Even as K-12 advocates prepare to campaign for a $950 million tax increase this fall, leaders from other corners of the public sector are quietly starting to build their own cases for more money.
The 1992 Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights requires voter approval for all tax rate increases. The amendment also sets other limits on government revenue growth, leading – in the minds of some – to underperforming schools, crumbling highways and a higher ed system increasingly addicted to tuition revenue.
The K-12 proposal expected to be on the statewide ballot in November would raise state income taxes. (Get details here.) Advocates of more transportation spending and a boost for colleges and universities are eying different revenue sources.
Lone Tree Mayor Jim Gunning told Colorado Public Radio this week about an effort to gauge public support for a possible 2014 sales tax proposal to raise revenue for highways and other transportation projects. A higher gas tax apparently is off the table because of voter resistence in polling. (Listen to the story here.)
Over on campus, leaders of the state’s two largest universities are talking increasingly about going to the voters for help, possibly in the next two years. Revenue sources being eyed include mineral taxes and regional taxing districts, similar to the one that supports Colorado Mountain College in several central mountain counties.
CU President Bruce Benson has been chattering about a higher ed funding boost all spring, and he recently suggested polling the public to test the waters. (Despite some public concern about tuition increases, increased tax support of higher ed traditionally hasn’t fared well in opinion surveys.)
Michael Martin, chancellor of the CSU system, weighed in this week in an opinion piece published in The Denver Post and other newspapers. Martin made a soft pitch, concluding by writing: “If we work together over the coming year to build a more cohesive and efficient higher education system in Colorado, then we’ll have a stronger case to make to taxpayers if we do decide to ask for more of their hard-earned dollars.”
Martin is involved in an effort to get colleges and universities talking about how they can cooperate better. Those discussions were sparked partly to ease the ill feelings generated by a contentious – and failed – effort during the past legislative session to allow community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees.
Democratic state Sen. Rollie Heath of Boulder, who’s been following both efforts, describes them as exploratory. “Where it ends up is anybody’s guess.”
Some observers are skeptical of such funding dreams. If K-12 supporters “quietly slip their funding formula … past voters this year (and that appears highly improbable), it likely closes the door to the other funding aspirants who would like to go to the ballot in 2014,” writes Miller Hudson, a former legislator and current columnist for the Colorado Statesman. (Read full column here.)
Colorado voters have not been kind to statewide tax proposals in the three decades since they passed TABOR. (See this EdNews story for the history.)
Some observers have a different take than Hudson has and fear that defeat of a K-12 measure this fall could weaken the prospects for several years for a repeat K-12 attempt or proposals for other tax increases.
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