David Zalubowski/AP Photo
The off-year election had a low turnout, with about 36 percent of registered voters participating.
Students, teachers, drivers, and transit riders were the losers on Tuesday as Colorado voters decided against giving up their tax refunds to pump up state K-12, higher education, and transportation funding. The tally was unambiguous: 55 percent voted no on Proposition CC; 45 percent voted yes. The measure prevailed in just three counties: Boulder, Broomfield, and Denver.
Supporters of Proposition CC outspent the American for Prosperity–backed opponents roughly $4 million to $1 million, but Coloradans’ deep suspicion of public sector spending habits won out. The No on CC proponents variously positioned the measure as a “back door tax increase,” and as a “blank check” supported by a “state government [that] refuses to prioritize Coloradans’ needs.” These and other fiscal conservative canards obscure the fact that even the most painstaking prioritization of existing state revenues will not cover, for starters, a $9 billion backlog of transportation projects and maintenance.
If the measure had passed, nearly $264 million in fiscal year 2019 and $143 million in fiscal year 2020 would have been directed to those sectors.
Low turnout in an off-year election, about 36 percent of registered voters, did not help the complex ballot initiative’s prospects either. The TABOR Amendment requires tax-related measures to go before the electorate in off-year elections, ensuring that the majority of Coloradans, especially Democrats who tend to support increased revenues for schools and transportation, will not weigh in.
Proposition CC’s defeat marks the fourth failed effort since 2018 to increase school, university, and transportation funding. Localities will continue to bear the brunt of funding needs, with the richer ones, of course, in a better position contemplate whether to tax themselves to fund municipal priorities. “It is a sad state that Colorado has the number one economy in the country, and we’re at the very bottom of the barrel for funding these things,” Democratic Speaker of the Colorado House K.C. Becker, a principal author of Proposition CC, told supporters Tuesday night in Denver.
Colorado’s defeat was happily not the dominant trend on a night where revenue-raising measures tailored to identifiable projects saw modest success. In Maine, a state with a large rural road network like Colorado’s, voters approved $105 million in transportation bonds (bolstering a $137 million federal funding allocation) dedicated to specific areas. Road and bridge construction will receive $85 million, while the remainder will be allocated to other areas, including public transit, ports, airports, bicycle and pedestrian trails, municipal culverts, and upgrades to a Gulf of Maine Research Institute wharf and bulkhead in Portland. Last year, California voters decided not to roll back a 2017 gas tax increase that had already jump-started road projects across the state. Those would have unceremoniously ended had the funding been cut off.
The fight to disarm the TABOR Amendment’s revenue constraints isn’t over yet. Groups like the Colorado Fiscal Institute that favor repealing TABOR altogether and other progressive tax policies, like replacing the state’s flat income tax with a graduated rate, are likely to go to the ballot, perhaps as early as next year. In the meantime, Colorado’s transportation assets will continue to deteriorate and teachers shortages to proliferate—more than half of its teachers are recruited from out-of-state and as far away as the Philippines.
