The right-leaning, Denver-based Independence Institute has a new report on Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the 1992 state constitutional amendment that limits the growth of government by capping revenue through a formula based on population growth and inflation.
“Two Decades of Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights” follows up on the Independence Institute’s 2003 study “A Decade of TABOR,” which was before the TABOR timeout , called Referendum C.
“In the decade before the enactment of The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, Colorado’s population and inflation grew by a
combined 50%,” writes fiscal analyst and Independence Institute senior fellow Fred Holden, the paper’s author. “Yet state government revenues grew by 133%, and state government spending by 119%. In other
words, government taxes and spending were growing at over twice the rate of the population and the price level increase.”
The new report can be downloaded online by .
“I am happy to celebrate over two decades of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights,” Independence Institute president Jon Caldara said in a statement officially released Monday. “Not only does it mean that TABOR is now old enough to drink, it means that since 1992 Colorado has avoided the fiscal traps that have ensnared states like California. This report tells the story so many in the ‘takings coalition’ don’t want you to hear. Read it if you dare.”
In Colorado, whiskey is for drinking and TABOR is for fighting. (Apologies to water.)
To increase taxes, politicians and revenue-seeking activists have to ask the voters. If tax revenue exceeds the limit set by TABOR, taxpayers get a refund.
Democrats (and a few Republicans) don’t like it, and a lawsuit is pending to declare TABOR itself unconstitutional, . TABOR opponents say a republican form of government, as defined by the Constitution, reserves authority to raise and spend taxes for the common good to elected representatives.
The left-leaning Bell Policy Center in Denver has taken its own look at TABOR in the past, and, unsurprisingly, .
“Under TABOR, Coloradans have had an unprecedented opportunity to set state fiscal policy through the ballot box. And under TABOR, state government has grown only slightly,” the Bell Policy Center says.
“But our research also points to structural flaws in the amendment that have seriously impaired the state’s ability to set budgetary and program priorities and respond to crises, such as the recession of 2001-03. In short, TABOR has created a state government that is hamstrung by inflexible rules that make it unresponsive and less effective.
