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State voters still wary of tax measures

Rocky Mountain News

Published November 4, 2008 at 11:05 p.m.

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It was an overwhelmingly Democratic day in Colorado. Barack Obama was the first Democrat in decades to attract a majority of state voters. Mark Udall seized an open Senate seat that had been held by a Republican. Even the 4th Congressional District, long thought to be a Republican stronghold, fell to Democrat Betsy Markey.

Yet something odd happened in the polling stations given the Democratic storm: Voters balked at Amendments 51, 58 and 59 - the first to raise the sales tax to fund services for the developmentally disabled, the second to hike the severance tax and the third to divert tax rebates to education. Even in thoroughly blue, thoroughly Democratic Colorado, it's hard to get a tax hike past state voters.

We're not suggesting the three failed for identical reasons. Voters were generally hostile to most ballot measures. But if ever the time was ripe to ask for a "de-Brucing" of state government, for example, or to request a tax hike on energy companies, it was surely this year.

You can blame the oil companies for defeating Amendment 58, but Amendment 59 proponents had the field to themselves. And almost no one had an unkind word to say aloud about Amendment 51. Coloradans have signaled that they still prefer a frugal state government - no matter how blue they may have turned.

Comments

  • November 5, 2008

    6:01 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Beaveroni writes:

    Thank you, Rocky, for supporting the ballot measure for the disabled. That was true community leadership. I am sorry that more people didn't agree with you.

  • November 5, 2008

    6:56 a.m.

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    VVVV writes:

    I am sorry about the severance tax, since we would have been taxing Californians more than ourselves to improve our education system that has been pushed to the brink.

    But anything related to killing TABOR should have been killed. The legislature has yet to attempt to economize, instead choosing to slash programs that people most care about in their childish hope that we would grant them a reprieve if they punished what we love. I hope this sends a sign to them that TABOR is going nowhere, and they'd better start doing their jobs instead of wasting their time whining about how it can't be done. Go ahead and tank the higher education system in this state. Since nobody is actually from here in this state (I am one native in a sea of Texans and Californians), they'll just send their kids to school where they came from. They'll still move back once they graduate. You can't beat them away with a stick.

    Go ahead and continue to waste time and effort. I promise that the next election will be even worse. How about a grassroots amendment that restricts the topics that can be brought to the floor, so the politicians are forced to do their jobs. There is no limit to the hardship the public can impose if they continue to see their money and time squandered.

  • November 5, 2008

    9:37 a.m.

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    Cwillyrun1 writes:

    Kind of off on the editorial there, aren't you? Colorado still has more registered Republicans, so even if Democrats have more power, it's still....... by majority, a Republican state. Independents have the swing power. Ritter is an example of a failed Democrat, and in a few years he's gone. Hopefully the defeats of these tax hikes sends a signal to the tax and spend liberals that we won't accept their policies if they choose that course.

    We have to live within our own budget limits, so should state and federal government.