No to corporate welfare in Aurora

As the Aurora City Council prepares to vote on a highly questionable real estate subsidy Monday night, I have lent my voice to a robo-call opposing the deal. Citizens for Responsible Aurora Government paid for the recorded message to 67,000 households on Thursday. Here is the text of that message, along with a more detailed statement from the citizens group. ROBO-CALL MESSAGE: This is former Senate President John Andrews. Like you, I’m concerned when government at any level spends tax dollars recklessly and overreaches its proper functions. The Aurora City Council is about to do just that, subsidizing a private real estate development with an urban blight designation on ranch land to the tune of millions of dollars the city doesn’t have. This has been labeled a bad risk by the city’s own consultants. It could be a disaster for taxpayers. Please urge the city council to vote down the Lend Lease Project on March 8. Paid for Citizens for Responsible Aurora Government. Statement by Citizens for Responsible Aurora Government Contact: Greg Golyansky 720.201.8789 or Almaz9713@aol.com

On Monday, March 8th, at 7:30 PM, the Aurora City council will be voting on a measure that would approve a Tax Increment Financing designation for the Lend Lease Horizon Uptown development, in east Aurora.

This vote will decide whether the raw ranch land will be "blighted" under the "urban renewal" state statutes. In addition our group of small government activist is trying to stop the Aurora City Government from subsidizing a private real estate development. If the Aurora Government is allowed to get away with this, then in due time they will be forced to increase taxes on all of the city's residents or face a major economic calamity.

According to the report written by the city’s BBC consultants, the project is not economically viable, risky and is based on overly optimistic assumptions. The new properties, if built, will, therefore, have to be sold/rented at a deep discount, thus producing minimal tax revenue. If you take into consideration the high cost of additional City services that will be required in these new areas, the City of Aurora will be loosing money on this "deal" for decades to come!

We must ask the members of the Aurora City Council how is it that our city administration that claims to be short of money for libraries, police and city parks - does have millions of dollars to subsidize a private company's real estate development.

TABOR suit assumes we're sheep

(Denver Post, Feb. 21) Mobilize the militia. Fire up the Humvee. Get down the musket off the mantelpiece. Boulder is preparing to invade Colorado. Yes, a lawyer from up in the progressive paradise says that your right to vote on taxes violates his constitutional entitlement to ever-increasing teacher salaries and NEA indoctrination of our kids. The invasion is no joke, because Herbert Fenster is a legal heavyweight and his intended enforcer is a robed priesthood answerable to no one. TABOR could be in trouble. Fenster will ask the courts to strike down the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights in our state constitution, whereby citizens have the last word on taxes and debt, under his theory that taxation by elected legislators, not you and me, is essential to “a republican form of government” as guaranteed to each state by the U.S. Constitution.

Some theory. Major premise: “The power to tax is the power to destroy,” as John Marshall warned Americans two centuries ago. Minor premise: Colorado’s people, explicitly sovereign under our 1876 constitution, have limited the taxing power with a 1992 amendment. Conclusion, according to Fenster: The General Assembly must be given unlimited power to destroy.

Who is to ax TABOR? Not the ordinary working Coloradans who sweat the jobs that bring the paychecks that yield the taxes that reduce the take-home that feeds the family. That would call for a ballot issue and a campaign, you see. It would require persuading too many selfish folks who don’t realize that others know what’s best for them. Fenster of Boulder would rather just persuade a few enlightened judges.

We could try to antidote this poison cocktail of elitism and illogic with facts. We could bring data to show that tax limitation over the past two decades has helped Colorado’s economy to thrive competitively, while buffering public budgets from the nightmare imbalance of states like California. We could cite studies tracing the dysfunction of public education to structural, not fiscal, causes. But that’s not the real issue.

The issue is whether we’re fit to be free – we the self-assertive and self-reliant Westerners, we the people. Herb Fenster and his liberal posse, decent Americans as best I know, don’t think so. They want the unelected judiciary to take our votes away from us because we’re uncaring toward children. What’s scary is that they may succeed, unless we raise the kind of hell that free men raise when liberty is threatened.

I don’t just mean filing legal briefs. A defense in court will be needed, and TABOR advocates will mount one. Nor do I just mean winning the debate. Montana's Robert Natelson and many other law professors could school Fenster in the constitutional acceptability of “direct citizen lawmaking” in both the Founders’ intent and case law.

But along with all that, we need the tea-party spirit. Absent an aroused and determined citizenry, neither law nor logic nor the majesty of the Supreme Court nor even the powers of Congress are now enough to safeguard limited government, so far gone is the old American republic with its “Don’t tread on me” ethos.

In the Reynolds case of 1964, the US Supreme Court imperially banned state senates from being districted as the U.S. Senate is. Constitutionally unwarranted and outrageous, but we swallowed it. Will the Fenster case tempt the Supremes to a similar tyrannical ban on tax limits? It could – and even if it does not, this should be a wakeup call for patriots.

