Just two months after Colorado voted — for the second and third times — to raise taxes for a school meals program, legislative analysts are warning state lawmakers they might have to go back to the ballot for round four.
The news reduced Joint Budget Committee Chair Emily Sirota to a three-letter response during a December meeting: “O … M … G …”
This time around, the stakes aren’t quite as high. The $95 million a year voters approved when they passed Proposition MM in November is expected to generate enough to pay for the Health School Meals for All program, with some leftover for SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for low-income families.
But — unlike the first school meals election in 2022 — lawmakers thought they’d asked voters for permission to spend enough money to avoid issuing taxpayer refunds under the state constitution.
Only now it appears they didn’t, legislative analysts told the JBC in December. And as a result, Colorado could be headed toward a fourth statewide vote to authorize taxes for a single program.
How we got here
In 2022, voters approved Proposition FF, a ballot measure that reduced tax deductions for higher-income households to fund Healthy School Meals for All. The program provides free breakfast and lunch to public school students. The tax changes raised about $11 million more than they initially expected, so lawmakers went back to voters this year to get permission to spend the extra money.
That’s all pretty standard Colorado budget stuff. The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights requires voter approval to raise taxes. The constitutional amendment also allows the legislature to go back to the ballot and ask again if a new tax collects more than voters were told. Otherwise, the excess revenue has to be refunded back to taxpayers.
But by the time lawmakers were drafting the follow-up request, 2025’s Proposition LL, another problem had surfaced. Even with the extra dollars, the program wouldn’t have nearly enough money to provide school meals to everyone who wanted them. So lawmakers went back to voters to ask for additional tax increases on higher earners — Proposition MM.
This time around, the JBC thought they’d found a way to avoid a follow-up election to spend excess revenue — just ask voters for more money in the first place. In theory, that would satisfy TABOR’s requirement that lawmakers get permission for every dollar in new taxes, without needing to hold a second election if the state collects a little more than expected.
At least, that was the plan. But as lawmakers learned in December, that’s not what happened.
What went awry
Lawmakers rely on estimates from the nonpartisan Legislative Council Staff to determine how much money the state will have to fund programs, like healthy school meals.
But no one can predict the future perfectly. So legislative staffers provide a range of estimates, from low to high, and lawmakers traditionally use the midpoint in drafting legislation and crafting the annual budget.
TABOR complicates that practice. In 2024, chief legislative economist Greg Sobetski told the JBC that by using the midpoint, lawmakers were ensuring duplicate elections under TABOR about half of the time.
To make a follow-up election less likely, the JBC and the rest of the legislature passed a new law for tax-related elections. Under the new policy, lawmakers would simply ask voters for more money to begin with.
The state’s nonpartisan election guide, known as the blue book, now has to advertise the maximum revenue estimate to voters when asking for a tax increase. And before the November election, the blue book did just that, telling voters that Proposition MM could bring in $103 million. That would be just enough to cover the $101 million that legislative analysts now expect the proposal to generate.
There’s just one problem: The ballot question itself still only asked for $95 million.
“I spoke a lot with the sponsors of the Prop. MM referral about that $95 million number maybe not being high enough,” Sobetski told the JBC in December.
It’s not entirely clear why things went awry.
The school meals bill predated the new rules being signed into law in June. But state Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat who sponsored the Proposition MM legislation, told The Colorado Sun her bill used a high estimate to minimize the chances of a subsequent election.
“We actually did use the higher end of the estimate — and we went through four or five different iterations,” Garcia said.
The original fiscal note for the authorizing legislation, though, shows that an even higher estimate was presented to lawmakers as early as March, while the bill was still being debated: $106.5 million.
“The fact that that’s something that within our constitution we are limited to is really just poor policymaking,” Garcia said. “And so the fact that every single time we have a revenue-generating ballot measure, we have to go back to voters, I’m surprised voters themselves aren’t already saying enough with this.”
As for the higher blue book estimate, Sobetski said it’s not binding under TABOR. The ballot question itself is what counts — much to the frustration of the JBC.
“Does that mean we can just put anything we want?” an exasperated state Sen. Jeff Bridges, the JBC’s vice chair, said at the December meeting. “Even if it doesn’t match with reality, we can just make up numbers and put them in the legislation? You can just make things up and have people vote on them and then they get what they get?”
TABOR itself doesn’t say exactly. The constitution only requires that voters be provided an estimate of what a new tax will generate. But lawmakers have ample incentive to ask for a reasonable amount. Ask for too little, as they did with taxes on marijuana, tobacco and sports betting, and it can lead to subsequent elections. Ask for too much, and voters might balk at an inflated price tag.
With Proposition MM, another factor may have been at play. The difference between $95 million and over $100 million represents a psychological barrier that ballot campaigns try to undercut, like when retailers list prices at 99 cents instead of rounding up to the next dollar.
It’s unlikely that made a difference in enough voters’ minds to tilt the election. The measure passed easily, with 60% of the vote.
What happens next
Going forward under the new law, House Bill 1327, ballot questions will match the blue book and ask voters for the “maximum” amount of revenue that legislative analysts estimate a tax could collect.
Don’t bank on another school meals election just yet, though. Sobetski says the latest estimates for Proposition MM remain just that — educated guesses, with a lot of room for error.
Analysts have already warned the JBC that their revenue estimates should be taken with more of a grain of salt than usual. The economic picture is unusually murky, and forecasters still aren’t sure how a new federal tax law will affect state tax collections.
And, Garcia says, even if collections come in high, she wouldn’t expect the legislature to go back to the ballot until 2028 at the earliest.