Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights is the foundation stone of the anti-tax movement, so true believers are closely watching November’s budget-reform measures. The results could have national reverberations.
Since Coloradans passed the bill known as TABOR in 1992, the nation’s strictest revenue limit has spawned many imitators. This year, similar spending or revenue restrictions have been proposed in 24 states.
TABOR supporters have held the constitutional amendment up as a model to be emulated. Opponents have pointed to Colorado’s problems as harbingers of things to come if TABOR passes in other states.
In fact, most other states considering tax limitations have removed or softened the TABOR provision that has put Colorado in a bind. The “ratchet effect” prevents Colorado state revenues from rebounding from recession as quickly as the economy recovers.
Nevada voters will likely consider a TABOR-like spending limit in fall 2006. State Sen. Bob Beers, who is pushing the Nevada measure, called TABOR a “beacon of hope and common sense.”
“Throughout the country, advocates of liberty and freedom look toward Colorado as the model for balanced, reasonable government growth,” he said.
Beers, a gubernatorial candidate, also is gazing east to see how Referendums C and D fare in November. He and others decided to hold off circulating petitions to put a spending limitation on the ballot until after Colorado’s election.
Opponents of Nevada’s proposed spending limitation also are using Colorado’s experience to argue against implementing it there, Beers said.
“They have been arguing that what we call TASC here, Tax and Spend Control in Nevada, is a bad idea because, after all, Colorado’s about to repeal it,” he said.
Referendum C would not repeal TABOR. It uses a provision of the constitutional amendment to ask voters to allow state government to keep all its revenue for the next five years instead of returning an estimated $3.7 billion to taxpayers as otherwise required by TABOR.
Referendum D asks voters for permission to take out what is essentially $2.1 billion in loans to pay for road, school and other improvements.
Grover Norquist, perhaps the nation’s most influential anti-tax advocate, recently told a small group of well-heeled Republican donors that Referendums C and D are “not the way to strengthen the state or move us in the right direction.”
Norquist spoke at a Greenwood Village home to help Colorado House Republicans raise money to regain control of the chamber they ran for almost three decades before this year.
In an interview, Norquist said that while Referendums C and D are “a big deal to Colorado taxpayers,” they will not affect the national movement for more limitations on taxes and spending.
For instance, Californians will vote on a spending limit this fall being pushed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, a Republican candidate for governor, is pushing for a TABOR-like bill in 2006. A number of other states are discussing similar limits.
“TABOR was a model when people decided they needed to focus on spending restraints. TABOR has therefore already done most of what it needed to do. It convinced activists in many of the 50 states that this is the model,” Norquist said.
David Bradley is a policy analyst for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal Washington, D.C., think tank. His group opposes TABOR limits.
Colorado’s budget-reform measures make it more difficult for the anti-tax crowd to sell TABOR in other states, Bradley said. That TABOR supporters like Republican Gov. Bill Owens are pushing the reform measures “is pretty damaging to the pro-TABOR side.”
Even so, Bradley said, “I don’t think the outcome is going to necessarily stop … the pro-TABOR forces.”
Americans for Prosperity is a conservative free-market grassroots organization pushing for revenue and spending limits throughout the country.
Barry Poulson, a University of Colorado economics professor who works with the group, has designed model TABOR legislation that addresses some of the problems Colorado has seen.
Regardless of what happens to Referendums C and D, anti-tax advocates “see the TABOR limit as the most effective way to restrain the growth of government,” he said.
The results of Colorado’s election will almost certainly find their way into the national debate over spending and revenue limits.
“I think both sides are watching Colorado,” Bradley said. “Closely.”
Staff writer Chris Frates can be reached at 303-820-1633 or cfrates@denverpost.com.