Those seeking to simply gavel TABOR down will try something else if this fails. They are emboldened and shameless. They evidently believe Dostoevsky was right when he predicted mankind will trade “the ill-fated gift of freedom” for bread and lies. They assume that Tocqueville’s prophecy of “soft despotism” gradually making Americans a nation of sheep has come true. Has it?

The Case for TABOR

By Bill Moloney States with constitutional and/or statutory restraints on taxing and spending have strong financial foundations because those restraints greatly militate toward the positive business climate and robust economy that invariably generate increased revenues across the board. Colorado, which has had such restraints since 1992, is a prime example of their great benefits. California -- today having the nation’s most disastrous state economy -- once had such restraints but cast them aside some years ago and consequently has become the poster child for what happens to states that fall into the trap of unrestrained taxing and spending. Editor: Last week, contributor Bill Moloney took the TABOR success story on a speaking tour of Maine, where taxpayer advocates are fighting for passage of a similar amendment on Nov. 3. Here is the rest of his message from that trip:

Prior to my decade as Colorado’s Education Commissioner I served as a senior school administrator in five other states-Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland- and in all of them had extensive experience regarding the interplay of taxation and spending and how they impacted the financial health of my district, and the state as a whole. These experiences over thirty years in rural, suburban, and urban settings led me to the firm convictions stated above.

In a nation wracked by recession, ballooning budget deficits and soaring public debt the issue of fiscal restraint has an urgency greater than at any time in our history.

Attempts to promote fiscal restraint through constitutional or statutory means however have been a guarantee of bitter political conflict in every state they have occurred.

An ordinary citizen might ask: “Who would be against fiscal restraint, particularly in these perilous economic times?”

The answer is: All special interests that profit greatly from unchecked taxing and spending, most prominently giant labor unions like the National Education Association (NEA), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

The main tactics of these special interests opposing efforts at fiscal restraint are always the same i.e. Predict devastating hardship if voters or legislators irresponsibly support mechanisms of fiscal restraint, and flood the state with money from their national organizations to be spent on saturation media advertising, direct mail etc. aimed at scaring people about the dire consequences of any legal barriers to unchecked taxing and spending.

The dire consequences are skillfully invented and invariably include impoverished schools (“This will hurt the little children”) and the disappearance of critical public services like Meals on Wheels (“This will hurt the poor senior citizens”).

These tactics are the equivalent of resisting restraints on a local school budget by threatening the abolition of the band and the football team. Amazingly when citizens restrain the budget anyways the band and the football team somehow survive thus exposing the scare tactics as just that.

In 1992 when Colorado voters were presented with a constitutional amendment- Taxpayers Bill of Rights(TABOR)- to limit the growth of state revenue and spending to the sum of inflation plus population growth they were bombarded with special interest media advertisements predicting a doom and gloom economic future if TABOR passed.

When the voters went ahead and passed TABOR not only did the “dire consequences” fail to occur but instead Colorado entered a period of economic growth and prosperity unequalled in its history.

Since 1992 Colorado has gone from a boom-and- bust-prone economy overly dependent on the energy industry to one that is much more stable, balanced, and diversified. This rapid transformation derived from the state’s growing reputation as a low tax business and investment friendly environment that was generating economic opportunity for companies and citizens alike. A particular success story was the burgeoning high tech industry that ironically owed much of its rapid growth to companies fleeing Silicon Valley owing to California’s steady undermining of those very same fiscal restraints that had been a model for Colorado’s TABOR law.

Among the principal beneficiaries of this new prosperity were the schools of Colorado which had known wide spread hardship during the energy industry bust of the nineteen eighties. After 1992 school district revenues surged owing to the growth and job creation fueling local and state prosperity in the wake of TABOR.

Today following the national economic meltdown of 2008 Colorado is facing the same kind of severe challenges as every other state. However, absolutely none of those challenges are traceable to TABOR.

On the contrary because of the enduring benefits of TABOR Colorado’s economic challenges are markedly less than most other states, and disproportionally less than those states-like California- which have ignored the clear track record and economic wisdom of fiscal restraint.

William Moloney was Colorado Education Commissioner,1997-2007, and is now an international education consultant as well as a Centennial Institute Fellow. His columns have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post. His e-mail address is moloneyvision@aol.com

No on Springs 2C, a $46M tax hike

Colorado Springs councilwoman Jan Martin says you're rich and that you don’t mind paying a lot more in taxes. If she's right about you, and you have plenty of money for the city bureaucrats to burn, then ignore this message and vote for Issue 2C when you get your mail ballot on October 15th. Editor: So writes former Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany in a letter and mass email last week. His appeal goes on:

However, if you want to help us fight one of the most massive tax increases in Colorado Springs history, then we urge you to make a contribution to CCEG (Citizens for Cost-Effective Government) today at http://www.voteno2c.com/donation

Every dime of your contribution will be used to defeat this business-crippling and economy-shrinking tax. None of your contribution will go to campaign workers or political consultants. We are all working hard as unpaid volunteers because the defeat of Issue 2C is so important to the economic future of our community!

