With a functionally insurmountable majority, leftwing representatives and senators driving the legislative agenda, and a Colorado Republican Party that maneuvered itself into irrelevance over the past decade, the Democrat-controlled Colorado House of Representatives and Senate are hellbent on challenging California’s status as the most “progressive” state in the country. Gov. Jared Polis is the only influential elected official who has been an intermittent voice of moderation.

The Colorado legislature is advancing bills that will force many landlords out of the rental market, raise housing costs, raise homeowner association dues, raise construction costs, drive businesses and investment capital out of the state, publicly fund abortions, penalize parents, schools, and businesses for “deadnaming” a transgender person (using a person’s birth/legal name and pronouns instead of their new identity). That later bill, pushed through the House last Sunday, could even disenfranchise parents who don’t support gender-transitioning their minor children by denying legal custody. Whether driven by the intoxication of unchecked power, economic illiteracy, fervent ideology, or any combination thereof, emulating failing states like California, Illinois, and New York is a pending disaster for Colorado.

Fortunately, there is one pesky impediment to California-type taxation and spending — and it is the state government’s number one enemy — the Taxpayer Bill of Rights constitutional amendment, commonly known as TABOR. Passed by voters in 1992, TABOR limits state revenue and spending increases, refunds revenue that exceeds the annual cap to taxpayers and requires voter approval for tax increases. The state and many local governments have tried for years to weaken, circumvent, vilify, and outright repeal TABOR. While TABOR has been overridden in many localities, statewide initiatives to completely repeal it have failed, including Proposition HH in 2023, which lost by 60%.

Unsuccessful in the court of public opinion, but undeterred in their passionate disdain for TABOR’s tax and spending limitations, the Colorado legislature has lightened your wallet with fees, not taxes, and has established various “enterprise funds” to collect fees not subject to TABOR. There are bills currently pending to reclassify regular state revenue as enterprise revenue, expanding this deceptive practice.  But the mother of all assaults on TABOR, as incredulous as it may be, is House Joint Resolution 25-1023 which allows the General Assembly to use your tax dollars to hire lawyers to challenge the constitutionality of the 33-year-old constitutional amendment. Even better, the state attorney general, who also hates TABOR and wants to be your next governor, will use your tax dollars to defend the lawsuit. So, the state legislature is going to sue the state at your expense to keep and spend more of your money.  Remember, these are the same state legislators who had forego $1.2 billion in additional spending because of TABOR’s fiscal discipline, but this is a good use of funds?

No doubt, the proponents of this resolution have venue shopped and have a judge lined up to declare the TABOR constitutional amendment unconstitutional. But wait, there’s more!

The crux of the resolution’s argument against TABOR is that it “violates the ‘Enabling Act of Colorado‘ and the republican form of government set forth in the Guarantee Clause of section 4 of article IV of the United States constitution (sic) by nullifying the authority of the General Assembly to assess taxes and infringing upon the plenary authority of the General Assembly to appropriate money for public purposes.”

The “Enabling Act of Colorado” moved Colorado from a territory to statehood in 1876, and it required the new state to implement a representative democracy, a “republican” form of government. So basically, the state legislature is arguing that a state constitutional amendment that limits the amount of money a state legislature can vote to tax and spend violates the U.S. Constitution because it was enacted by voters, not the state legislature, and therefore state legislators have been disenfranchised from their inherent right to tax and spend without restraint. Therefore, TABOR is a threat to democracy itself! Who knew?

Aside from its inane logic and fundamental absurdity, H.J.R. 25-1023 is expected to pass in both the Colorado House and Senate. Will the state legislature argue that wolf reintroduction is similarly unconstitutional?

TABOR is the only thing that stands between Colorado and California. Remember that at the ballot box.

Bruce Butler's column "Common Sense Conversations" publishes biweekly on Tuesdays in the Summit Daily News. Butler is a former mayor and council member in Silverthorne, where he has lived for 20 years. Contact him at butlerincolorado@gmail.com.