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Voters may be asked to OK half-penny sales tax increase

Hike would offer long-term care for 'most vulnerable'

Chris Barge, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 30, 2007 at midnight

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Colorado voters may be asked next year to approve a 17 percent state sales tax hike to provide long-term care to nearly 4,000 people with developmental disabilities.

The plan proposed Wednesday by state Rep. Michael Garcia, D-Aurora, would raise the current state sales tax rate of 2.9 percent to 3.4 percent.

It would join several tax increases the Democratic-controlled legislature is expected to take up after it convenes in January.

Republicans warned that stacking three or four tax questions on the 2008 ballot is a recipe for across-the-board failure, but Garcia said extra funding is the only way to end the wait for the 3,692 developmentally disabled adults and 157 developmentally disabled children in need of long- term care.

The question is not why should voters raise their taxes to end the wait, said Garcia, chairman of the Committee on Long-term Care Services and Support for Persons with Developmental Disabilities.

"I think the question is, why should Colorado voters hold up our most vulnerable citizens for 10 to 20 years from getting services they are entitled to," he said.

Blue-ribbon commissions this summer and fall are also studying health care, transportation and education reform.

Tax hike proposals are anticipated out of those discussions as well.

"There are just too many competing proposals potentially on the 2008 ballot," said Sen. Nancy Spence, R-Centennial.

Spence said she might support folding the long-term care tax hike into a broader health care tax question. But she said she would prefer a competing proposal by fellow disabilities committee member Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs.

Gardner has proposed reducing the waiting list for services by people with disabilities by cutting funding to other programs over a five-year period, rather than raising taxes.

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