Colorado Democrats don't seem to have a lot of faith in your ability to know what you want: they skirt asking your approval when taking your money and bristle at attempts to rein them in.
Governor Polis, is the "Colorado Way" skirting the voters' desire to be asked about fees?
Is it allowing some special interests (those that align with what you want) influence over Colorado politics but decrying others?
A rental car association has threatened to run two new constitutional amendments in response to the bill creating a rental car fees to fund passenger rail in Colorado.
If you'd like to study up and/or see some context, I put a CPR story linked first below, a link to the SOS's tracker page linked second below, an attached screenshot so you could find the measures, and lastly, the rental car fee bill linked third below as references.
The essence of the two amendments is an effort to bring fees under the umbrella of TABOR; to make it such that politicians have to not only ask about new taxes, but would have to do so for fees as well.
Quoting the CPR article, "One [proposed amendment] would add a definition of fees to TABOR, so all new fees would need voter approval. A second would require voter approval for any new fees for public transportation specifically and require they be assessed only in areas served by transit."
Obviously, a blatant attempt to bring voters back into the conversation about how much of their money the government can take, and how it's spent, cannot go unremarked by Colorado Democrats--the politicians that have, in the last four years, made assessing fees and creating new enterprises to a high art.
In the CPR article, Senator Fenberg characterizes the two potential amendments as "“... dangerous and irresponsible" and Governor Polis gave a lengthier statement also blasting the effort: "'It’s reckless for out-of-state special interests who already benefit from special tax treatments to threaten the financial stability of the state to line their own pockets.' 'It’s not the Colorado way and Governor Polis supports this comprehensive plan to help improve transit in Colorado for people who are sick and tired of waiting in traffic or who want to improve air quality,'"
A practiced career politician like Governor seems to betray no self-consciousness of his own hypocrisy; he can strain at a gnat while swallowing camels with perfect ease in front of a media, which, let's be honest, he knows won't call him on it.
After all, how many special interests are alive and well in this state since he and his fellow Democrats took complete control, pushing gun control measures, environmental policy, growing government, and making our lives more expensive?
A simple look through their policy over the last four years gives a hint at their concern. It's not special interests as a group, it's not being irresponsible in the sense that a growing government will place extra burdens on people and business.
No, it's a special interest doing something they don't like: trying to put limit on fees, one trying to bring this state closer to what the voters have repeatedly said they want.
Voters want to be asked before the government takes more of their money and the Democrats simply do not want to ask because they're afraid of the answer they'll get.
https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/titleBoard/
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb24-184
Related:
The headline of the article I reference in the post above is: "Lawmakers want more rental car fees. The industry could wreck state finances in return."
So much to unpack about this headline, but I want to just focus on one thing here and keep it brief.
Saying that efforts to curtail the legislative tricks of fees would "wreck" our state's finances is one perspective you could take. I mean, after all, the Democrats running this state have been to that well so many times that the path is compacted to the point where nothing will grow there.
Another, and just as valid, way to look at this issue is to say that the lawmakers have wrecked finances by making fees their go-to. As I have said multiple times, the way we do finances in this state is a choice of the lawmakers and there are multiple different ways to do it right.
For instance, they could have been more circumspect in their spending and been more thoughtful of how they approach Coloradans for their money instead of grabbing it and working outside TABOR (and fiscal sense).
Let's pretend that the proposed amendments make it into the Constitution, the Democrats would have no alternative to respect our wishes then, right?
Right?
In the post right prior to this one I wrote about a couple amendments to the Colorado Constitution that would require voter approval of any fees; essentially the amendments would put fees alongside taxes under TABOR.
For convenience's sake I copied the CPR article I reference in that post as the first link below.
I wanted to give you a look at what I think would be the likely outcome if those measures were to make it to the ballot and then get onto the Constitution.
If you're thinking to yourself that the folks running the state would gladly rethink how they're doing things and bring citizens into the fold on how much of our money they take and what they spend it on ...
