Last Week Speaker

Doug Brown introduced speaker Charlie Brown of Colorado Futures Center and Economic Consulting Firm.

Charlie spoke to us about the Tabor Law: The Tax Payers Bill of Rights.

 

TABOR is a way of limiting the growth of government. It is a provision requiring that increases in overall tax revenue be tied to inflation and population increases unless larger increases are approved by referendum. Charlie said Colorado continues to face a structural imbalance.  "Prior to TABOR, the property tax burden on households for schools was much more equal, a provision in the Public School Finance Act of 1988 created that “uniform” mill levy -- a tax of one-thousandth of a dollar for each dollar of the assessed value of property."

 

"The idea was that no matter where you lived or where your school district was or what its tax wealth was, everybody would levy the same amount of mills to support their local public schools and then, whatever that uniform rate would not generate, the state would backfill with state support,” Brown said. But after TABOR became law, some districts paid virtually nothing and others faced significant burdens."  In essence, Colorado taxpayers are subsidizing extremely low levies in a small sample of districts, many of which are quite wealthy, a study conducted by Brown.