Prop CC campaign to keep taxpayers’ TABOR refunds finally launches

The people who want Colorado voters to give up their TABOR tax refunds in exchange for better roads, schools and bridges finally launched their campaign Wednesday morning — nine days before ballots drop.

“This is really important for the future of Colorado,” said Dan Ritchie, a civic leader and former chancellor of the University of Denver. “This is not just something that’s nice. This is something that’s needed.”

The Yes on CC campaign’s formal launch, which was held at Metropolitan State University, came with remarks from Gov. Jared Polis and a $25,000 donation from an alumni group. In total, the campaign has about $1.6 million to spend in less than a month, according online campaign finance records. The opposition launched months ago and spent the summer knocking on doors and sending mailers telling people to vote no.

“It might be late for a kickoff like this, but, you know, a lot of people don’t start paying attention until after Labor Day,” said House Speaker KC Becker, D-Boulder.

She and her fellow Democrats passed a bill last session with the help of Republican Sen. Kevin Priola to send Proposition CC to voters in November. It asks them to unwind part of a state constitutional amendment called the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. TABOR gives voters the final say on all proposed tax increases and provides a formula for how much money city, county and state governments can keep. Anything above the TABOR cap is sent back to taxpayers as refunds.

The question before voters is whether to get rid of that cap forever at the statewide level and split the money equally among K-12 education, higher education and transportation.

All but four of Colorado’s 178 school districts have already “de-Bruced,” the nickname for permanently lifting the limit on the amount of tax dollars a government can keep. Eightyfive percent of Colorado’s municipalities and 51 of 64 counties have also convinced their voters to let them opt out.

“In the most conservative areas of the state they have said, ‘Look, rather than trying to raise taxes, why don’t you let us not raise taxes and spend what we already collect,'” Polis said. “It just makes common sense.”

Conservatives who oppose the ballot measure see it differently.

“What the proponents won’t tell you is that this is a huge tax increase,” Colorado Rising Action director Michael Fields said in a statement. “It’s also a blank check — with no guarantee where the money will be spent. The legislature should prioritize fixing our roads without taking away our TABOR tax refunds forever.”

The projected TABOR tax refund for the first fiscal year Prop CC would be in effect averages out to about $37 per person, Becker said. It’s not a huge amount of money per taxpayer, but altogether it adds up to about $300 million, which could pay for things like teacher bonuses, books, new classroom technology and road repairs.

Polis spent part of his summer calling Republicans to see if they could reach a deal to make some changes to the ballot measure in a special session. He wanted to add the current fiscal year to the ballot measure, and Republicans wanted a tax cut to offset some of the refunds. The two sides couldn’t reach an agreement and talk of a special session died in late August.

“Obviously, we got a late start because we were trying to work with Republicans all summer to see if there were changes they’d want to make,” Becker said. “But I think we’ve got a good campaign team. I think we’ve got a really good message.”