Even though we’re paying premium prices to heat our homes and fuel our vehicles, Coloradans took out their pocketbooks last week to maintain government services.
While all eyes were on the state revenue battle known as Referendum C, voters were approving more than two-thirds of the local tax issues put before them across the state.
Even Lakewood residents, who’ve turned back previous proposals for sales tax hikes, agreed to raise the city’s sales tax by 1 percentage point to prop up sagging government services.
The 2005 election will be remembered as a turning point in Colorado politics – the year voters restored some of their faith, and cash, back into government.
High on the voters’ agenda were local government “de-Brucers,” which allow governments to use revenues collected in excess of the annual limits set by the 1992 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. (Passage of such measures does not increase tax rates.)
“This was a struggle for the soul of representative democracy,” said Jane Urschel with the Colorado Association of School Boards, a strong proponent of Referendum C. “This is a tremendous statement of renewed trust in government.”
A New York Times editorial headlined “How Colorado Got Its Government Back” called the Referendum C vote “a thumbs down on ‘starving the beast’ – the Republican strategy of excessive tax cuts to force government to shrink.”
Some analysts think Referendum C had coattails.
Referendum C “was framed as an election to say yes to taxes in general, to invest,” said pollster Floyd Ciruli, who believes the referendum, and Gov. Bill Owens’ support for it, helped other tax measures. “The message of C and D was investment and that things are hurting, and that was the local message, too.”
Governments across the state didn’t ask for lots of bells and whistles with their tax hikes, but rather a bailout.
Overall, nearly 60 percent of the 22 municipal tax measures across the state, separate from other tax issues such as school bond and mill-levy issues and de-Brucers, were approved. Since 1992, the average approval rate has been about 55 percent.
Aurora’s property tax hike for public safety was shot down, and ended up being sort of an anomaly along the Front Range, with Longmont voters approving a five-year extension of the city’s street-improvement sales tax, the growing city of Arvada hiking its sales tax to pay for more police, and Mead approving a lodging tax.
It’s clear that Coloradans don’t agree with the likes of Grover Norquist, who wants to drown government in a bathtub.
Limited government doesn’t have to mean death by starvation.
