Greetings!
As the incoming chairman of CRBC, on behalf of the Board, I encourage you to please join us in actively supporting small business interests, either by being engaged in various ways such as testifying, volunteering and/or contributing, or just by staying abreast of legislative and political news and passing the word on to your circle of friends, associates and other contacts.
I’d like to draw your attention to the following four important matters:
- Senator Rollie Heath’s (D-Boulder) initiative to raise your sales and individual & corporate income tax
- Lawsuit to eliminate TABOR – Taxpayer Bill of Rights
- Unelected Colorado bureaucrats who just issued $300 million in new debt – with more to come!
- Lobato v Colorado – another lawsuit that could effectively eliminate TABOR
1) Initiative 25, the “Bright Colorado” Initiative
Sponsored by Senator Rollie Heath (D- Boulder) would raise the statewide sales tax rate from 2.93% to 3% and would increase the individual and corporate income tax rate from 4.63% to 5% for five years. Most of the additional tax revenues would be dedicated to K-12 and higher education. Please note that these additional revenues must be deposited into the General Fund, which means of course they can subsequently be appropriated as the General Assembly sees fit.
The tax increase is estimated to raise about $2.6 billion over the next five years. That’s roughly $500 for every man, woman and child in Colorado or $2,000 for a family of four.
Interestingly, Heath could not get even one member of his Party to support a similar legislative bill. Thus, the petition route.
The proponents of Initiative 25 have received approval from the Title Board for the ballot title and now may proceed with their efforts to collect a minimum of 85,853 valid signatures from Colorado registered voters, to be submitted to the Secretary of State no later than August 1, 2011. If the Secretary of State determines that enough valid signatures have been submitted the Initiative will appear on the November 8, 2011 ballot.
A counter group, chaired by former Representative Penn Pfiffner, is called Too Taxing for Colorado. That group is in the formative stages and will soon have its website live. If you would like to participate with volunteering, donating, writing Letters to the Editor, blogging, or helping in some other way, please contact the campaign’s Executive Director Regina Thompson at 720-371-9218 or regina.thomson@yahoo.com.
2) An attack on TABOR – Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.
A lawsuit has been filed in federal court, claiming that TABOR is a violation of the US Constitution because it allows citizens to vote on tax increases instead of reserving that power to the politicians in the General Assembly.
The essence of TABOR is to require that all tax and debt increases be approved by a vote of the people. In the Colorado Bill of Rights (Article II), it starts with the acknowledgement that, “All political power is vested in and derived from the people….” Additionally, the people are recognized as having the “sole and exclusive right…to alter and abolish their constitution and form of government….” The only limitation is that it not be in conflict with the U.S. Constitution.
The plaintiffs argue that TABOR violates the “Guarantee Clause” of Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution, which guarantees each state a “republican form of government.”
Chief Deputy Attorney General Cynthia Coffman is quoted in the Denver Post as saying that the attorney general’s office would “vigorously defend” TABOR in court. (Attorney General John Suthers was out of country and unavailable for comment.) The list of plaintiffs, which includes some current Democrat legislators, along with some Republicans, are identified in the attached article. Please note that no Republican currently in office supports this lawsuit.
Americans for Prosperity, led in Colorado by Jeff Crank, is sponsoring a web petition to fight the lawsuit.
The Colorado Republican Senate Committee is also sponsoring an online petition drive.
CRBC Board member Brian Vande Krol tells the backstory about the lawsuit in his blog article.
3) Another attack on TABOR – SB09-108 (FASTER) authorized creation of a “Colorado Bridge Enterprise”, which subsequently borrowed $300 million to start a round of bridge repairs, and is charging every vehicle owner in Colorado each year a “fee” for “access” to those bridges.
Rich Sokol, a CRBC Board member and a member of the advisory board of the Leadership Program of the Rockies and Tom Ryan, a financial expert with Analyst Strategy Group, each have written papers for the Independence Institute regarding this outrageous TABOR attack.
The linked article below quotes Sokol: “The law allows an unelected group of bureaucrats to appoint an unelected administrator and together borrow whatever amounts of debt can be backed by FASTER funds. On December 1, 2010 they did just that. And now Colorado’s citizens are burdened with $300 million of newly issued debt – with promise of more to come…All this, and we weren’t asked.”
Please see the interview with Rich and Tom by Jon Caldara on his Devil’s Advocate TV show accessible in the linked article below.
4) Yet another pending attack on TABOR – the Lobato v. Colorado lawsuit with the next court battle scheduled for August. This lawsuit began in 2005 and if the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs TABOR could be “judicially repeal(ed)”.
From the Attorney General’s office filing:
“Plaintiffs contend the public K-12 education system should receive nearly 3 billion additional dollars, as well as billions more for capital funding, in order to be ‘adequate’.”
“Thus, Plaintiffs seek either a judicial repeal of TABOR or to usurp the role of the
General Assembly by urging the reallocation of almost the entire general fund to public education….”
Andy Anderson
Chairman
Colorado Republican Business Coalition
303.829.9435