Bravo WorldNetDaily! If you haven’t seen this remarkable write-up of what FASTER has meant for taxpayers in Colorado then check this piece out. The article does a wonderful job of explaining the intention of our Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) to those unfamiliar with it and explaining how former governor Bill Ritter’s fee infested FASTER legislation subverts it. The inspiration for the article was a couple of Issue Backgrounders we published last month that go into detail about how FASTER raised $100 million with an unconstitutional tax and $300 million in unconstitutional debt. And even better than that, they linked to my TV show with the authors of those Issue Backgrounders.

It’s great to see national outlets picking up important issues in Colorado like this one. It shows that legislatures can and will break the letter and the intention of law when it suits them. It doesn’t even matter if the law is in the Constitution half the time! All it took with the FASTER legislation was some clever wordplay and a sympathetic legislature. And as critics keep slandering TABOR in the media, it might take even less next time.

Let’s stay vigilant. Keep shouting your support of government checks and balances from the rooftops. Keep reminding our legislature that we are the employers and they are the employees. And share stories like this when national outlets pick them up.

Over at The Daily Caller, Mothers Against Debt (MAD) director Amy Oliver Cooke gives a pretty severe spanking to proponents of the recent lawsuit against the Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), comparing them to spoiled teenagers wanting a bigger allowance. Money quote:

What’s not to like about TABOR? Plenty if you are an elected official or special interest group with a teenager’s narcissistic propensity for spending someone else’s money. They are annoyed at having to explain themselves to voters.

Whole thing here.

Let’s put another stake in Herb Fenster’s TABOR lawsuit shall we? As if there weren’t enough stakes in the heart of this silly lawsuit, we’ve got perhaps the largest, most rusty stake yet courtesy of Senior Fellow Rob Natelson. As you might remember, Vincent Carroll cited Rob many times in his Denver Post editorial on the TABOR lawsuit, but we did not get a chance to hear directly from Rob himself until his post on his blog here and then this Colorado Springs Gazette guest column, TABOR Does Not Violate the U.S. Constitution. There is no greater authority on the founding era understanding of terms, phrases, legal jargon, and our Constitution than Rob Natelson. His op-ed rips the lawsuit to pieces and leaves the reader knowing that the founders had no beef with TABOR (nor our initiative and referendum process). Additionally, Rob sat down with one of my minions to do an iVoices.org podcast on this subject. You can listen to that podcast over on iVoices.org.

The old saying that politics makes strange bedfellows came to mind after reading Vincent Carroll’s op-ed this morning in the Denver Post. In the column, Vincent points out that anti-TABOR forces are drawing heavily from the Founders in their lawsuit that alleges TABOR is unconstitutional. In particular they quote James Madison from his Federalist No. 10. The argument is that Madison, along with the other Founders, rejected “direct democracy” in favor of representative democracy. And look, it’s even in the Constitution itself – “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.” The lawsuit argues that our Taxpayer Bill of Rights is a form of direct democracy as it requires a vote of the people to raise taxes and debt.

Leaving aside my argument that this lawsuit is not really about TABOR but more about our petition process, it’s a bit ironic that big government elites all of the sudden fancy themselves constitutional scholars taking on the important fight to secure our founding documents from perversion and ignorance. So I’m supposed to believe that tax and spend, no limits on government, elitist, living constitutionalists are now walking hand in hand with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson? Strange bedfellows doesn’t even begin to describe that phony alliance.

Our Constitutional scholar Rob Natelson doesn’t buy it either. As is always the case with Rob’s research, he visits the 18th century writings to discover the truth. What Rob finds is that the Founders used the word “republic” in a different way than the lawsuit’s proponents lead us to believe. “They all define ‘republic’ as merely ‘commonwealth’ or ‘a government controlled by more than one person,” says Rob. Not only that, the governments the Founders looked to for inspiration and guidance employed elements of direct citizen action. For example, the early Roman state had a republican form of government and yet legislation came out of popular assemblies where citizens voted in person. In his op-ed, Vincent quotes heavily from Senior Fellow Rob Natelson as he makes the case that the Founders would have had no beef with our citizen initiative process in general and our Taxpayer Bill of Rights in particular.

The evidence is convincing: this lawsuit will go nowhere. It’s unfortunate that in the next policy fight our big government opponents will have all but forgotten their affection for the Founders and our founding era documents. I predict this love affair is a one time occurrence. Mere puppy love – fickle and fleeting.

Since the moment it was passed, politicians have been trying to circumvent TABOR and its restrictions on taxes and debt. Sometimes their attempts fail, but sometimes they are wildly successful. Take for example the 2009 FASTER legislation. This bill created the Colorado Bridge Enterprise – a government owned business tasked with fixing and maintaining bridges within the state. If that sounds eerily familiar to what CDOT is supposed to do, it should. FASTER was a quick way to bypass the restrictions that CDOT would face in raising money to repair bridges. In other words, FASTER was a quick way to grab taxpayer money without asking us first.

How did FASTER manage to do that? Easy. It established a new tax, I mean “fee” in the form of higher vehicle registration costs for every single car registered in the state. It amounted to about $23 per car, per year totaling almost $100 million. The evidence that this “fee” increase is actually a tax is quite overwhelming. Which means that this tax increase is flagrantly unconstitutional. In just a couple of pages, Tom Ryan makes the case in this Independence Institute Issue Backgrounder, Colorado Bridge Enterprise: A Case Study in Contravening Colorado’s Constitution.