In fact, your contribution will be used exclusively for voter education mailings and e-mails, yard signs, and as many web site, print and radio ads that your contribution makes possible.

What are we going to tell the voters?

As any small business owner knows, Colorado Springs business property owners already pay four times the amount of taxes that residential property owners pay.

If 2C passes, the average homeowner will be soaked for another $200 per year. The average small business owner will pay $1,000 more per year. For large businesses that employ many Colorado Springs residents, that bill could easily reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That is hundreds of thousands of dollars going to government instead of into wages and benefits for workers.

Now, if you've read the tax-hiker's website on the issue, they stand by their story that we'll still have one of the lowest property tax rates in Colorado. But the Gazette looked into the issue and found out that was not true!

The truth is if Issue 2C passes, Colorado Springs taxpayers will pay one of the highest property taxes in all of Colorado! Higher even than Boulder.

When asked about the city's bogus claims, Jan Martin said "I'm trying to remember where we got those numbers."

She can't remember, because they made them up!!!

But facts never get in the way of our Jan Martin and the tax-and-spend city council members. They claim the condition of city finances is "dire" and that there will be catastrophic cuts should voters fail to pass 2C.

What she forgets is that business owners across Colorado Springs have already made "catastrophic" cutbacks -- in budgets and staff -- just to keep their doors open.

Any tax increase -- not just 2C -- right now would kill those same businesses.

But the City Council still keeps its hand out asking for more and more of our tax dollars. Because they don’t have the political courage it takes to make the kinds of cuts that business owners have to make every time the economy goes south.

And it's not like they've gone without more tax dollars.

During the past few years, the voters have swallowed their demands for more revenue. And when the voters say "no," the city council dreams up schemes to seize the dollars they want.

Do you remember the .01-cent sales tax increase to pay for the purchase of additional open space? That raised $5.2 million dollars this year alone.

Or how about the public safety tax of .04 cents to pay for additional police and fire? That raised $23.5 million dollars this year.

Then there was the countywide transportation tax (RTA) of 1 cent, which has allowed Colorado Springs to significantly reduce its contribution to road maintenance and throw that entire burden on the Regional Transportation Authority. That also gave them the room to divert the money they once spent on infrastructure to hiring more bureaucrats.

That transportation tax raised $70 million dollars this year, from which the city of Colorado Springs received 78% or $54.6 million dollars.

And of course, there’s everybody’s favorite, the stormwater tax. (Oops, excuse us, we mean stormwater “fee.”) That generated $20 million dollars this year alone!

That is $103.3 million every year in additional taxes and fees created in just the last few years! And, they still want more!

While we’re on the subject of “fees,” we are still facing a several hundred percent increase in our water rates, and Council says it’s still not enough.

Now Jan Martin and her tax-and-spend council cronies want to boost your property taxes by 200% in the middle of a recession. (And never forget the one truism about taxes: they may go up, but they almost never come down.)

That kind of thinking will kill the very businesses we depend upon to take the risks, generate the profits and hire the workers that keep our tax base and our city strong.

That’s why we're turning to you to help us fight this outrage now, and help save Colorado Springs businesses and our struggling economy.

Thank you for your friendship and support. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards, Andy McElhany

PS- The Colorado Springs city council has promised to repeal the business personal property tax. It is a drop in the tax bucket. They are promising to give up $2 million if they can pass Issue 2C taxing our homes and businesses an additional $46 million on top of the $103.3 million a year in new taxes and fees they have taken from us in the last few years. Help us defeat Issue 2C by donating at our website, or mail your check to Citizens for Cost-Effective Government (CCEG), P.O. Box 6711, Colorado Springs, CO • 80934-6711

Car Tax Backlash: Podcast & Links

Our Aug. 20 radio special noted that while DC politicians are talking in trillions, folks in Colorado are steamed about a $32 vehicle fee hike and a $100 late penalty. We looked at the FASTER bill for highway funding, source of this uproar. And we talked about the impact angry motorists may have on next year’s legislature and the 2010 election. "Under the Dome: Car Tax Backlash" was my latest issue special on 710 KNUS in Denver. Click here for the podcast.

It's a full record of my conversation with former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, Colorado gubernatorial candidates Scott McInnis & Josh Penry, Arapahoe County Clerk Nancy Doty, and tax-cut petition advocate Jeff Gross. Judicial reformer Matt Arnold joined me for the interviews.

Doty's recent article on the backlash as felt in her motor vehicle section is linked here.

Info on Gross's petition, which would roll back the vehicle fees, cut the state income tax, and do away with most phone taxes, is at www.cotaxreform.com

Info on Arnold's campaign to dismiss four activist judges from the Colorado Supreme Court, which erased the distinction between fees and taxes in 2008 decision, is at www.clearthebenchcolorado.org.