Measure to relax TABOR may make Springs ballot

Colorado Springs voters might decide in April whether to repeal the city's version of the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, a part of the City Charter that limits how the government imposes taxes and spends money.

The city would still be subject to the TABOR amendment to the state Constitution, which is less restrictive than the city's version.

A citizen panel, the Sustainable Funding Committee, is debating whether to recommend a measure for the April 7 election ballot that would repeal the city's TABOR. The City Council appointed the panel in May, and since then it's been examining how the city raises and spends money.

The committee is expected to recommend up to three ballot issues to the City Council at a Jan. 6 meeting.

"City services matter to all of us," committee chairman Dan Stuart said Monday. "If we don't have the revenue or the ability to provide services that people have come to expect, then we need to make the best decisions we can about what services will remain.

Probably everyone has a different viewpoint as to what's essential and what isn't."

The City Council has the final say on whether a measure makes it to the ballot.

Repealing the city's TABOR amendment would be a marked shift for Colorado Springs, which approved its City Charter amendment in 1991. A year later, voters statewide approved the TABOR amendment to the Colorado Constitution.

Since then, voters in hundreds of local governments from school districts to sanitation departments have approved measures to weaken the amendment's hold on public finances.

Colorado Springs has so far left its charter amendment and its relationship with the state amendment untouched, except for new sales taxes approved in 1997, 2001 and 2004 that don't count toward TABOR's revenue limit.

Tax-reduction crusader Douglas Bruce, who wrote the city and state TABOR amendments, said voters would likely defeat any effort to repeal the city's amendment.

He noted the outcome of the Nov. 4 election, where voters statewide rejected an effort to remove key portions of the state TABOR. Amendment 59 failed with 54 percent saying "no." In El Paso County, the "no" votes were 59 percent.

"If they can't read that the public mood is not to raise taxes and certainly not to strip away taxpayer protections, then I guess they'll just have to be defeated in April," Bruce said.

Removing the city's TABOR could ease rules that are pinching the city's finances during an economic downturn, Stuart said.

"We're the only community in the state that has its own TABOR," committee chairman Dan Stuart said Monday. "We're also subject to state TABOR, as are many other communities, and there has not been a suggestion made that we're opting out of that."

Stuart said the other measures that might be recommended for the election ballot include:

• Letting the city keep about $800,000 the government expects to collect this year in excess of the limit allowed in TABOR. The money would otherwise have to be refunded.

• Letting the city maintain a property tax that's scheduled to expire at the end of 2009, which would raise about $3 million a year.

Contact the writer: 636-0187 or perry.swanson@gazette.com

PUBLIC MEETINGS

The Sustainable Funding Committee meets at 7:30 a.m. Jan. 6 in the City Council Chambers, 107 N. Nevada Ave., to settle on its recommendations to the City Council.

Then both panels meet in the City Council Chambers at 2:30 p.m., where the council will hear the recommendations.

Both meetings are open to the public.