Metro Denver-area voters will decide Nov. 5 whether the Regional Transportation District can continue to keep all of its sales tax revenue in coming years, even when a strong economy pushes revenue up above caps set in the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
The so-called “de-Brucing,” named after TABOR author Douglas Bruce, is a common request from local taxing agencies.
In RTD’s case, a “yes” vote on 7A would not raise the current dedicated RTD sales tax, but would allow RTD to keep projected revenue about $50 million to $60 million a year above the TABOR cap instead of refunding that amount to millions of taxpayers.
Local elected officials and pro-transit nonprofit groups are aligning behind 7A, with no real organized opposition. There are valid questions, though, about RTD’s recent performance.
Here’s what you need to know about 7A, which will be on the ballot where RTD provides service, in all of Boulder, Broomfield, Denver and Jefferson counties, parts of Adams, Arapahoe and Douglas Counties, and a small portion of Weld County.
How do supporters of 7A say it would help RTD?
RTD, one of the largest transit agencies in the West, gets only about 5% of its budget from riders paying fares. By far the great majority of RTD money, $932 million or 75%, comes from the 1% RTD sales and use tax that consumers and businesses pay in the metro area district.
If sales tax revenue rises above the cap placed each year on local government revenue by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, RTD would have to return $50 million to $60 million a year to individual consumers. (The cap is determined by annual increases in population and inflation.)
RTD’s past authority to keep excess TABOR money is expiring, and 7A would allow RTD to keep it again for coming years. The current amount of RTD’s sales tax portion would not change.
Current RTD Board Member Lynn Guissinger gives big-picture and practical reasons why voters should again allow the transit agency to keep any money over the cap. RTD has made good progress recently, she said, in hiring to bolster its driving and train controller corps to begin restoring routes and frequency cut back in past years.
The agency is also embarking on the highly anticipated East Colfax Avenue “Bus Rapid Transit” rebuild, dedicated fast lanes for transit and increasing bus frequency to every few minutes, Guissinger noted. Construction will begin this year. The Colorado Department of Transportation is also working with RTD to study similar formats on busy Colorado and Federal boulevards.
Meanwhile, RTD has had to spend big on restoration projects like the 16th Street Mall bus shuttle corridor, and maintenance on the aging light rail corridors. Taking away a significant chunk of RTD revenue would hurt agency efforts at a time when local officials, air pollution activists and nonprofits are all demanding more transit options, not fewer, Guissinger said.
Voters have previously approved long extensions of RTD’s TABOR exemptions, she said.
And on the practical side, returning $60 million a year would be a nightmare, she noted. The RTD sales tax is paid by tourists, business visitors, children buying candy or other nonessentials, as well as millions of metro-area residents. Tiny checks or ride vouchers or some kind of compensation would have to go out to 2 million or more locations, Guissinger said.
“How do you figure out who gets it?” she said.
Who is supporting 7A?
A group called Keep Colorado Moving is organizing the endorsements and support for a “yes” on 7A, and the sign-on sheet is an extensive array of mayors, city councils, chambers of commerce and nonprofit advocates.
CoPIRG, a consumer-oriented nonprofit working on transit, air pollution and recycling issues, has made a strong endorsement, and in it mentions others in the coalition including AARP, the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, the NAACP, Downtown Denver Partnership, Servicios de la Raza and Denver Streets Partnership.
All the current RTD board members have also endorsed 7A, CoPIRG notes.
“Our core is the people who really need it, and we need to take care of that,” Guissinger said. In addition to the big maintenance projects now under way, she added, “Public transit is a big piece of meeting the state’s and the region’s environmental goals.”
Who is opposing 7A?
There is not an equal, formal opposition to 7A, former RTD board member and current Jefferson County Commission candidate Natalie Menten said. She and some others have spoken out about it during their own policy discussions, she said.
What are the best arguments against 7A?
Perhaps the toughest campaigner against RTD is the agency’s own recent publicity.
The governor’s office and many in the legislature are so frustrated with metro public transit that they have floated draft bills that would change RTD from a fully elected, regionally representative board to one primarily appointed by lawmakers.
RTD’s on-time performance, meanwhile, takes regular hits in local media and social media, with the agency acknowledging that operations have been hurt by maintenance gaps and challenges in hiring a full roster of drivers in Denver’s strong jobs economy.
Drivers and passengers also have also expressed concern about violent incidents, drug use and loitering at transit stops, and mental health challenges for some passengers who take shelter on RTD routes or at stations. The RTD safety image was not improved by reports of investigations into the transit’s own safety chief, who was found to have been driving in excess of 100 mph in RTD vehicles to Denver from a home in Colorado Springs.
All those factors are exacerbated by major cultural shifts in the past two decades, said Menten, who served on the RTD board for eight years.
“My time on the board was pulling my hair, often actually, in frustration with what was a transportation model created back in the early 2000s, and that transportation model has changed so much since then that that model really does not work very well anymore,” Menten said.
COVID and affordable housing demands shifted potential riders away from the expensive hub-and-spoke light rail system focused on downtown Denver that RTD had created starting in the 1990s. Regional bus and rail fares became so expensive, though lowered recently, that riders found other means of commuting.
RTD’s ridership has dropped dramatically, falling to 65 million boardings in the past year from 103 million in 2015.
Now the agency is locked into systems that are very difficult to reform.
“RTD is stuck in promises they made and kept,” Menten said.
Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft can provide individual rides cheaper than RTD’s most heavily subsidized, infrequent fixed routes in areas like the Jefferson County foothills that Menten served, she said. (Though advocates note those services are not always accessible to RTD riders most in need.)
Meanwhile, RTD’s route and frequency cutbacks have made the service impossible to ride for regular workers frustrated by having to wait an hour between buses, or make multiple connections to get home.
“If they start work at 4 p.m. and they’re getting off at midnight, RTD does not do much,” Menten said. “If we were giving them instead their public sales tax dollars back in the form of a transportation voucher, then they could be using it and it would likely be a far safer ride, more convenient and more efficient than whatever RTD would be offering at midnight. So the whole model, to me, is flawed.”
Getting a TABOR refund back would help residents find “a transportation mode that fits them best, and that’s what TABOR’s about — not overcharging taxpayers, and letting them make the best choices,” Menten said. In leaving the money with RTD, Menten said, “I don’t see good return on the dollar for the taxpayers.”