Did you like your TABOR refund? A group is trying to take them away. Rushing heedlessly into heavy duty EV's. The Post's hatchet job on community colleges.
Do you like TABOR? Did you enjoy your refund?
There are a couple newly-minted initiatives popping up that I hope you join me in speaking up against. I say this because they would take away, permanently, any sort of TABOR refund.
If you go to the Secretary of State's Initiative page and look for #39 and #40, you'll see the two I am referring to. Introduced on April 6th and up for their first hearing on the April 19th, the two are both tentatively named "Authorization to Retain Excess State Revenue".
Recall that one aspect of TABOR is that it puts a cap (using a formula that adjusts for population and inflation) on how much money the state can take in. If they go above that cap, they must refund it to taxpayers in one form or another.
Translated to everyday language, then, what these initiatives will do is to allow the state to keep any and all excess revenues. Permanently. See the second link below if you'd like to read the full language.
Not okay in my view.
I am hoping to attend the Title Board meeting on the19th. In addition (and, in case I can't make it), I wrote up an email which I have attached below. I will send the email when I receive my notification of the hearing. Expect an update/reminder then.
I urge you to join me in sending an email as well. Please make it your own--your voice, your thoughts, and your way of expressing yourself--but I would like to put in a word for your including the following because I think it will lead to the greatest chance we have of being heard by the Title Board (and thus making these initiatives more truthful and harder to put over on people).
**one other quick note: if you've held off on emailing groups in the past, let me reiterate that small boards like the Title Board hear from almost no one and thus your email has a greater impact here than in other contexts.
The important points to consider adding are the following:
1. It is important that the initiative language and/or title include mention that the excess revenue it mentions retaining would have otherwise gone to taxpayers. There is precedent for including this language. In 2022 a different initiative that would have held onto your TABOR refund was forced to include phrasing like this by the Title Board. See screenshot 1. If you want an example of how to reference this, see my email.
2. It is important that this initiative follow the guidelines in TABOR that requires a preamble in all caps that indicates this measure will (effectively) raise taxes. Again, for an example, see my email below.
If you are interested in speaking up but have questions, please send me an message. What help I can offer, I will.
Email follows.
To the Colorado Title Board,
My name is Cory Gaines and I am writing in with regard to proposed initiatives #39 and #40 (both tentatively called "Authorization to Retain Excess State Revenue".
I am hoping to be able to talk to you in person during the meeting, but am sending this email in case my teaching schedule does not allow it.
I believe that the initiatives are missing some important language. There are a two things that I believe should be added.
First, these proposed initiatives do not contain any mention of the fact that the excess revenues to be retained would have otherwise been returned to taxpayers. This is an important detail to include and its inclusion has some precedent with the Title Board.
To wit, the link below, included for convenience's sake, is to the "Hearing Result" page for Initiative 63 from 2021/2022. I point you to the Title Board's inclusion of the following in the Ballot Title and Submission Clause: "allowing the additional revenue to be from revenue that the state or a local school district is otherwise required to refund to taxpayers in years in which a refund is due"
Initiatives #39 and #40 for 2022/2023 need to include phrasing such as this to be complete and to be in synch with earlier rulings by this board.
Second, I would like to point out the fact that this initiative does not include any of the language or the all capitals print required by the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. While not a direct tax increase--a direct taking--this initiative would nonetheless amount to the same thing. I believe the all-caps prelude required by TABOR needs to be included here.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Cory
https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/titleBoard/
https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/Initiatives/titleBoard/filings/2023-2024/39Final.pdf
What is the damned hurry?
A reader forwarded me the Gazette Op Ed decrying the Polis administration's rush job on energy regulations (linked first below) on the same day that I happened to read the article about Colorado's Air Quality Control Commission considering new regulations on heavy trucks (linked second below).
They might seem tangentially related, but they're more closely tied than you think. What do they share?
They both share a sense of urgency.
In the first case, it's the state moving much, much faster on pushing new building energy regulations than any other, similar action in the past.
In the second case, it's rushing to implement rules before we have the technology to make heavy trucks run feasibly on anything except fossil fuels--especially for hauls that would go outside local regions like the Denver Metro. The electric trucks to do the job are expensive, they're not readily available, and they do not work well moving a load for long distances (and certainly not up any sustained grades like we have in Colorado).
Nonetheless, these bodies are moving ahead and are being encouraged to do so by environmental groups.
