Colorado lawmakers advanced a bill involving TABOR this week, formally launching the state’s traditional spring ceremony in which the Legislature passes something, a conservative group threatens to sue, and everyone pretends this was not the plan from the beginning.
The Senate moved the bill forward while Advance Colorado prepared legal action, according to Colorado Politics, confirming that Colorado’s fiscal policy will once again be determined by a sacred three-branch process: elected officials, ballot language, and whoever files first in Denver District Court.
Officials described the measure as necessary, responsible, carefully crafted, and several other phrases traditionally used right before a judge asks what the hell they thought they were doing.
“We respect TABOR deeply,” said a Capitol source familiar with the bill, “which is why we have spent months locating the smallest unlocked window in it and climbing through with a duffel bag.”
TABOR, Colorado’s voter-approved constitutional limit on government revenue and taxes, remains popular enough that politicians rarely attack it directly and annoying enough that they constantly try to route around it through fees, enterprises, reclassifications, and other budgetary taxidermy.
Legislative aides said the bill was not an attempt to weaken TABOR, but rather a modernized compliance framework designed to preserve voter intent by ensuring voters are involved as little as legally survivable.
“This is about protecting democracy from the dangerous unpredictability of asking people,” said one consultant close to the matter. “Colorado voters are very important to the process, provided they appear at the end, approve the branding, and shut up.”
Advance Colorado, meanwhile, signaled it is ready to sue, continuing its role as the state’s emergency brake for lawmakers who discover, every session, that the constitution contains words written in ink instead of vibes.
The group’s impending legal action was met at the Capitol with the weary annoyance of people who know exactly what they’re doing and resent the paperwork required to pretend otherwise.
“We’re confident this bill is constitutional,” said a person involved in the process, “assuming the court agrees that ‘shall not’ now means ‘shall, but with a stakeholder meeting.’”
Supporters framed the bill as a practical response to Colorado’s budget pressures, which are real, recurring, and apparently impossible to address without first treating voters like a troublesome permitting requirement.
Opponents called it another attempt to gut TABOR without saying “gut TABOR,” because even in a building full of lanyards and dead-eyed ambition, some words still poll badly.
By the end of the day, the bill had moved forward, the lawsuit machine was warming up, and Colorado’s government had once again achieved its preferred form of transparency: everybody knows the scam, but the forms are filled out correctly.
Source: Marianne Goodland
Just Stop It
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