In addition to looting taxpayers to the tune of almost $100 million in new car registration “fees,” FASTER raised $300 million in debt – also without asking. It’s the old double end-around TABOR: raising unconstitutional taxes AND debt! As Richard Sokol tells it in this Issue Backgrounder, on December 1, 2010, the citizens of Colorado were put on the hook for $300 million dollars… and counting. FASTER was an attempt to repair and maintain Colorado bridges. The car registration tax increase was going to collect around $100 million. Evidently, $100 million was not enough. Richard Sokol explains,

…with a payment of $1.9 million to Wall Street-based bond dealers, the Colorado Bridge Enterprise issued $300 million of debt. Of this amount, $43 million matures in 2027, and $257 million matures in 2040. The interest rate on the debt is about 6.1 percent. The Enterprise will pay about two-thirds (4.0 percent) of the interest rate, and the federal government, through the taxpayer-funded Build America Bond subsidy, pays the rest. So, without a vote of the people, a CDOT Enterprise has issued $300 million in debt that will not be paid off for nearly 30 years.

Pretty slick huh? Loot current taxpayers to the tune of $100 million now and loot future taxpayers for at least $300 million later.

This deceptive story was too juicy to leave for just two Issue Backgrounders, so we had both Tom Ryan and Richard Sokol on my TV show Devils Advocate last week to share the awful details of this scam.

Let’s not forget that what FASTER did to taxpayers was soooo 2009. The hot new trend is to repeal TABOR through the courts. Why attempt to circumvent TABOR with accounting gimmicks and legal fictions when you can just rip it straight out of our state constitution? (Along with every other citizens initiative that was approved since the dawn of time). It’s a bit ironic that some of the same folks who love direct democracy when it comes to political elections, somehow disdain “direct democracy” when it comes to a citizen petitioning their government. David Harsanyi points out in The Blaze that proponents of repealing our electoral college because it’s just too damn representative, also favor getting rid of our initiative process because it’s just too damn… democratic? Huh? Rep. Andy Kerr might want to explain that one to us because I still don’t get it.

By now I’m sure you’ve heard about the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of TABOR. Yeah, we laughed out loud too. Since this lawsuit has no chance of going anywhere, it makes me think this charade is all just a PR stunt. What better way for anti-limited government forces to get together and hurl stones at TABOR than to use the media’s giant public platform? Because once you get right down to it, this isn’t about TABOR at all. This is about trying to kill the citizens initiative process – yet again.

Our initiative process has had more attempts on its life than all the mafia dons in the Godfather series combined. Yet this new stunt attempts to undercut not just future attempts at petitioning our government, like the recent SCR-001 and HB 1072 does, it attempts to rescind all previously passed constitutional amendments as well! Because what this lawsuit is trying to prove is that having a petition process where citizens can gather signatures to put initiatives on the ballot is “direct democracy” and not “representative democracy.” In other words, our state constitution is unconstitutional.

I’m not sure the lawsuit’s proponents really understand the far reaching effect that this lawsuit could have. No TABOR. No term limits. No automatic increases in K-12 funding. No campaign finance reform. No ethics in government. No merit selection of judges. No sunshine law in government.

And those are just some of our state constitutional amendments. What about our local, municipal government amendments? Better still, if successful, this suit would invalidate all initiatives in all states. Um. Good luck guys.

Look for II to assist the State in defending TABOR and the initiative.

Last week our resident economist and Health Care Policy director Linda Gorman went to UC-Denver to debate Carol Hedges on our state budget hole. Typical with any debate on state funding and public services, the arguments eventually boiled down to what each person believed ought to be funded and provided by government. In other words, a “what’s the role of government” type debate. I want you to watch the debate because it is important we understand the real arguments on the other side. Too often we write blog posts mowing down caricatures and argue amongst ourselves using strawmen we’ve created of the other side. In the video however, you’ll see Carol Hedges accurately represents what many on her side feel, using arguments she genuinely and sincerely believes in. It’s imperative we be able to reply to these real talking points. Granted, being sincere doesn’t make you right. And as you’ll see, Linda does a superb job of articulating our stance to a room full of people who fundamentally disagree with her (and us). I might be biased, but I think she comes out ahead in the end. And she gets extra brownie points for bringing up our Citizens’ Budget project!

PS – You need to have a movie player like VLC in order to watch the video. Unfortunately the video link we got from the presentation requires VLC (download it here) or a similar movie player. I wish it were a simple .mov file or something

Fiscal Policy Center director Penn Pfiffner is at it again, spreading the good ideas inside our Citizens’ Budget project. This time he’s taking his presentation on the road and sharing it with an audience at the CU-Denver’s Anschutz Medical Campus downtown. We’d love for you to come out and enjoy a fantastic lunch presentation this Thursday, the 7th from noon to 1pm on the CU-Denver Anschutz Medical Campus. And best of all, the event is FREE!! Details can be found on the flyer posted below.

To RSVP online, please go here.

(Click to enlarge)

On Wednesday March 2nd, the Independence Institute held a panel event at the University Club in Denver to discuss the solutions presented in the Citizens’ Budget project. Presenters included project director Penn Pfiffner, Education Center policy analyst Ben DeGrow, Health Care Policy Center director Linda Gorman, and Fiscal Policy Center senior fellow Barry Poulson. Each presented for around 10 to 15 minutes, with a questions and answers period at the end of the event. All presentations, including the introduction, closing remarks, and Q & A have been recorded.

For those of you unable to make it, we’ve compiled the presentations by each speaker in individual podcasts. Feel free to download these podcasts and share them with others who might be interested.

• Introduction from Citizens’ Budget project director Penn Pfiffner: AUDIO here.

• Ben DeGrow on K-12 education spending policy: AUDIO here.

• Linda Gorman on health care policy: AUDIO here.

• Barry Poulson on higher education spending policy and PERA: AUDIO here.

• Closing remarks from Penn Pfiffner and Q & A: AUDIO here.