Progressive Talking Points 11/3/05

Defanging the TABOR Tooth Tiger

November 3, 2005

On Nov. 1, Colorado voters suspended the state's "Taxpayers' Bill of Rights" (TABOR), a hodgepodge of "anti-tax" initiatives that became law in Colorado in 1992. The approved statewide ballot proposition, Referendum C, will allow the state to keep an extra $3.7 billion over the next five years and reinvest it in critical services like health care and transportation. TABOR has impaired Colorado's ability to set priorities and respond to crises through an overly "restrictive formula" and has contributed to a "decline in public services in Colorado."

• The effort to defeat TABOR was a bipartisan effort. Fifty-two percent of the state decided that TABOR needed to go and embraced the bipartisan effort, led by Governor Bill Owens (R) and groups such as the Bell Policy Center and the Colorado Progressive Coalition.
  
  
• TABOR was devastating to Coloradans and would be for other states. Under TABOR, the percentage of Coloradans with no health insurance rose from 12.7 percent in 1992 to 15.6 percent in 2001, and the percentage of low-income children lacking health insurance rose from 15 percent in 1991-92 to 27 percent in 2002-03, while the national percentage fell from 21 percent to 19 percent.
  
  
• The TABOR vote is an important victory. With an impending TABOR-like vote in California and potential votes in Arizona, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Coloradans have sent a clear message to other states that TABOR does not work.