CUT scores JBC's Lambert at 100%

The Colorado Union of Taxpayers, a non-partisan group advocating for taxpayers, has released its 2009 CUT Ratings of the Legislature, announcing Taxpayer Champions and Guardians, those Legislators voting most often in favor of the taxpayer. Earning Senate Champions with scores of 97% were Republican Senators Dave Schultheis and Bill Cadman, Colorado Springs.

House Champion Representative Kent Lambert, Colorado Springs, scored 100%. Lambert was named by Minority Leader Mike May on Sunday to fill the Joint Budget Committee seat left vacant by Rep. Don Marostica's recent appoint to Gov. Ritter's cabinet.

Senator Kevin Lundberg, Berthoud, scored 91% ranking him Senate Guardian. House Guardians are Representatives Cory Gardner, Yuma, candidate for US Congress, and Jerry Sonnenberg, Sterling, with scores of 90%.

Nine Senators tied for big losers earning 3.13%, while Representative Su Ryden is the House loser at 0%. Governor Ritter scored 9%.

Another "F" for the Legislature. The Legislature continues to pass bills which re-distribute dollars to special interest groups, increase fees, raid cash funds, eliminate spending caps, and attack your liberty!

Says CUT President, Marty Neilson, "The Colorado budget crisis which we hear about at every turn, is a budget for 2009/2010 that is 2.6% higher than the prior year! What crisis? In an economic downturn when Colorado citizens must tighten their belts, government must be expected to do the same."

"TABOR, the taxpayers' bill of rights, continues to win support from Colorado voters and can be credited for protecting Colorado from the real budget woes being exprienced in California."

The Colorado Union of Taxpayers (CUT) is a non-partisan taxpayer activist group whose mission is to help educate the public as to the dangers of excessive taxation, regulation, and government spending, thereby encouraging the reduction of taxes, regulations, and government spending.

Visit www.coloradotaxpayer.org for the full 2009 Ratings Report.

Fiscal epiphany for Ritter & Bennet?

Impending mortality tends to focus the mind, and looming elections tend to focus politicians' ears on vox populi. But just as theologians debate the sincerity of "deathbed conversions," voters should be skeptical of lawmakers who find religion as elections near. Although 15 months remain until the 2010 elections, Democrats are learning — just as Republicans discovered after their 2004 victory tour — how quickly the political winds can shift for the party in power.

In less than a year, Governor Bill Ritter has seen his favorable/unfavorable margin flip from plus-13 to minus-8, according to Public Policy Polling. Newly imposed vehicle licensing "fees," championed by Ritter, won't make Coloradans with cars or trucks any more charitable, either.

Ritter's beneficiary, appointed Senator Michael Bennet, hasn't impressed many outside his own party during his eight months in office. Bennet's approval/disapproval rating stands at minus-7 (34%-41%) among all voters, but even worse (minus-11) among unaffiliated voters.

Nationally, the trend is no more comforting for vulnerable Democrats: Rasmussen shows the generic congressional ballot favoring Republicans 43% to 38%, while Gallup says voters are souring on President Obama's health care push with 50% disapproving and 44% approving.

Not coincidentally, both Ritter and Bennet sought to induce a bit of voter amnesia recently with tough talk on taxing and spending.

Ritter told a gathering of municipal leaders that he won't ask for a tax hike in 2010. The AP report didn't mention whether Ritter's proclamation was met with audible laughter or just snickering.

Here's a governor who convinced the legislature and the state supreme court that legislation increasing property tax revenue isn't really a tax increase and therefore doesn't trigger the constitutional requirement for a public vote. As a result, property owners will pay some $200 million more this year than they would have without Ritter's "tax freeze."

In the wake of that ruling, Ritter and the Democrat legislature used a new loophole manufactured by the supreme court to enact an additional $125 million in tax increases — also without a vote of the people.

Just this year Ritter championed two new "fees" so large as to make taxes superfluous. First he enacted his famous vehicle fee to raise an estimated $250 million by increasing the cost of licensing almost every vehicle in the state by $41 to $51 annually. Then he signed a "hospital provider fee" that will, when fully implemented, raise $600 million a year from new charges on patient services.

With fees like that, who needs taxes?

