Colorado Democrats won’t pursue a lawsuit to invalidate TABOR after all
Despite being introduced more than a month ago, House Democrats did not advance a measure directing the state to launch a legal challenge after it cleared its first vote
Madison Osberger-Low/The Aspen Times
Editor’s note: This story was updated to correct the party affiliation of House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese.
Colorado Democrats will not pursue a lawsuit to try and invalidate a 1992 voter-approved amendment to the state constitution that limits government growth, with some signaling they may take up the measure next year.
Lawmakers introduced a resolution on March 31 that would have directed the legislature’s legal arm to file a lawsuit in state district court claiming that the Taxpayer Bill of Rights — or TABOR — is unconstitutional.
But with the clock ticking and several other high-priority bills to pass before the legislative session ends on May 7, Democrats did not move the measure forward after it cleared its first hurdle.
The resolution passed the House Finance Committee in a near party-line vote on April 7, but it languished for weeks and failed to advance to a debate on the House floor. It would have needed to pass both a preliminary and third-reading vote in the chamber before moving to the Senate, where the process would have started all over again.
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Rep. Lorena García, D-Adams County, a lead sponsor of the measure, said there was time for the legislature to approve the resolution this session, but that “the will wasn’t there to hear it.”
“It’s important for us to bring to the forefront the blocks and the containers under which we are forced to work in, and we never have those discussions,” Garcia said. “So, we need to start having these real, honest conversations on how our fiscal policy is, in fact, bad for Colorado.”
‘Sometimes, it takes a couple of tries’
Democrats have grown more vocal this year over their frustrations with TABOR, which prevents the state’s budget from increasing beyond the rate of population growth plus inflation.
Any excess revenue the state collects is remitted to taxpayers, commonly referred to as TABOR refunds.
The measure has been criticized by Democrats as an imperfect model that doesn’t allow the state to keep up with its needs. They point to the more than $1 billion in cuts lawmakers made to the upcoming fiscal year’s budget, which Democrats blame on the TABOR cap.
Heightened demand for long-term Medicaid care, for example, was a primary driver of this year’s budget expenses. Lawmakers have lamented that the revenue cap kneecaps their ability to keep up with inflationary pressures in the health care industry, which has outpaced the statewide inflation rate upon which TABOR is based.
The resolution to sue over TABOR garnered broad support from Democrats in the legislature, with 31 sponsors in the House and 12 in the Senate. Democrats hold a 43-22 majority in the House and a 23-12 majority in the Senate.
House Democratic leadership, however, did not bring the measure to a floor vote, instead choosing to prioritize other major pieces of legislation in the waning days of the session.
“At the end of the day, we just have to look at the timing that we have available,” said House Majority Leader Monica Duran, D-Wheat Ridge, during a news conference last week.
Duran said it’s likely the effort will be back in some form next session, adding, “Sometimes, it takes a couple of tries.”
Garcia said she and other lawmakers would continue pushing legislation to address TABOR.
Democrats have tried multiple times to take the TABOR fight to the ballot box, but voters in recent years have consistently rejected those efforts.
Proposition CC, which would have permanently ended the state’s spending cap by eliminating refunds, failed in 2019 and voters in 2023 shot down a property tax measure, Proposition HH, that would have significantly cut into TABOR refunds.
State Republicans have remained uniformly opposed to changing TABOR and vowed this legislative session to fight any efforts to dismantle it.
House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, R-Colorado Springs, said in a statement that Coloradans have “made it it clear: they want the power to vote on tax increases and limit the growth of government.”
Pugliese said striking down TABOR through a taxpayer-funded lawsuit “would have been an outrageous abuse of public dollars and a direct attack on the voters’ right to approve tax increases.”
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