Colorado Senate Panel Advances Bill To Redirect TABOR Refunds

By: Savana Kascak | Complete Colorado

DENVER–Couched as a state education funding effort, legislation to siphon off overcollected revenue that would otherwise be refunded to Colorado taxpayers passed out of a Democrat-controlled Senate committee on Thursday.

Senate Bill 26-135, “State Public K-12 Education Funding,” refers a question to Colorado’s November ballot to increase K-12 education funding by 2% annually for the next ten years. According to the bill, the money is intended to go towards teacher pay increases and retention, lowering class sizes, and technical career programs.

Along with raising education appropriations, the bill allows the state to keep and spend excess revenue collected above the limitations in the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR).

TABOR, among other things, limits the growth of a portion of the state budget to a formula of population growth plus inflation.  The state is required to refund revenue collected over the limit back to taxpayers. While SB-135 asks voters to give up their refunds for the foreseeable future, recent polling shows TABOR remains quite popular among active voters, with a 61 percent approval overall.

While Democrat sponsors are selling the bill as a funding boost for Colorado schools, only a portion of the money retained is actually required go towards K-12 education.

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