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Colorado Prop CC’s failure may lead to bigger TABOR fights in 2020

Jon Murray, Denver Post
Colorado state Rep. Tom Sullivan, middle, and Sen. Lois Court, right, watch as the numbers come in during a watch party for Proposition CC at Improper City in Denver on Nov. 5, 2019.
Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post

Proposition CC’s big defeat this week was only the latest in a series of bruising ballot-box losses for Colorado Democrats and their allies, but some activists are gearing up for an even bigger fight next year.

Already on the menu of options: a full repeal of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights — the nuclear option of Colorado politics — and a revived stab at a progressive income tax that would cost high earners more. Voters rejected the latter proposal last year as a way to raise more money for schools, but its backers see a potential opening in a presidential election year with far greater turnout.

“Whatever we do next must be bold enough to drown out the alarmists,” declared Scott Wasserman from the liberal Bell Policy Center on Tuesday night as CC’s decisive defeat sunk in. “That work begins today.”



That sentiment was the most aggressive signal that backers of CC don’t intend to stand down in their efforts to reform TABOR — or to seek out new sources to fill recurring funding gaps of hundreds of millions of dollars for K-12 education, higher education and transportation, the three areas that would have benefited from CC. Losing by more than 8 percentage points in the latest results, the measure would have let the state keep excess tax revenues above the spending cap instead of returning it to taxpayers.

Read more via The Denver Post.


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