It always seemed odd that an “election” in Aurora in 2011 to authorize higher tax subsidies for the Gaylord Rockies Hotel and Conference Center involved just a single voter who represented the landowner, was not a resident of the city and who would probably never pay the taxes.
But Aurora officials strongly insisted that this was perfectly standard practice in Colorado when creating a special district to help finance a major development.
Nonsense, said Adams County District Judge Ted C. Tow on Monday. It is not standard practice. It is highly unusual — so unusual, he said, that it is illegal.
And he threw out the election.
“Defendants assert that [the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights] has been satisfied, because the tax collector has approved the tax. To interpret TABOR in such a way would make a mockery of the procedure,” Tow wrote in a stinging rebuke of Aurora’s position.
Aurora can appeal the ruling, of course — and Mayor Steve Hogan told us Tuesday that it would. Or the city could go to all voters and ask them to approve the special subsidy.
Our own view is they should go to voters. If the hotel project near Denver International Airport would be the boon that Aurora officials maintain, then it shouldn’t be too difficult to persuade voters to approve special lodgers and admissions taxes in the district — taxes, after all, that would be borne in the main by tourists.
Moreover, the judge seems to have a point when he says the “secretive” manner in which the city went about holding the one-man election was apparently designed to keep actual city residents in the dark. It’s time to be transparent and to get voters on board.
Hogan maintains that Tow’s ruling is not only improper but also “minor in the overall scheme of things,” and that “we feel good” about the city’s success in the courts so far.
In the Adams County lawsuit, he points out, “the city has now won five of the six contested arguments where a ruling has been made,” including two in Monday’s ruling.
He also dubbed the tax hikes a “minor part of the financing plan” — and not a deal breaker.
But if those subsidies, involving tens of millions of dollars over three decades, were not needed, then the obvious question becomes: Why were they given to the developer in the first place? Perhaps that is something Aurora voters will want to examine if they eventually are given a chance to rule on the matter.
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