So many tax increase possibilities. So little time.
I attended the Pagosa Springs Town Council meeting last night at Town Hall, and listened to the Council members present discuss some expensive ideas. A multi-million-dollar ‘Town to Lakes Trail’ that’s been underway for a decade now, and that might take decades more to complete. Millions of dollars in deferred but necessary street repairs that might take decades to complete. Salary increases for all or most Town employees.
Plus nine pages of short-term (2018-2020) goals, each of which will take money to accomplish.
The Town Council members are basically volunteers. Yes, they earn a few hundred dollars a year for their service, but the stipend amounts to a rather meager hourly wage, if you consider the hours required to do a good job as a Council member.
The situation is different, a few blocks away at the Archuleta County Administration offices. Our three County commissioners earn some of the largest salaries in town, which is pretty interesting, considering that they are not required to meet any particular job qualifications, nor are they required to work any particular number of hours per week.
Yet without having to meet any clearly established office hours, or any particular job qualifications, our elected County commissioners can still propose a $27 million tax increase for a Sheriff’s facility and a jail that will house — according to the Sheriff’s own data — an average of two dozen (mostly non-violent) inmates.
But hey, that’s politics for you.
At any rate, we’re seeing some expensive propositions popping up onto the ballot for this November’s election — one of our few opportunities, as taxpayers, to make direct decisions about various and sundry government budgets.
I promised, last week, that I would discuss one particular ballot initiative — Amendment 73 — which would make changes to Colorado’s income tax rates and property tax rates, to raise additional funding for public education.
On August 9, Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams announced that Initiative 93 made the ballot. This proposed constitutional amendment boosts income taxes for the wealthiest Coloradans, and changes the property tax valuation formula to raise money for education — preschool through high school.
Colorado law requires that ballot-measure backers turn in 98,492 valid voter signatures — 5 percent of the total of votes cast for all candidates in the last Secretary of State general election, which was in 2014. Initiative 93 petitioners turned in 130,022 valid signatures.
The full text of the measure can be viewed here. As a result of qualifying for the ballot, the name of the measure was officially changed to “Amendment 73.” (You can read an explanation for the name change on the Ballotpedia website.)
The voter-approved Amendment 71 (in 2016) changed the requirements for proposed constitutional amendments — so this education measure must pass with a 55-percent majority rather than a simple majority in November, and supporters were required to collect 2 percent of their signatures in each of the state’s 35 Senate district.
The title for the ballot measure reads like this:
STATE TAXES SHALL BE INCREASED $1,600,000,000 ANNUALLY BY AN AMENDMENT TO THE COLORADO CONSTITUTION AND A CHANGE TO THE COLORADO REVISED STATUTES CONCERNING FUNDING RELATING TO PRESCHOOL THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL PUBLIC EDUCATION, AND, IN CONNECTION THEREWITH, CREATING AN EXCEPTION TO THE SINGLE RATE STATE INCOME TAX FOR REVENUE THAT IS DEDICATED TO THE FUNDING OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS; INCREASING INCOME TAX RATES INCREMENTALLY FOR INDIVIDUALS, TRUSTS, AND ESTATES USING FOUR TAX BRACKETS STARTING AT .37% FOR INCOME ABOVE $150,000 AND INCREASING TO 3.62% FOR INCOME ABOVE $500,000; INCREASING THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX RATE BY 1.37%; FOR PURPOSES OF SCHOOL DISTRICT PROPERTY TAXES, REDUCING THE CURRENT RESIDENTIAL ASSESSMENT RATE OF 7.2% TO 7.0% AND THE CURRENT NONRESIDENTIAL ASSESSMENT RATE OF 29%TO 24%; REQUIRING THE REVENUE FROM THE INCOME TAX INCREASES TO BE DEPOSITED IN A DEDICATED PUBLIC EDUCATION FUND AND ALLOWING THE REVENUE COLLECTED TO BE RETAINED AND SPENT AS VOTER-APPROVED