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Colorado's lessons on I-695: Tax votes not disastrous, but complicated
Colorado's lessons on I-695: Tax votes not disastrous, but complicated
by David Postman
Seattle Times Olympia bureau
COLORADO SPRINGS - Citizens here will have unprecedented power come the Nov.
2 election. Thanks to a 7-year-old Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, Colorado voters
approve all tax increases and make other decisions that long had been the job
of elected officials.
On the ballot are billions for roads, new taxes for buses and the zoo, and
money to hire firefighters and buy firetrucks for an empty fire station.
Colorado, more than any other state, has experience in wielding the power
Washington voters soon may have. Initiative 695, on Washington's Nov. 2 ballot,
would cut car-tab fees and require votes for any tax or fee increase by local
and state government.
There are important distinctions between the two measures and their requirements
for voter approval on taxes, but still, the experience in Colorado could be
a peek at Washington's future.
In Colorado, the dire predictions of opponents have not come to pass. Voters
have been supportive of some tax and spending measures on the ballot. There
have not been the catastrophic cutbacks some warned about.
Those who campaigned against the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, known as TABOR,
say it isn't nearly the disaster they predicted.
"I continue to be pleasantly surprised," said Sam Mamet, associate director
of the Colorado Municipal League.
Douglas Bruce, the activist who led the 1992 anti-tax movement, says government
officials "at least treat the citizens like customers" and that there is a "greater
sense of citizen responsibility."
There also has been a series of lawsuits as local governments struggle to
implement the law. Bruce says he has lost most of the cases.
Some, though, say the real impact won't be known until Colorado's hot economy
cools.
"The real danger comes when you ask people to give you more money at the very
time they feel they are suffering," said Rocky Scott, president of the Greater
Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation.
`Douglas Bruce - Subversive'
In Colorado Springs, at least, TABOR already has forced tough decisions about
the proper role of government. Those decisions, in turn, are forcing discussions
about how much power voters should have over day-to-day decisions of government
spending.
This, the birthplace of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, is a city of 350,000
in Colorado's high-plains country. At the base of Pikes Peak, it sits 6,000
feet above sea level and about 70 miles south of Denver.
The city has excellent credentials for breeding a tax revolt. It is the county
seat of El Paso County, said to be the most conservative in the state, and was
the birthplace of Colorado's anti-gay rights initiative. It is also home to
the Air Force Academy and the Christian group Focus on the Family.
Citizen-led attempts to limit taxes in Colorado date back to 1966. All were
unsuccessful - until Douglas Bruce gave up his job as a Los Angeles prosecutor
in 1986 and moved to Colorado Springs to be a real-estate investor.
By 1988, fueled by a libertarian streak, a pathological distrust of government
and a loud, sometimes crude dislike of politicians, he had taken over the anti-tax
movement.
His business card used to say, "Douglas Bruce - Terrorist." After the Oklahoma
federal building was blown up, he changed it to, "Douglas Bruce - Subversive."
"The simple rule is that everything the politicians say is a lie," he said
in an interview last week.
His voice booms through a nearly empty Chinese restaurant. He banters with
the waitress, eats his braised shrimp with "sarcastic lemon" and drinks a virgin
pina colada - all the while lecturing on the evils of government and the triumph
of citizen tax revolts.
He is the embodiment of Colo rado's tax revolt in a very real way. When cities
vote to exempt themselves from the tax limits, they are said to be "de-Brucing."
"He is a master of distilling very complicated issues into a very simple,
very compelling, message," said Scott. " `It's our money, not theirs. Take control
of government. Government is evil.' "
The message didn't always work.
Measure like I-695 fails
In 1990, Bruce tried to pass a ballot measure that would have required a public
vote not just on tax increases, but any increase in government fees or utility
bills. Those same provisions are in Washington's I-695.
Colorado's publicly owned utilities said the requirement for voter approval
would make it impossible for them to run efficiently. Opponents also focused
on the requirement for votes on fee increases, which could have included the
cost of a school lunch or a fishing license.
"The message that got out was that if you wanted to vote on what parks and
rec could charge your softball team, vote yes," said Randall W.B. Purvis, an
attorney who served on the City Council at the time.
"That's what killed it."
Bruce conceded his mistake and made the 1992 ballot measure less sweeping.
He required voter approval for increases on taxes but exempted fees and utilities.
There was no tax cut - as in Washington's I-695 - but the Taxpayer's Bill
of Rights included a restriction on the total amount of revenue governments
can collect. If the cap is exceeded, the money must be given back to taxpayers
as a tax rebate unless they vote to let government keep it.
It was a tough campaign, with Colorado's government establishment united against
Bruce. There were dire predictions of broken governments, including claims from
the associations that represent city and county governments, school boards and
school administrators.
They worried that voters would reject each and every tax increase.
In fact, voters have approved most TABOR-mandated ballot questions affecting
local government.
How TABOR has worked
The most common elections have been requests by governments to spend revenue
in excess of the spending limit rather than return it as tax rebates, so-called
"retention elections."
Since the Municipal League started tracking the elections in 1993, cities
have posed 356 of those ballot questions, and voters have approved 325 of them.
Of 27 new taxes proposed, 13 were approved. Increases to existing taxes were
approved 42 out of 81 attempts.
