LOVELAND —Voters in the Thompson School District will get to decide this November whether or not to extend a bonding measure that has been in place since 2005. But critics say the use of the phrase “without raising taxes” in the measure is misleading, noting that under the plain language of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, it actually does amount to a tax increase.
The district serves roughly 14,000 students in portions of Larimer, Weld and Boulder counties, including the cities of Loveland, Berthoud, Windsor and Johnstown in northern Colorado.
The bond, which the district says will go towards a variety of “critical needs,” including additions to Berthoud and Ivy Stockwell elementary schools, is predicted to raise $99 million.
The Thompson School District Bond page says it is not “expected” to increase taxes, despite the fact that without an extension of the bond, the tax accompanying the debt would expire at the end of its initial approval period, thus decreasing the property tax on homeowners within the district. In other words, say skeptics, extending the bonding keeps taxes higher than they otherwise would be, which amounts to a tax hike.
Ballot language abuse
Rob Natelson, senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at Independence Institute,* says that the school district’s verbal manipulation is prime example of what he calls “ballot language abuse.”
“The drafters of TABOR knew that officials often manipulate language on ballot measures for their own purposes,” Natelson told Complete Colorado. “So to protect the voters from misinformation, they prescribed standard wording for tax and debt referenda. Unfortunately, they failed to include similar protection for ballot measures that raise spending caps. Unscrupulous politicians have been smashing through that loophole ever since.”
“Those politicians have a powerful incentive to mislead the voters, because while TABOR limits spending-cap increases to four years, the Colorado courts have misinterpreted it to allow a single referendum to raise spending in perpetuity,” Natelson adds. “A single act of ballot fraud can injure the taxpayers permanently.”
“Ballot language abuse has become a Colorado scandal.” Natelson wrote in a previous Complete Colorado column on the topic.
‘Voters are not stupid’
Thompson Board of Education Member Nancy Rumfelt was the sole no on whether to send the bond extension to voters, noting in a school board meeting that voter trust was an issue and the main reason a bond issue in 2024 failed. She also pointed out that the language was not TABOR compliant.
“The resolution and ballot question must comply with TABOR which means in the first sentence asking voters to approve NEW DEBT with an expected repayment cost, and the amount of taxes to be collected annually for repayment,” Rumfelt said. “In my opinion it is disingenuous to say ‘with no tax increase’ as voters are not stupid and know that if there is no new bond then their property taxes will decrease.”
Rumfelt said there was no real plan for the money and that it has changed multiple times since first proposed.
“We have provided no calculation for taxpayers to understand how much of their tax bill relates to the 2005 bond payment and therefore how much of their money we are asking to keep,” she said.
Ballots for the Nov. 4 election will start being mailed out to voters on October 10.
*Independence Institute is publisher of Complete Colorado.