Note that Ritter didn't vow to veto any tax increases sent to him by the legislature; he merely vowed not to ask for them.

Bennet's charade is pathetically weak, too, introducing the so-called Deficit Reduction Act of 2009 in an attempt to build credentials as a "fiscal hawk."

Remember that Bennet cut his senatorial teeth by voting for President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package — the one that stimulated very little and really costs $3.7 trillion, including $1 trillion in interest.

Bennet also helped kill a measure that simply sought to limit new federal debt over the next 10 years to no more than the old federal debt accumulated in the previous 220 years. That's right, the amendment would have allowed for a doubling of the federal debt but no more. Even that medicine was just too strong for Colorado's appointed junior senator.

Bennet's fiscal hawkishness is so feeble that he doesn't even bother to suggest that the federal budget should be balanced — only that overspending should be capped at 3% of GDP, not this year or next year or the year after that but by 2013. By that miserly standard, President Bush succeeded at least half the time.

No, Colorado's big spenders aren't changing their ways — just their words.

Mark Hillman served as Colorado senate majority leader and state treasurer. To read more or comment, go to www.MarkHillman.com.

Clerks feel car tax backlash

If you’ve registered a vehicle lately, you may be suffering from mild sticker shock, but don’t blame the Clerk and Recorder’s Office. Editor's Note: The author is Arapahoe County Clerk & Recorder.

The Legislature passed—and Gov. Ritter signed into law—SB09-108 known as the FASTER measure. It was co-sponsored by Democrats, Sen. Dan Gibbs and Rep. Joe Rice.

It adds about $32 a year to the average registration fee to pay for “Road and Bridge Safety Surcharges”—none dare call it a tax. But wait, there’s more! You used to be able to get by with a $10 late fee if you exceeded the 30 day grace period when renewing your registration. Now, it’s $25 a month, month after month, up to a maximum $100. Got an old boat trailer you take out once or twice a year? Or a hauler you run to the dump with once in awhile. You’d better send that registration card in on time, or you may end up paying more than the vehicle’s worth to re-register if you are late.

You say, “Thirty-two dollars here, and twenty-five dollars there doesn’t sound like a lot of money?” But here are the numbers: Arapahoe County collected $340,000 in late fees in the month of June (the county retained $67,720 and $272,425 was forwarded to the State). And we’re only one of 64 counties collecting these fees! The Governor’s Office has expressed its intention to address this legislation and its consequences in 2010, but in the mean time we must continue collecting the fees as directed by law, and anyone registering late will just have to pay.

Now some would question, “Why impose another regressive tax in the middle of the worst recession in 70 years?” Have the bridges escaped the Legislature’s attention until just this very minute? Have we, then, been driving on unsafe roadways all along? Will the fees sunset or be eliminated after the bridges and roads are repaired? Don’t bet on it. And are these new fees really taxes that should have been voted up or down by the taxpayers? And finally, what about the windfall federal stimulus money that Colorado has also received for roads?

These are all good questions. However, please “don’t shoot the messenger”. The motor vehicle clerks at the front counters in every county clerk’s office in the state have had to explain these fee increases to customers. As agents of the state, they have had to endure irate drivers who take out their frustrations on them. The Denver Post’s recent editorial stated that threats made by unhappy customers in the DMV offices are unacceptable. I agree. Maybe it’s time to e-mail your senator and representative and ask them:

“Why this, why right now and why no vote by the taxpayers?”

Taxes undo Mass. Guv & other Dems

(Wellfleet, MA - July 20) This is a small Cape Cod community –about 500 people when I was growing up- now part of Massachusetts’ National Seashore Park. It's also home to a few hardy souls with whom I shared the experience of a one-room school house presided over by a septuagenarian female teacher whose reproving glances struck abject fear in our young hearts. One of the advantages of encountering such old friends is that it is possible to discuss current events without hitting the high wall that these flinty New Englanders usually erect between themselves and nosy “outsiders”. Thus of a recent morning I enjoyed some illuminating conversation concerning Massachusetts politics- usually a good source of light entertainment if not moral uplift.