If you think they'd "find religion" about what we've repeatedly told them about TABOR, taxes, and fees ...
I have some startling news for you. Their response, in keeping the with the maxim that the best predictor of future behavior is current behavior, would look an awful lot like the response they've already given in current legislation.
In that same CPR article, mention is made of how legislators and the governor, in their deal on fees for oil and gas in exchange for quieting down their rabid environmentalist base (see the bill, linked second below), already are putting language in that redefines fees to skirt any attempts to bring fees in under TABOR.
Quoting the CPR article: "The oil and gas fee bill for transit already contains language meant to keep it alive if voters eventually approve the change to transit fees. Fenberg said it was included because he and others, 'don't want all that good work, that agreement, that stakeholding to go out the window because of one special interest that is potentially going to spend millions of dollars to get something on the ballot.'”
I went to the bill page and attached a screenshot of the recently-added (hence the italics) language.
This is what I believe lawmakers would start adding to every single fee if these amendments were to pass.
That or they'd create some new legal animal which our State Supreme Court would obligingly say clearly doesn't fit under TABOR.
After all, you (the voter) don't know what's good for you. They do.
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb24-184
And thus we arrive at the final post of the day. The theme for all?
Colorado Democrats don't seem to have a lot of faith in your ability to know what you want: they skirt asking your approval when taking your money and bristle at attempts to rein them in.
I wrote an op ed a bit back about the consequences of long-term single part rule in this state. It's linked first below and was written shortly after the passage of the bills that exempted the legislature from Colorado Open Meetings Law and the (proposed and now dead) bill that rewrote how CORA requests are done.
In looking a the what the legislature has done since, I am only reinforced in my earlier contentions. I think that, among other things, one-party dominance in this state has led to an arrogance on the part of the ruling party.
The idea that they know best. That the values that their political base along the Front Range ought to by right be the template for the state. That the special interests they represent have the one true vision for things here.
By way of wrapping up this three-parter on the topic, I want to leave you with a quote from the article linked second below.
The article is about how the newly-introduced and (again as with other efforts) last-minute "fix" for property taxes has got the nod from the governor, some Repulicans, and the legislature's Democrats BUT NOT from the conservative and business groups that are running ballot measures to lower property taxes.
Taking a quote from ultra-progressive legislator Rep DeGruy-Kennedy from the article gives a sense of what I think is a prevailing attitude of many in the Democrat party running this state:
"Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, a Democrat who is sponsoring the tax bill, isn’t holding out much hope for a negotiated compromise. 'I'm annoyed by rich people thinking that they get to make public policy that goes above and beyond what the elected representatives get to do. That's not how democracy works,' he said. He said that the legislature could neutralize the outside groups’ threat by passing a strong measure that would appeal to the public. 'It's going to take all the wind out of their sails, so they can bluster all they want, but it's not going to turn into a successful ballot measure for them,' he said."
I put the full thing in there because I don't want anyone to say I take things out of context, but look again at the first sentence of what he said.
"I'm annoyed by rich people thinking that they get to make public policy that goes above and beyond what the elected representatives get to do."
Put aside the obvious class-baiting here (I'm not rich, but I do indeed support efforts such as those that would lower property taxes and require the government to ask taxpayers about fees).
Put aside the lie that any initiative or amendment that makes it onto the ballot goes "above and beyond" what the elected representatives get to do (read your state constitution representative, there is a path for the Assembly to do amendments and referenda and all of that).
Consider just Rep DeGruy-Kennedy's annoyance that any group outside of the legislature gets to make policy.
This childish annoyance, a mark of a group so accustomed to running things that they can't even conceive of having to share power or include other perspectives, puts the bow on what today has been about.
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2024/03/16/gaines-arrogance-colorado-one-party-rule/
https://www.cpr.org/2024/05/06/big-business-and-politicians-proposed-bipartisan-property-tax-bill/
Excellent summary of the arrogance down at the Capitol. Unfortunately, it's not limited to the Democrats. Plenty of arrogance on the Republican side too (with some exceptions).