Conservatives sound alarm over city's efforts to de-TABOR

Local conservative leaders gathered Wednesday to denounce a campaign to “eviscerate” Colorado Springs’ version of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

TABOR, an amendment to the state constitution and the Colorado Springs city charter, is a formula limiting government spending. But its core provision has nothing to do with formulas: it takes the authority to impose tax increases out of the hands of lawmakers and grants it directly to citizens voting in a referendum.

A proposed ballot initiative supported by City Councilman Tom Gallagher would repeal the formula but preserve the part about voter approval of tax increases. Gallagher and other supporters of the measure say the formula, by preventing city spending from growing faster than the rate of population growth plus inflation, prevents the city from rebounding after a recession like the current one.

“Don’t leave us in 1997 when the economic recovery comes,” said Gallagher, standing at the edge of the small crowd assembled on the steps of City Hall, where speakers took turns deriding his proposal.

“This isn’t an attempt to reform TABOR,” Sean Paige, the organizer of the event, said of Gallagher’s initiative. “This is an attempt to destroy TABOR one piece at a time.”

City Councilman Darryl Glenn called Gallagher’s proposal “fiscally irresponsible.”

The exact language of the proposed ballot measure has not been finalized, but Jeff Crank, state director of Americans for Prosperity, nevertheless called it “an attempt to deceive taxpayers.” He added that the city was engaged in a never-ending search for more money instead of making “the difficult, difficult decisions that governments have to make” in times of declining tax receipts.

Paige, director of Local Liberty Action, a Colorado Springs-based small-government group, was also joined by representatives of four other locally based conservative groups and a couple dozen supporters.

Notable by his absence was Douglas Bruce, the small-government gadfly and godfather of TABOR. He said he hadn’t been invited, but took no offense. “It’s important that they show that defense of TABOR is not just Douglas Bruce’s responsibility,” he said, and challenged supporters of the initiative to a debate.

“It doesn’t change the economic realities,” Gallagher said of the opposition arrayed against him. He noted that his proposal “doesn’t bring any more money” into the city’s coffers.

The city is already struggling to find the money to run its buses and water its parks. Unless there’s a new round of fee increases that many regard as tax increases by another name, the next steps will be closures of city offices and agencies.

Paige insisted that local support for TABOR remained strong. “If you try to take the teeth out of TABOR, the taxpayers are going to bite back, and they’re going to bite back hard,” he said.

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