Ballot asks what state do we want

This November, Coloradans will be confronted with the sort of big questions every previous generation who has lived here has had to consider: What is a Colorado way of life worth to each of us?

This year, that big question will be broken into smaller ones about how we build the kind of state we want and who should pay for it.

Amendment 73 asks you if the 8 percent of households that make over $150,000 per year should pay a sliding tax to improve our schools. That investment would not only benefit them, but help the other 92 percent of Coloradans who make less than they do. In practice, this means considering if a family earning $200,000 in income should pay an extra $60 so we can compensate teachers better, lower child care costs, and reduce student debt loads. A family making $400,000 per year would pay an additional $3,000 in taxes.

Opponents to this idea will ask you to believe such a change would actually induce these families to give up their life in Colorado because the price is too much for them. Does their argument pass the sniff test? You’ll have to decide.

An entirely separate ballot question, Proposition 110, will ask everyone in this state, regardless of how much they make, to pay less than a penny on the dollar to unclog our roads and create more transit options. In doing so, we’ll also make room in our state budget for other investments, like better

water infrastructure, a better reserve fund, and lower college costs.

Opponents of that question are pushing Proposition 109. It tries to force our state into taking out a big loan for some roads with no sustainable way to pay for it, except putting up our hospitals, schools, and colleges as collateral. It’s not a plan. It’s a fiscally irresponsible ultimatum.

Colorado isn’t poor. Our great and wealthy state is a magical place with plenty of natural resources, beauty and adventure. We’re so industrious that we have tripled our GDP over the last 25 years. But as it turns out, a bigger economy doesn’t always mean a better economy for everyone. Our “boom” gets its quotation marks because it has left a lot of us behind. Inequality is as present here as it is in the states without our kind of wealth. That’s why US News and World Report ranks Colorado as the country’s No. 1 economy, but lists our education system at 20th and our fiscal stability at 31st.

A look below our majestic skyline of mountains and cranes reveals valleys full of infrastructure in disrepair and communities that have been nickel and dimed. As we all know, life here comes with a common refrain: “Traffic is bad, housing is insane, child care is hard to find, schools are pricey, and college comes with debt, but life in Colorado is too valuable to leave behind.”

This sentiment doesn’t just come from the bottom of our economy. It comes from our dwindling middle class, too. Colorado’s middle class isn’t shrinking because of tax burden. It’s shrinking because wages, which have only just begun to move up for some, haven’t kept up with the prices of essential supports that we’ve reduced our public investments in. The result has been higher tuition rates, fourday school weeks, and cashstrapped childcare centers. These are pain points every family feels.

The challenges we’re asked to resolve this November aren’t new for most of us, but they are getting worse. For years, our neighbors, friends, and family members who lead our communities have wrestled with the lack of adequate funding. Coloradans have had longstanding disagreements over how to close all the gaps and cracks in our state, but no one believes they’re not there.

There’s a distortion field you’ll encounter when approaching these questions. That’s because Colorado is ground zero for a radical effort by billionaires like the Koch brothers to shape tax policy in this country. Our family fights have become their national business, and they do their best to distort our picture of what truly helps restore balance in our economy. They say there’s plenty of money in our state budget; we just need to prioritize better.

Our legislature has prioritized, but there’s no getting around the fact that since we permanently reduced our tax rates in 1999, we’ve spent less on state services. Adjusted for inflation, we are spending the same percentage of our total personal income we did during Colorado’s recession in the early 1980s. Even in good economic years like this year, we won’t be able to spend enough to do much more than maintain status quo. This is why we are a state of paradoxes, where we continue to miss opportunities to do better for the people who live here. There simply is not enough fuel in our tank. The “idiot light” is on.

Will this year be the year Colorado gets a badly needed tune up? This year, Amendment 73 and Proposition 110 are two attempts to do that. If the cynical voices who tell us we can’t do this end up winning, these questions won’t go away. Without new tax revenue, Colorado will not have the funding it needs to create the kind of state where we all prosper.

I will be voting yes on both these questions because I think Colorado can be the complete package. We can be a booming economy that boasts a prosperity all of our residents feel. We can make sure no group falls through the cracks. Just like the generations before us who built the Eisenhower Tunnel, forged waterways that spread life across our state, and built the civic campuses that center our communities, we have a responsibility to plan for our future. Will future Coloradans look back and thank us for the investments we made, or will they wonder why our economic engine went idle? This November, you are in the driver’s seat and the choice will be yours.