DENVER — For years, Democrats have been chipping away at Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) refunds while looking for ways to permanently disable the more than 30-year-old constitutional amendment that, among other things, limits growth of a portion of the state budge to a formula of population growth plus inflation. Revenue collected over that limit must be refunded to taxpayers unless voters consent to forgoing refunds at the ballot box.
This year, however, they may have found the way. The late session introduction and passage of Senate Bill 135 sends a question to the voters in November essentially ending TABOR rebates. Proponents are using using school children and teachers to tug at the heart strings of Coloradans by claiming the retained billions will go to education, a claim critics call disingenuous at best.
Sleight-of-hand
If approved by voters, the annual TABOR revenue limit would be raised in the first year by the amount equal to the previous year’s K-12 education appropriation, nearly $5 billion. A newly created education funding “positive factor” formula then compounds annually over the course of a decade, continuously raising the revenue limit and essentially dismantling the TABOR cap, thus making the refund of overcollected revenue to taxpayers a thing of the past.
However, the idea the money will go to strictly to education is an example of legislative sleight-of-hand.
First, the measure does not in any way guarantee the money goes entirely to K-12 education. While 2 percent of the increased revenue is guaranteed to go there, the rest will go to “other programs for children,” with no definition what that means.
Even the money that actually makes it to school districts is complicated and vague, opponents say, with language that directs spending to four specific categories: Increasing teacher pay, improving retention, lowering class sizes, and expanding access to career and technical classes. However, it doesn’t say it must be spent on all four. Districts can pick one or all of them. And according to Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer (R-Weld County), there is no way to define what exactly spending in those areas looks like, especially improving retention or lowering class sizes.
“What is that? What is that?” Kirkmeyer said during a Senate floor debate. “We don’t know what spending on improving retention is. What do you do to lower class sizes?”
Independence Institute* policy analyst Nash Herman agreed, saying without strict guardrails, SB-135 funds are likely to follow the path of least resistance.
“One could easily imagine how a district might claim that adding administrators improves teacher retention by providing more support and reducing teachers’ stress,” he said. “Or maybe a new stadium could be argued to increase teacher retention, because teachers love their school’s sports so much that it improves their job satisfaction. These things are easy to claim, but difficult to prove, which highlights how ineffective SB-135 may prove in doing what it advertises, since it cannot guarantee that any of the spending will actually work as advertised.”
A blank check
Herman also makes the case that no matter how you try and slice it, SB-135 is not actually an “education funding” measure, but rather a blank check for lawmakers.
“SB-135 does not include a sunset clause, meaning that barring future legislation, the new, higher TABOR revenue limit set by the bill is here to stay forever” wrote Herman in a recent Complete Colorado opinion piece. “Meanwhile, the requirement that the newly retained taxpayer money goes to education lasts only for the first 10 years. After that, all the money becomes available for any other purpose.”
Along with Sen. Kirkmeyer, fellow Weld County Senators Byron Pelton and Scott Bright were so frustrated with the language of the measure that the three spent hours on the floor of the Senate arguing the nuances of the bill during second reading to no avail.
They offered numerous amendments aimed at highlighting that disingenuity, everything from the attempt to change “may” to “shall,” changing the name of “excess state revenues” to “government waste” and adding language that said: “allowing the state to use the rest of the money for any purpose determined by the state legislature.”
They all failed.