Why the rush, however? Alternatively, what do we risk by taking a more considered approach?
Beyond the fact that rushing into things is foolish, that ill-conceived and ill-thought out plans don't usually work, I'm left wondering why we need to jump in, right now, with both feet.
Perhaps smaller, feasible steps with known and proven technologies such as, for example, incentives to upgrade to more efficient boilers or diesels, would be a better solution.
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/opinion/a-rush-job-on-colorado-energy-regs-denver-gazette/article_a4a9144e-d88c-11ed-b504-4732e991defb.html
https://coloradosun.com/2023/04/13/colorado-clean-electric-heavy-trucks-mandate/
The Denver Post's hatchet job on community colleges.
Before anything else, I want you to take note that, while this article appeared in the Post and the Post had a hand in it, this is not strictly written by the Post. I think that has bearing which I will get to later. See the first screenshot attached.
**Also, and an important thing you need to know: I am speaking on my own behalf, not on behalf of the Colorado Community College System, and I am someone whose job is to work at a community college. This will color what I say and it's important for you to remember.
On to the article.
The promise of community colleges is that they are places with open enrollment and lower costs than traditional colleges. They exist to fit the niche of those who are motivated to get an education but have problems doing so at the more selective institutions. They also do this by offering more than bachelors degree programs and by being more local in scale.
I will not say that any individual human or institution is perfect, but I would like to offer some rebuttal to the claims in the article below. I believe it to be a hatchet job. It is unfair.
I say this because the article has some giant holes and gaps in it.
1. I don't believe anyone involved in this article spoke to any community college, anywhere in Colorado. They certainly didn't come to my school.
Again, I can't speak for everyone nor every school, but had anyone from the Post or the other groups bothered to consult someone in Colorado, they would have likely gotten a much different picture than that given in the article above.
For example, at my school, I am unaware of anyone waiting weeks to have a question answered. I, and I know my colleagues do the same, do not also send people office to office: when someone asks me a question, if I can't answer directly, we figure a way together to get it answered.
The power of a small school is that I know the people in different departments by name. I see them regularly and say hello. This is not a faceless bureaucracy with me waving someone along if they have a question.
2. I wonder whether or not anyone involved in writing this article, at any point, stopped to ask what part personal responsibility plays in the poor outcomes they list. A couple examples stand out starkly to me.
Quoting the article, "[w]ith scant advising, many community college students spend time and money on courses that won’t transfer or that they don’t need." Again, had anyone bothered to speak to anyone at a school here in Colorado, they would have found that advising is readily offered, even to the point of nagging. There are some students who simply choose not to come in. Who bears the responsibility for a poor outcome if you don't accept the resources that would help--those offering or those refusing to take advantage?
Further down, you see the following (again, quoting): "[w]hile four out of five students who begin at a community college say they plan to go on to get a bachelor’s degree, only about one in six of them actually manages to do it. That’s down by nearly 15% since 2020, according to the clearinghouse [the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center mentioned earlier in the article]. Two-year community colleges have the worst completion rates of any kind of university or college. Like Camara, nearly half of students drop out, within a year, of the community college where they started. Only slightly more than 40% finish within six years."
Again, it is important to remember that there is something of a self-selection issue happening here. Community colleges (at least in Colorado) are open enrollment institutions. Their doors are closed to no one.
As such, you get a mix of people who are motivated and ready to work (with perhaps not the best record to impress a more selective institution) along with people are not as motivated or ready. If I went to the gym looking to train people to be good powerlifters, my success rate would be markedly different if I picked people at random and took everyone vs. if I went to the people already using the squat rack regularly, lifting lots of weight.
Neither I, nor any other individual or institution can crack someone's head open, pour in motivation, and compel them to succeed. I and my colleagues try; we work hard encourage people and work with them to help them get past the obstacles that slow them down, but ultimately, you cannot choose for someone else.
Lastly, and this one isn't so much a hole as an example of the quality of the journalism done here, I want to point you to screenshot #2 attached. I hope you'll agree with me that an error of saying that only a third of employers agreeing that community college graduates were career ready when it was at least 60% is glaring.
Emblematic of sloppy reporting. Emblematic of reporting that starts with its conclusion and fills in the details as needed as opposed to relating reality to the reader.
A hatchet job.
https://www.denverpost.com/2023/04/04/community-colleges-are-reeling-the-reckoning-is-here/