Four years ago, a narrow majority of Coloradans bought the slick advertising of the Referendum C tax hike. Today, statehouse Democrats seem to have forgotten all their grandiose promises. (Or were they not telling us the truth in the first place?) A great catch by Face The State (go and listen to the brief audio clip for yourself):So we were shocked to hear JBC vice-chairman Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, assert during last week's discussion that “Ref C wasn’t designed to fix anything," and that "Ref C was an arbitrary amount of money.†… [Read more...]
Bill Ritter Ginning Up Excuses for His Attack on Taxpayer Protections
Wandering out to the Western Slope on his cross-state jaunt with his U.S. Senate protege Michael Bennet, Governor Bill Ritter yesterday sat down with the editors of the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. When asked about his reckless anti-TABOR remarks ("the straightjacket") in his State of the State speech, here's reporter Mike Saccone's retelling of how Ritter defended himself:He started by saying that if Colorado has taken all the money it has refunded under TABOR and kept it in a rainy-day fund, Colorado would not have had to make massive budget cuts in the last recession and an estimated $600 million worth of cuts this year. Here's the problem, though. Bill Ritter already chose to pass up a legitimate chance to put money from Referendum … [Read more...]
Bill Ritter in a “Straightjacket” over Colorado’s Taxpayer Protections
Sean Paige at Local Liberty Online made a great catch, picking up on this excerpt from Bill Ritter's State of the State speech earlier today (H/T Complete Colorado):"There is also an opportunity here – a chance to address TABOR and the constitutional and statutory straightjacket* that makes modern, sensible and value-based budgeting an impossibility. Last year, former House Speaker Romanoff started the conversation, and we need to keep it alive. We need to talk about life after Ref C – whether and when to extend it. We have a chance to find a better way forward, a Colorado way forward." Bill Ritter said what? About 2 months after Colorado voters said No to a proposal to gut TABOR refunds forever and rejected two other major statewide … [Read more...]
Mark Hillman Credibly Criticizes Dems for Failure to Save State Money
Mark Hillman - former state senate majority leader and former state treasurer - once again has established himself as a leading voice of fiscal sanity in Colorado. In an op-ed in today's Denver Post, he assails Governor Bill Ritter and his Democratic colleagues at the helm of the state legislature for their ongoing mismanagement of the looming budget crisis:Balancing a budget during a recession is a difficult job, certainly. But balancing this year's budget didn't need to be this hard if only the leaders at the Capitol had learned from the last recession — or listened to those who experienced it. Last spring, as the economic storm clouds gathered, Gov. Bill Ritter and legislative leaders had opportunities to take precautions. One … [Read more...]
Fiscally Conservative Kevin Lundberg Merits Nod for State Senate Seat
I see the upcoming showdown over the appointment to replace state senator Steve Johnson as a real testing ground: Do Republicans want well-qualified and proven fiscal conservatives of class and character - regardless of their views on social issues - or do they just want to toss officials overboard for their socially conservative views? Estes Park's Jon Nicholas gets it right: state representative Kevin Lundberg is the right person to fill Johnson's seat. Especially if Nicholas' observations (one technical error aside) about Lundberg's less well-known rivals indeed are correct: … [Read more...]
Democrat Rollie Heath Wants to Use Economic Downturn to Kill TABOR
It only took seven weeks after the voters of Colorado said no to a statewide proposal that would have gutted the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) - a proposal pushed by a campaign that heavily outspent the opposition - for the Democrats to be back at it again. From today's Denver Post:Rollie Heath, a Boulder Democrat elected to the Senate, said that as lawmakers grapple in the coming session with cutting as much as $600 million from the budget because of declining revenues, they should also look at TABOR, a revenue-capping provision of the state's constitution. The state is in a timeout from TABOR's tax-revenue limits, but that timeout expires in 2010, when Colorado will have to begin refunding to taxpayers any revenue it collects … [Read more...]
Whimsical Case for a “Progressive” Third Party to Replace the GOP
Are you up for a little distracting whimsy? A former elected official, Boulder attorney and self-proclaimed "former Republican" (one of the more popular descriptors being bandied about these days) offers this (over) dose of elitist smugness, painful self-indulgence, overwrought rhetoric, and selective historical knowledge:I was a Republican for 28 years. Like so many others who now vote Democratic, I didn’t leave the party — it left me. Based on the analyses of this month’s election, it also left college graduates, suburbanites and Hispanics in the red-state dust. The sad fact is that a map of the few counties that voted more Republican than they did in 2004 neatly overlays maps showing the nation’s highest rates of obesity, poverty … [Read more...]
Ted Trimpa: Extortion Negotiator, Gill Adviser, “Educate the Idiots” Insider
Denver attorney Ted Trimpa is being touted as the great mediator, the great savior, in negotiating a compromise between business and labor to remove four anti-business initiatives from the ballot. Who's doing the touting? Why, the liberal Dead Governors blog, of course:For those of you who don't know about Hogan and Hartson's Ted Trimpa, well, you should. He's the one who brought this pact, the most unlikely partnership since Referendum C, together, helping reinforce his growing waterwalker mystique. It's also true that labor wasn't really looking forward to taking the blame for the potentially serious unintended consequences of a couple of these proposals. The infusion of cash to fight the anti-labor initiatives will help, as will the … [Read more...]
Romanoff Missing Summer Fun to Put Anti-Taxpayer Measure on Ballot
The Rocky Mountain News reports today on outgoing House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's intense efforts to place an initiative on the ballot that would forever end TABOR refunds for Colorado taxpayers. Of course, the skewed way the Rocky describes the ballot measure, you wonder what sensible person could oppose it:While the rest of Colorado is hiking, rafting, barbecuing or putting in some serious hammock time, Romanoff, D-Denver, and a group of volunteers will hit the streets attempting to gather about 120,000 signatures from registered voters.... The proposal aims to unsnarl the fiscal knot of conflicting spending mandates and limits embedded in the state's constitution. Called SAFE (Savings Account for Education), the effort would seek … [Read more...]
“Tiger for the Taxpayer” Mark Hillman Rebuts Cowardly Whisper Campaign
One of Colorado's brightest, most respected conservative leaders - Mark Hillman - is running to represent the state party as Republican National Committeeman. He is running against state senator Dave Schultheis, a rock-ribbed conservative from Colorado Springs. How disappointed I was to see an anonymous online writer quoting unidentified sources to spread misinformation about Mark Hillman's fiscal conservative bona fides vis a vis Referendum C. I am only left to wonder where exactly the cowardly attacks are coming from. Face The State highlighted the absurd flap today, giving Hillman an opportunity to recite his record of opposition to Ref C:As far as the suggestion that Hillman was not aggressive enough in opposing Referendum C, … [Read more...]