It’s been a tough week for the state’s Democratic governor, Deval Patrick. On Monday the Democratic State Treasurer Tim Cahill announced he was quitting the party and signaled pretty clearly that he would run against Patrick as an Independent. On Wednesday Charles Baker, a prominent Republican businessman with deep pockets, announced that he too would challenge the incumbent.

Illustrating a key reason for Patrick’s vulnerability was the discovery on Tuesday that the state’s budget gap- already 3.2 billion dollars- had worsened by an additional 200 million dollars owing to dismal June revenues.

The basic cause of Patrick’s plummeting approval ratings and the consequent electoral challenges is no mystery: Taxes. With the concurrence of the Democrat controlled legislature Patrick has recently done the following: a. increased highway tolls by 25 %; b. increased Metropolitan bus and subway fares by 30 %; c. imposed a first ever tax on retail alcohol sales (two dollars on a fifth of Scotch. Ouch!); and d. –causing the most outrage- raised the already high sales tax by 25%.

The use of weasel terms like “fee adjustments”, or “revenue enhancements”, or Patrick’s gem-“state income improvement measures” does not fool but does further infuriate a public that knows a tax increase when it sees one.

Also significant is that all of those taxes are regressive in nature falling most heavily on those lower income groups that have traditionally been the foundation of the Democrats’ electoral base.

All of this however is not just a Massachusetts story, but rather a template for states across the nation where Democrats are running things. The recession has put the Democratic Party under a harsh spotlight that has simultaneously exposed their deeply flawed approach to governance and their fundamental incapacity to preside over difficult economic times like the present.

The recession undermines and ultimately makes counter-productive the Democrats favorite activity: Spending. It also impels them toward the only remedy tolerated by their ruling elites: The political Kool-Aid of Tax Increases.

At the heart of the Democrats’ dilemma are three inherent defects that have long plagued their party: 1.They are constitutionally incapable of grasping the concept that lower tax rates can generate higher tax revenues (See Reagan,R., 1981); 2. They are politically incapable of any budget or policy initiative opposed by their union allies; and 3. Ideology makes them utterly blind to the fact that creating a “business friendly” climate is essential to any sustained economic recovery.

Historically, political change in the U.S. begins at the state level before going national. An excellent example is Proposition 13- California’s 1978 tax revolt that prefigured the triumph of Ronald Reagan.

A major reason for this pattern is that economically speaking reality bites earlier and harder at the state level. Economic make-believe can be sustained longer at the Federal level because it is a remote and artificial environment that prints its own money- a luxury unavailable to states where budgets must be balanced in real time.

Accordingly political retribution is swifter at the state level. Gubernatorial approval ratings nosedive faster than the Presidential variety, but in the end both are reflective of economic malfeasance, and the populist backlash it generates.

In 2006 Deval Patrick was an attractive, articulate outsider who preached a gospel of “Hope and Change”. His good friend Barack Obama even admitted in 2008 to plagiarizing a few of Patrick’s speeches.

No doubt friend Obama has noticed that Patrick’s “Hope and Change” bandwagon has collided head-on with “Reality and Disillusion”.

An increasingly restless nation waits to see what if any lessons our new President will learn. William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadephia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News.

Petitions defend TABOR

Taxpayers fight back With Colorado's governor, legislature, and Supreme Court actively colluding to gut or repeal the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, just when California's fiscal collapse dramatizes the need for TABOR, citizens are circulating three petitions to fight back. We featured them July 5 on Backbone Radio. Here are the web links where you can find out how to sign the petitions, or carry them for your neighbors to sign, so voters will have a chance to defend TABOR on the 2010 ballot.

Sticker shock on this year's sharp increase in vehicle registration "fees" (arguably a tax by another name, and as such, subject to a vote of the people) made headlines just before Independence Day. One of the petitions would cut vehicle taxes (and fees), income taxes, and phone taxes. Get details at www.COtaxreform.com.

Another of the petitions locks the door tighter (since politicians keep finding ways around the existing ban) against credit card government in Colorado. Get details at www.LimitCOdebt.com.

The third of these companion proposals, each needing over 100,000 signatures by this fall, in order to make the ballot next fall, addresses the upward trend of property taxes, for which TABOR's protection has also proved inadequate. Details on that one are at www.LimitPropertyTax.com.