Carman: The sun is setting on TABOR and the generation of Colorado voters who supported it

The celebrations have been loud, long and joyful. Democrats, who didn’t dare imagine anything like what happened in the midterms, are over the moon. Even in Colorado Springs, a Democrat will represent Colorado’s 5th Congressional District for the first time — ever.

But an even bigger accomplishment has slipped by largely unheralded.

After 34 years; hundreds of successful de-Brucing votes in nearly every city, county and school district in the state; a statewide measure (Referendum C) that modified it; and numerous efforts to rein in its draconian restrictions on funding education, public services and infrastructure;  voters finally put a stake in the heart of the cynical Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

Passing the graduated income tax measure, Amendment 87, along with the education funding measure, Proposition NN, is like tossing water on the Wicked Witch of the West. The TABOR amendment, activist Doug Bruce’s bitter claim to fame, is melting before our eyes. 

The proponents of 87 and NN should be congratulated not just for their hard work, but for their exquisite timing. They rode a wave of hostility toward the billionaire class with measures that promised to reduce taxes on modest incomes and increase tax rates on those earning over $500,000 a year. The measures earmarked the resulting increased revenues for boosting teachers’ salaries, reducing K-12 class sizes and supporting early childhood education.

They might as well have used the image of trillionaire Elon Musk taking a chainsaw to federal programs for the working class in their campaign material. Resentments still run hot, and this was an opportunity to fight back. 

Against steep odds, the measures won.

“We were a grassroots coalition up against millions of dollars in dark money and a steady stream of disinformation, and Colorado voters saw past it,” said Chris deGruy Kennedy, president of the Bell Policy Center and co-chair of the coalition behind Amendment 87. 

The Bell estimates Amendment 87 will cut taxes for everyone making less than $500,000 a year while generating $2 billion annually from those who make more. It also requires an annual audit to make sure the money is spent as voters intended.

DeGruy Kennedy said the coalition will monitor the implementation of the amendment to ensure the money produces “meaningful impacts for Colorado’s people and small businesses.”

Time will tell, of course, but compare that to the way TABOR came about.

It took three elections before the amendment was passed by voters in 1992 and it’s safe to say few — if any — of the 812,308 people who voted for it had the slightest idea what they were endorsing. They thought it was a simple matter of allowing voters to approve any tax increases and limit the growth of state government.

It was a decade before Coloradans realized what they really got. 

After the dot-com bust, they discovered the hard way that if the economy sunk into recession, TABOR’s ratchet effect would prevent state, local and school district budgets from returning to pre-recession levels. A temporary downturn in the economy became a permanent reduction in public services.

That made funding road maintenance, sheriff’s departments, even paying for repairs of heating systems in rural Colorado schools extremely difficult. It sparked an explosion of frantic de-Brucing measures to keep snowplows operating in mountain towns and teachers in warm classrooms.

In the 2010s, when anti-tax organizations in other states attempted to pass TABOR measures, even some prominent Republicans hit the road to warn voters about the consequences of such extreme anti-government funding proposals. Colorado served as a  cautionary tale.

Voters across the country resoundingly rejected them after seeing what had happened here. 

Now, after more than three decades of struggling to untie the Gordian Knot that is the TABOR amendment, Coloradans are taking steps to build a tax structure that is rational, straightforward and reflects their values.

Like so many of the results in this month’s election, the success of 87 and NN serves as a sign of a movement away from the Baby Boomers’ legacy of tax avoidance for the wealthiest among us, high deficits, failure to address climate change and neglect of public services to a new era of younger generations demanding fair taxation, real representation and effective government.

“… Young people in Colorado have worked relentlessly to get Amendment 87, the Income Tax Fairness Act, on the ballot and then successfully passed because we understood the future of the programs we depend on was at stake,” said Christina Soliz, executive director of New Era Colorado and co-chair of the coalition behind Amendment 87.

“Our generation is a powerful reminder that our hopes and dreams are not out of reach, and when we come together during an election, we change results.”

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