PHOTO: A hot air balloon sailing over Pagosa Lakes subdivisions.
“Americans generally believe in fairness.”
I wrote that on Friday, in Part Five. It’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
But when a County government is chasing an $85 million tax increase… (an estimate of the extra taxes Archuleta County would collect over the next ten years from proposed Ballot Issue 1A)… maybe ‘fairness’ and ‘legal elections’ have to take a back seat?
A lot of Americans have been concerned about election fraud lately, and their basic assumption seems to be that our own governments have been perpetrating the fraud, by counting ballots that no one actually cast. I assume some measure of fraud occurred — after all, we’re talking about 99,657,079 ballots, according to the US Elections Project; we can easily believe that a certain number of errors, intentional or unintentional, were committed during the counting process. We also know that many local jurisdictions are using newfangled computerized devices to count ballots, and such devices can be hacked, without the voters — or officials — ever knowing that it happened.
We may never know the full truth about the 2020 election, but we can certainly make assumptions about it, if we want to.
There are other ways for governments to defraud the voters, however, besides posting inaccurate ballot counts. I ran into an apparent attempt just last week, perpetrated by Archuleta County Manager Derek Woodman.
When a a government agency places an issue before the voters, the State of Colorado requires election officials to allow the voters to submit arguments, ‘For’ and ‘Against’ the issue. Those arguments are then published and distributed to the electorate, to help voters understand both sides of the issue.
There are always two sides.
According to Colorado law (CRS 1-7-901) the comments — ‘For’ and ‘Against’ — must be filed by a registered voter, eligible to vote in the election. The submitted comments must be signed, and must include the elector’s address, and must be filed with the Designated Election Official.
The Designated Election Official is charged with summarizing all the properly submitted arguments, and providing the summaries to the County Clerk. The County Clerk then publishes the comments, and distributes them.
Sounds like a simple process? It has always appeared to be simple during past elections. But maybe this is a time of extraordinary changes?
Apparently, the process was too simple for County Manager Woodman.
The person who has been the primary organizer behind Ballot Issue 1A — the proposed $6.5 million sales tax increase proposed by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners — happens to be County Manager Woodman, who also happens to be the BOCC’s Designated Election Official — the person responsible for receiving the signed and addressed ‘For’ and ‘Against’ comments from registered voters, and summarizing them for publication.
Any arguments submitted must specifically address the ballot issue in question.
No doubt this situation has put Mr. Woodman in an awkward position, since he is also, to some degree, responsible for trying to get Ballot Issue 1A approved by the voters. How can you be ‘fair’ to both sides… when you yourself are trying to win the election contest?
The position was so awkward that Mr. Woodman apparently ended up violating Colorado law.
Mr. Woodman received only one signed and addressed submission by the statutory deadline. That submission came from yours truly, the Daily Post editor, and was an argument ‘Against’ Ballot Issue 1A.
Mr. Woodman did not receive any voter submissions arguing ‘For’ the measure.
Here are the arguments ‘Against’ Ballot Issue 1A that Mr. Woodman received from me:
Arguments Against Ballot Measure 1A
1) Since 2016, the amount of sales tax collected by the Archuleta County government has practically doubled, from $9 million in 2016 to an estimated $17.6 million in 2022. During that same period, rental housing costs have also doubled, gasoline prices have doubled, food prices have increased, and inflation has more than tripled. Archuleta County employees have received salary increases, and the County has borrowed money to build a $19 million jail that the voters rejected twice at the polls. Now the County is proposing to extract even more money from struggling families, by increasing the County sales tax rate from 4% to 5.5%. That’s a 37.5% increase in the local sales tax rate, on top of the 100% increase in sales tax revenue since 2016.
2) The estimated sales tax increase for 2023 will be approximately $6,500,000, and the tax is perpetual and will increase with inflation, year after year. There are about 6,000 households in Archuleta County. The new tax, in 2023, will average more than $1,000 per household. Since 2018, local households are now paying County sales tax even when they purchase items online.
3) The County and Town governments hired a Front Range strategy company to conduct a survey, to find out what problems the voters are most concerned about, because the governments didn’t know. But they had already chosen the $6.5 million tax amount, before they saw the survey results. The survey confirmed that only 4% of likely voters “strongly agree” that Archuleta County can be trusted to spend taxpayer money wisely.
4) The County claims that a large portion of sales tax is paid by tourists, but have never presented reliable data to support that claim. Independent analysis of County sales tax trends, based on actual County data, suggests that local, full-time households bear at least 80% of the sales tax burden.
5) Economists universally acknowledge that sales taxes are ‘regressive’, and especially impact low- to middle-income households. Most Americans believe that wealthy households should contribute more generously to public services than poor families, but sales taxes do just the opposite of what most Americans believe is fair.
6) A new report from Region 9 Economic Development says that Archuleta County has the highest cost of living of any county in southwest Colorado. We don’t need to add to the struggle our families are dealing with in 2022.
The total number of words allowed for ‘For’ and ‘Against’ arguments is 500 words each. The argument I submitted totaled 399 words.
When a Designated Election Official receives properly submitted comments from multiple voters, the DEO must do their best to accurately combine and summarize the arguments, ‘For’ or ‘Against’. The idea, presumably, is to be as ‘fair’ as possible to both sides.
Apparently, that proved impossible to do, at least partly because County Manager Woodman did not receive any ‘For’ arguments, properly submitted and signed by eligible voters.
So he had to ‘find’ some arguments that were not properly submitted.
No big deal, apparently. The County had recently hired some election consultants from the Front Range — Magellan Strategies — who had run a survey, prior to the decision by the County to place 1A on the ballot, and some of the respondents to the survey included comments explaining why they might vote ‘For’ a future sales tax increase, or why they might vote ‘Against’ since a ballot measure.
Since Mr. Woodman didn’t have any properly submitted ‘For’ comments, he simply grabbed a selection of comments from the Magellan survey and submitted them to County Clerk Kristy Archuleta, as if they had been submitted to him as signed, addressed comments by registered voters, as required by CRS 1-7-901.
Just a few little problems. The comments were not, in fact, filed by the voters. Nor were they signed. Nor did they include the addresses. Nor did the comments address a specific ballot issue, because the comments were written prior to August 16, Ballot Issue 1A didn’t exist until September 6…
Ooops. Election fraud.
Not a great way to begin an election campaign.
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.