Hello Colorado

[luckyleftyme2]

I am a Mainer who will soon voting on a tabor bill(tax payers bill of rights) I would like to hear how tabor has effected your state pro or con.
the Maine heritage org. is pushing this bill! I have heard both good an bad, but the last time we had this bill we defeated it because we found out that the side pushing it was not forth right! they neglected to tell the voting public that you had suspended your tabor at the time.
please comment so I can decide if I want to vote for or against.
thank you

[hlthe2b]

1. Disastrous...

Others may weigh in and I have to get ready for work, shortly, but that's my quick response.

[randr]

2. Tabor damn near Californicated Colorado

We are in the process of rolling it back and fixing the damage.

[donco6]

3. Absolutely horrible.

It has caused the state to pick up more and more K-12 education costs due to the ratcheting down of property tax mills. Which may sound great, except now that the state is in financial trouble due to the revenue limitations, our ranking as 40th lowest per pupil funding is going to drop even further.

Good article here:

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_13518410

[CanonRay]

4. Completely f'd up the state

A total disaster, vote NO!

[Robb]

5. It's hard to find a worse thing we've done to Colorado.

Avoid it at all costs. Good article upthread.

[Hawkeye-X]

6. Whenever possible, tar and feather the author

of the TABOR law.

We've already tarred and feathered him, and we're still trying to deBrucify the damn law especially for times like these.

[InternalDialogue]

7. It neglects the need for a state to sometimes outspend its tax income.

As the economy lagged, the state budget had to follow, per the law. Unfortunately, sometimes a state spending a bit more in a down year can help pick up the local economy, but instead it had to follow the downward spiral, instead of providing a necessary network of spending to keep people employed, funded, and spending a little bit more (which in turn helps the tax base, and so on).

We already had a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget in Colorado, but when TABOR mandated spending limits, it sometimes ignored the fact that Colorado had a balanced budget anyway, but limited spending regardless. Also mandated a tax refund when revenues exceeded expenditures every now and then. That also made the lean years rougher -- it's like preventing a family from saving extra income in years when they made bonuses or whatnot. Where's the safety net if excess income can't be held for a rainy day?

Horrible idea, totally disregards the advice of economic thinkers and replaces it with a simplistic math formula.

[uncle ray]

8. consider this:

the colorado springs Gazette, a right-libertarian paper, is teaming up with the local independent paper encouraging voters in no uncertain terms to support a tax increase because of the city being under funded due to doug bruce's TABOR.

hell has seen it's first frost.

[Froward69]

10. additionally most other towns in Colo

De-bruced or un-TABORED and thus they (*albeit) are struggling, Colo spgs is shutting down because of it.

It gives the state/Towns NO power to reinforce itself economically for a bad economy.

*because of the overall slowdown of the economy.

[haydukelives]

9. Dont do it