On the Colorado ballot are two statewide measures that are interwoven: Propositions LL and MM. Both are legacies of Proposition FF, referred to voters by the Democrat-controlled state legislature and passed in 2022, creating the Healthy School Meals for All Program (HSMA). Prior to HSMA, the state covered the cost of school lunches only for “at-need” (a euphemism for “poor”) students. HSMA expanded that coverage to include all students regardless of household income, including the children of rich parents. This was just one of countless supposedly “temporary” programs during and after the COVID epidemic.
But Prop FF went way beyond HSMA. It was the camel’s nose under the tent for the first stage of the Democrats’ latest scheme to undermine the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), a constitutional protection that bars the legislature from increasing taxes or imposing new ones without the consent of voters. TABOR also limits state spending to the growth in population and inflation, refunding any revenue surplus to taxpayers. Democrats have tried to kill TABOR for years and resort to devious tactics to get around it like misrepresenting tax increases as “fees.”
LL and MM is the second stage. Prop LL allows HSMA to retain overcollected revenues that would otherwise refund to taxpayers. Before FF, Colorado used your federal taxable income, including the federal standard deduction, to calculate your state income tax. Prop FF raised income taxes on earnings over $300,000 by denying the full federal standard deduction, exposing more earnings to taxation. Prop MM goes much farther. For example, the federal standard deduction for joint filers in 2025 is $33,200. Had MM been in effect this year, its standard deduction would have been limited to a mere $2,000, exposing another $31,200 of one’s earnings to taxation. Moreover, that $300,000 marker isn’t indexed to inflation, so bracket creep would drag in many more with real income lower than that each year.
The next step, a really big one, is a ballot measure primed for 2026 by the Bell Policy Center, an activist, Democrat-aligned left-wing think tank. the scheme would replace Colorado’s flat tax rate with a progressive income tax to soak all those earning more than $500,000. Similar policies have eroded the tax revenues of blue states like California, New York, and Illinois as upper-income residents flee to red states like Florida and Texas with no income tax. Colorado would be foolish to follow this example.
More debt for Denver
Moving on to the Denver ballot, the worst measures are Issues 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, and 2E. This is Denver’s so-called “Vibrant Denver Bond.” Five separate bond issues with a cornucopia of projects that will make Denver great again (unlike President Trump, Mayor Johnston and the City Council aren’t wearing red ball caps). Whatever the merits or demerits of this package, the obvious disqualifier is that Denver government is fiscally irresponsible and has no business getting even deeper in debt.
The cumulative new debt of these bonds is about $1 billion. Interest on the bonds will further burden each year’s city budget, totaling another billion dollars over the bonds’ term. Adding in the repayment of principal at maturity, that’s $2 billion overall. If the city rolls over the debt with future bond issues, the cycle of indebtedness worsens. By law, the cost of these general obligation bonds is passed on to Denver property taxpayers in a mill levy that will no doubt be raised, adding to that problem.
Denver’s government and bureaucracy is a model of inefficiency. The one-mile 16th Street Mall refurbishment project has taken three-and-a-half years and is way over budget. (By comparison, the Pentagon was built in 16 months during WW II.) A rational Denver government would reappraise its priorities. Instead of using each election as a springboard for yet more government spending to solve every imaginable social justice wish, subsidize thousands of illegal aliens, make Denver great for car thieves, and coddle other criminals, Denver government should open its eyes to reality and curb its spending. (And get rid of those stupid bike lanes.)
Given the Denver electorate, which chooses to be governed by a super majority of left-wing Democrat progressives, this won’t happen. The same can be said of Colorado’s overall electorate. The fiscal hole we’re in is the consequence of government addiction to the flood of temporary federal money during the COVID epidemic. That bonanza is over and government spending needs to return to pre-COVID levels. Instead, the politicians that Colorado’s progressive voters elect will continue to spend beyond our means in a self-destructive attempt to tax the state rich.
Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for Complete Colorado.
