rulings that dishonestly disguise new taxes as “fees” that are exempt from TABOR’s voter-approval requirement.
Despite claims of “cuts,” total state spending has risen every year. Some TABOR opponents predicted state collapse if it passed. Ironically, they plead to keep the excess revenues that they forecast would never occur. TABOR guards Coloradans’ government budgets from the boom-andbust cycle of other state economies. We have a steady growth in state revenue with fewer problems during nationwide recessions that send other states into crisis, such as in California and Illinois. TABOR created tax stability, which investors and new businesses want. Housing prices are strong. Commercial and residential vacancy rates are well below other states’ averages, as is the unemployment rate.
There will always be calls for higher taxes. In our state, proponents must explain to you why you should surrender more of your family’s budget. You know better than they whether the proposal is worthwhile, so you get the final say on whether government grows ever bigger. After all, it’s your money. Certainly there are challenges and calls for more public services and subsidies and spending and regulation. When there is a call to pay more for government programs, elected representatives must ask you first; when their request makes sense, they obtain their requested taxes. But control remains in your hands, where it belongs.
Governments are formed “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Our wonderful American experiment created a system of self-governance that keeps citizens in charge of state and local authorities. The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights was established to do just that. It is succeeding.