The case is easy enough to make.
Colorado needs to spend significantly more money on K-12 education if our kids are to be properly sent out into the world. One respected nonpartisan research institute recently put the underfunding number at $4,600 per student. Meanwhile, underpaid teachers need significant pay raises. Class sizes, in many districts, need to be lowered. Students, facing difficult job prospects, need better access to continuing education. Teachers, who are leaving the profession at dangerous levels, must be retained at higher rates.
But the case for being able to get all that done is, sadly, not quite so easy. Some would even call it a longshot.
Such is life under the state’s benighted — and yet somehow still quite popular — Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) regime, which is unique in the 50 states in how severely it restricts government’s ability to spend on critical issues.
Give credit to the state legislature — or at least the Democrats in the state legislature — for trying again, putting yet another measure on the ballot, this one asking voters to basically give up their TABOR refunds for the foreseeable future to bring Colorado education, in our rich state, up to speed.
We’re talking about a lot of money — how much depends on a number of factors related to revenue — but a lot of money is what is necessary.
The referendum is a call for optimism at a time where gloom has settled over the state, the nation and much of the world. I mean, hope is being blockaded wherever you look.
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But is it really optimism emboldening the legislature or something closer to desperation?
If we rely on recent history, going all the way back to 2019, the likelihood of getting the referendum passed would be an uphill — if not Sisyphean — struggle.
Maybe we could call the referendum: Project: Hail Mary! And see if that helps.
In 2019, voters widely rejected Proposition CC, which would have used TABOR refunds for education and roads. In 2023, voters widely rejected Proposition HH, which would have used TABOR refunds to minimize the increase in property taxes.
This year, the vote would come in an atmosphere where inflation is rising — thanks in large part to Donald Trump’s tariffs and his war in Iran — the price of gas is soaring, and the economy, by most measures, is flailing.
What does Trump tell voters in such dispiriting times? That they need to suffer for a while and trust him to make America great again or at least as, uh, great as it was before the war started.
Will Colorado voters, who rarely are moved to raise their own taxes, raise the TABOR cap — which is basically a rise in taxes by subtraction — at a time like this?
When TABOR was passed in 1992, Colorado was deep red. Now that Colorado is pretty deeply blue, you’d think we could eventually get rid of it. But polls show a majority of Coloradans still support TABOR — which requires voters to approve any tax hike. And voters especially like TABOR refunds, even in years like this one in which the refund is fairly paltry.
Ironically — I think it’s ironic, anyway — the state’s revenues have fallen, in part, because of Trump’s Big, Ugly, Contemptible Act, which dramatically cut federal tax rates, which affect Colorado’s state revenues. And so here we are.
At Colorado SunFest 2026, the nonpartisan Colorado Polling Institute revealed likely voters’ views on TABOR, showing that 62% have favorable opinions. Unsurprisingly, 74% of Republicans support TABOR, 63% of unaffiliated voters and 48% of Democrats. Any politician would kill — or at least seriously annoy someone — for that kind of support.
Pollster Lori Weigel, director of New Bridge Strategy, which has historically Republican roots, explained it this way: “The things that (voters) tend to think about are, ‘Oh, I get to vote on tax measures.’ Or, sometimes somebody sends me a check and says, ‘Here’s some money.’ That doesn’t sound so bad if those are the two things that you think most about in terms of TABOR.”
But there are other things to think about — like adequately funding K-12 education, like making up for the severe Trump cuts to Medicaid, like making recent state improvements in funding childcare just a starting point.
Some Democrats even believe that we might be — forgive the phrasing here — at an inflection point. We have been there before.
Way back in 2004 — yes, a generation ago — voters passed Referendum C, which allowed the state to keep and spend TABOR refunds for five years. The state budget was dropping dangerously because of a recession, so dangerously that Gov. Bill Owens — the last Republican governor in Colorado — championed it along with then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who overcame his fear of heights to actually jump out of an airplane in support. (Told you it was a long time ago.)
“Now we’re back in the same situation we were when Governor Bill Owens, Republican Governor Bill Owens, said (TABOR’s impact on the budget) is terrible for the state,” noted State Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, who was the main sponsor of the latest referendum, which is being pushed by the state’s teachers’ union.
But in a 9News article, we see Owens rejecting the premise.
“I’ve supported TABOR all my life,” he said. “It had an unexpected structural problem in it called the ratchet. We fixed it with Referendum C. For my friends in the Democratic Party to always go back to those good ‘ol days is very, very misleading.”
Owens calls the budget problems a matter of overspending. Bridges calls the spending necessary to support — you know — the kids.
The measure, if passed, would require half the revenue kept by the state to go to K-12 education. The other half would go to a “Children’s Account,” which could be used for a variety of issues related to children, like preschool, childcare and the tragic shortfalls in Medicaid coverage.
Meanwhile, liberal groups in the state are hoping to put on the ballot a measure to change Colorado’s income tax policies, shifting from the flat rate we have now to a graduated income tax, in which those with higher income — let’s just call them the rich to limit confusion — pay more.
That would be another great reform, if the groups can round up enough signatures for the measure to even make the ballot.
It would give voters just one more reason, among many, to turn out in November in what will almost certainly be a particularly momentous election for our state and for the nation.
And, yes, for the kids.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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