The few statewide proposals put before voters have not fared as well. A measure
last year to let state lawmakers spend surplus money on higher education and
construction projects was rejected by a 2-1 ratio. The state Division of Wildlife
says it hasn't raised its low-cost, out-of-state deer- and elk-hunting licenses
because of the revenue limit.
Colorado Springs' mixed record
Colorado Springs voters have given mixed reviews to fiscal requests by city
and county officials.
In 1995, there were four TABOR-mandated elections - all were defeated, including
proposals to build jail cells, hire police officers and create a new tax to
buy open space in the city.
In 1997, residents voted to allow the city to spend $15 million on public-works
projects and approved the open-space tax that had been killed two years earlier.
"People said it would fail again," said Ann Oatman-Gardner, a citizen activist
who ran the parks and trails campaign. "I said let's just ask. They told us
to ask, so let's ask."
Colorado Springs Mayor Mary Lou Makepeace is one of the few elected officials
willing to challenge the effectiveness of the voter-approval requirement.
"We have given it a heck of a good shot, but now we're to the point where
it's not working for us," Make peace said.
She said voters have been much more supportive of construction projects than
the day-to-day operations of government.
"A fire station doesn't do you any good if you don't have firefighters, and
police cars aren't any good unless you have someone to drive them," she said.
"Parks are not particularly attractive if they're not maintained."
Zoo and symphony lose out
The November ballot is constructed in part to address that problem.
Colorado Springs is proposing a new cable-TV franchise fee that would pay
for police and fire operations. The proposed Rural Transit Authority would bring
in $16 million in new taxes to double the capacity of the county's bus system,
freeing up existing tax money for police, fire and transportation needs.
Even the most studious voter will have a difficult time wading through the
ballot this year. The tabloid-size voter's pamphlet runs 23 pages of often esoteric,
technical, financial details.
Many talk about ballot clutter and ballot fatigue, with voters just picking
yes or no and checking all measures the same. If voters are confused, polls
have shown, they'll vote no.
The city's privately owned zoo is asking voters to create a special zoo tax,
now that the city has stopped helping it with grants. And last week, City Manager
James Mullen proposed that funding be cut for the Colorado Springs Fine Arts
Center and the Colorado Springs Symphony.
City Councilman Lionel Rivera said TABOR has been good because it forced officials
to restrict what government can do. He's comfortable with the decisions being
made.
"Police, fire and infrastructure - that's what people in this community feel
government should be doing," Rivera said. "Not everyone benefits from a symphony
or fine-arts center or the zoo."
This is what Bruce envisioned. His goal is not simply to reduce taxes. He
wants to change government. He wants a lot less of it.
"This is not about money," he says. "It is about people's ability to be free."
He expected people to approve even fewer tax increases. "If they want to vote
themselves into slavery, I can't stop them," he said.
Boiling it down for the voter
Of all the measures on the November ballot, the one presented with the most
urgency is a $29 million-a-year tax increase for Colorado Springs School District
11.
Deputy Superintendent Robert Moore Jr. said he supports the voters' right
to approve tax increases, but he said TABOR's revenue-limit and tax-rebate provisions,
and how they conflict with other state laws, are making it difficult to maintain
funding at the level officials would like.
"The fine print is killing us. That, and the unintended consequences," he
said.
He says the district has been unable to give teachers adequate raises. But
there have not been the sort of budget cuts that would cause widespread alarm,
for example, eliminating busing or closing neighborhood schools.
The school-district's campaign is carefully written to win support from a
skeptical public.
The district developed a detailed "Education Improvement and Reform Plan"
that includes a promise not to spend any of the money on administrative salaries
or benefits. The tax increase would be phased in over several years with the
upper limit not being reached unless student reading scores improve. District
financial records would be reviewed by an independent committee.
It's a plan developed with the help of opinion polls and political consultants.
"It becomes sticky," said John Leavitt, the district's public-relations director.
"You have to, in some way, explain school finance to someone who doesn't necessarily
want to hear the details of school finance. You may very well need the money,
but if you can't boil it down to a level that they are able to grasp, you're
pretty much doomed."
But are voters doing their part?
Neither supporters nor opponents of TABOR seem happy with what they say is
the unseemly salesmanship of some governments trying to win voter favor.
"Everyone tries to twist what they are doing so it sounds like they're not
raising taxes, and the government is so afraid of taking bold steps," said Oatman-Gardner,
who is running the campaign for November's transit vote.
Purvis, the former city councilman, is a strong supporter of giving voters
taxing authority. But he's not sure the citizens of Colorado have kept up with
their new responsibilities.
"The question is, will people make use of the information, access it, digest
it and make an informed decision?" he asked. "I don't know that people spend
any more time informing themselves on the issues."
Makepeace said regardless of what happens Nov. 2, she will push for changes
to the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights. Even Rivera, a strong conservative, has proposed
adjustments to the revenue limitations.
Earlier this year, state lawmakers said they were going to review TABOR.
But after criticism from Bruce and others, they backed down.
Bruce will continue to protect his legacy. And while he speaks of TABOR in
grand terms, he says it really is a simple proposition.
"It is a question of who should decide how much government we can afford,
we the people who earn the money, or the politicians who want to spend it?"
David Postman's phone-message number is 360-943-9882. His e-mail address
is dpostman@seattletimes.com