REVENUE CHANGES; REQUIRING THE LEGISLATURE TO ANNUALLY APPROPRIATE MONEY FROM THE FUND TO SCHOOL DISTRICTS TO SUPPORT EARLY CHILDHOOD THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL PUBLIC EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS ON AN EQUITABLE BASIS THROUGHOUT THE STATE WITHOUT DECREASING GENERAL FUND APPROPRIATIONS; DIRECTING THE LEGISLATURE TO ENACT, REGULARLY REVIEW, AND REVISE WHEN NECESSARY, A NEW PUBLIC SCHOOL FINANCE LAW THAT MEETS SPECIFIED CRITERIA; UNTIL THE LEGISLATURE HAS ENACTED A NEW PUBLIC SCHOOL FINANCE LAW, REQUIRING THE MONEY IN THE FUND TO BE ANNUALLY APPROPRIATED FOR SPECIFIED EDUCATION PROGRAMS AND PURPOSES; REQUIRING THE MONEY IN THE FUND TO BE USED TO SUPPORT ONLY PUBLIC SCHOOLS; REQUIRING GENERAL FUND APPROPRIATIONS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION TO INCREASE BY INFLATION, UP TO 5%, ANNUALLY; AND REQUIRING THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO COMMISSION A STUDY OF THE USE OF THE MONEY IN THE FUND WITHIN FIVE YEARS.
Ha ha. I didn’t actually expect you to read that paragraph. It’s pretty much illegible, in my opinion.
But you might have made it through the first sentence, enough to know that the measure would increase Colorado taxes by $1.6 billion per year. The money would be raised (as I understand the measure) by increasing Colorado income taxes for families and estates earning over $150,000 a year, and by freezing the school district-related property tax rates — after first lowering them from 7.2 percent to 7 percent (for residential property) or from 29 percent to 24 percent (for commercial and other types of non-residential property.)
Basically, Amendment 73 appears to reduce taxes for most state residents in the short run — but then increase taxes for most residents over the long haul. The main burden would initially be carried by the very wealthy.
As I understand the measure. Which maybe I don’t.
How much is $1.6 billion, relative to public education funding? According to the most recent decisions made by our legislators in Denver, a little more than $7 billion in base spending will go to K-12 education in 2018-19. That’s a 7 percent increase from the last school year — with the state portion going up considerably more than the local share.
Meaning that — in the opinion of many education supporters — Colorado still falls about $672 million short, this year, of its constitutionally-required level of education funding. That ‘gap’ is created by a state accounting trick known as ‘the negative factor.’ The gap this year is the smallest it has been since the Great Recession… but for some education proponents, “its persistence is a major source of frustration”… according to a 2018 article on the Chalkbeat website.
From that article:
Average per-pupil spending for 2018-19 will be around $8,137, a $475 increase from this year. That translates into millions of additional dollars for many districts. Lawmakers also sent an extra $30 million to cash-strapped rural districts and set aside $5.5 million for state-authorized charter schools to make up for local property tax revenue they don’t get.
This average amount — $8,147 per student — is approximately the amount our local Archuleta School District will be receiving. That translates to $204,000 in revenue, for every classroom of 25 students. Considering that salaries and benefits for a typical classroom teacher run about $50,000… we’re not quite sure what the additional $150,000 per classroom is spent on, but I’m sure it’s spent on something useful?
That aside, we do indeed have the negative factor to consider, and it sounds like we’re spending $672 million less in 2018-2019 than the voters wanted us to spend on education, when they passed Amendment 23 back in 2000. The Great Education Colorado website claims that total education funding, since the Great Recession, has fallen $5.1 billion short of what voters intended.
So Amendment 73 might help address that gap, and then some, by adding $1.6 billion more to public education funding — each year. Seemingly, this new funding would resolve the ‘negative factor’ shortfall within about three years.
But that’s only one proposed tax increase. There’s more, folks.
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.