It has become conventional wisdom in certain spaces that Colorado voters do not like raising taxes – maybe excepting certain sin taxes. But the 2024 General Election showed that it’s past time to retire that thinking. Across communities in Colorado, voters favored increased spending, increased taxes, and exempting local tax revenue from TABOR. The caveat is that voters scrutinized where the increased revenue would go and made determinations based on how it lined up with their own priorities. While there were exceptions, the results of tax and spend measures mostly showed Colorado is ready to move toward funding community priorities like education, transportation, child care, health care, and other crucial programs.

Meanwhile, the results of statewide initiatives were more mixed when it came to economic mobility and state budgeting. Voters rejected an attempt to move closer to public funding for private education by opposing Amendment 80. That initiative could have created significant budget problems within our public education system. However, voters approved Propositions 128 and 130 which will make major changes to our criminal justice system that will put greater pressure on our statewide budget at a time when the state is already struggling to meet the needs of Coloradans.

Moving Past TABOR

As we detailed in our pre-election piece on local elections, there were many communities looking to “debruce” their budget by eliminating the cap on spending to which every government is subject. The results show a cross-partisan coalition of voters ready to jettison some of the more onerous parts of TABOR and invest money in their communities. 

• Arapahoe and Jefferson counties joined 51 other Colorado counties in removing the cap on spending, allowing those counties to spend all of their tax revenue on housing, infrastructure, wildfire mitigation, and other public services.
• The cities of Loveland and Lakewood both permanently eliminated their cities’ TABOR caps after temporarily suspending the cap multiple times in previous elections. This will allow these cities to spend more money to improve their streets and sidewalks and their parks and open spaces.
• South Adams Water District passed their own debrucing measure so that it can receive state grants to improve water safety.

While Mesa County was the only place to reject a debrucing measure in Colorado, it is important to know that there were more votes in favor of eliminating the TABOR cap in Mesa County than there were for any Democrat who ran in the county, showing the cross-ideological salience of these issues.

Increasing Taxes for Public Goods

Throughout Colorado, communities were asked whether to raise taxes for housing, schools, child care, infrastructure, parks, and other public priorities. Many of these measures passed – many of them with significant majorities. This proves that Coloradans are not necessarily anti-tax, nor are they universally wary of new taxes. Rather, it shows that Coloradans are particular about where their money goes and need to understand how it works. 

Statewide Tax Increases

To further illustrate this point, Coloradans actually passed a new statewide tax at the ballot, approving Proposition KK. This initiative imposes a new 6.5 percent excise tax on firearms, firearm parts, and ammunition to fill a statewide gap in funding for crime victim services, veterans’ mental health, and school safety. Colorado, like other states, had been relying on federal funding for those needs, but that money has been decreasing and is projected to further decrease in the coming years. Coloradans clearly understood the need that was present and voted to raise revenue for that purpose.

Local Lodging Tax Increases

Many counties and cities were asked to increase or reallocate their lodging taxes for the purposes of housing, child care, and other impacts from tourism. This stems from a 2022 law passed by the state legislature allowing more uses for local lodging taxes. Lodging taxes are those levied on hotels, motels, and other places for short-term stays.

• Grand County voters increased their lodging tax by over $250,000 starting next year. Those funds will go toward more housing development and subsidies for child care in their county.
• The city of Montrose increased its lodging tax from 0.9 percent to 6 percent – an increase of $1.5 million in the first year – to fund child care, affordable housing, and street improvements in that city.
• Voters in La Plata County in Southwest Colorado decided to reallocate a portion of their lodging tax to go to housing and child care.
• Very conservative Kiowa County even increased its lodging tax, with the money going to general operations in that county.

In a similar category, the cities of Minturn and Mt. Crested Butte increased their taxes on short-term rentals for housing and child care, helping countless families and residents in their towns.

Other Tax Increases

There were many other tax increases on ballots in Colorado, with sales and use tax increases and property tax increases even passing.

• While the city of Denver rejected a significant sales tax increase for affordable housing projects, residents of the capital city did pass a sales tax increase to help Denver Health meet the growing needs of the region and keep the hospital’s doors open.
• Pitkin County voters agreed to raise their mill levies and increase property taxes to fund affordable housing, a critical need for many counties in the mountains and resort communities.
• The city of Avon in Eagle County voted to raise $4 million through an increase in the use tax on construction materials to fund community housing.
• Glenwood Springs in Garfield County narrowly raised its sales and use tax rate to fund street improvements and utility lines across the city.

Public School Funding Had a Good Election

Many school districts had some kind of funding measure on local ballots. In fact, there were successful asks of voters in many places that hadn’t passed any kind of tax increase for schools in many decades – sometimes even never.

• In Montezuma County, the Montezuma Cortez School District had never increased its mills for schools, but this year voters passed one.
• In Harrison School District 2, which is in Colorado Springs, voters passed the first-ever tax increase for the district.
• The Holyoke School District, which is based in Phillips County near Nebraska, passed its first tax increase in more than two decades this election.

Poudre School District and Cherry Creek School District also passed tax increases for schools and teachers. Many other school districts passed bond packages worth more than $500 million, which are not tax increases, but do increase debt and will do much good for their schools and teachers.

In statewide school news, Coloradans rejected an attempt to lay the groundwork for public funding of private schools. In Colorado, Amendment 80 would have enshrined school choice in our state constitution – a likely step toward public funding for private schools. This constitutional amendment could have paved the way for the courts to allow state money to be diverted away from our public school system toward private and religious schools, and could have greatly reduced our ability to properly fund our education system. Fortunately, Colorado voters decisively rejected this harmful amendment. Voters in Nebraska and Kentucky – states that shifted right in many ways during this election – also rejected these potentially destructive ideas, keeping public money for public education.

Voters Add to State Budget Woes in the Name of Public Safety

Not all votes were beneficial for the state of Colorado. With recent projections showing that the state legislature will need to balance the budget to eliminate a projected $921 million deficit, the last thing the state needed was more mandated funding without a new revenue stream. But Proposition 130, which forces the legislature to move $350 million in General Fund revenue to pay for local efforts to recruit and retain police officers, narrowly passed at the ballot. While we can broadly appreciate the concerns many are feeling about safety in our communities, this measure took the unprecedented step of requiring the state to prioritize funding for functions that have almost exclusively been funded by city and county governments. This means that Colorado is now staring down a projected $1.27 billion deficit this coming budget year. This could lead to massive cuts to vital programs that help millions of Coloradans. This is on top of the long-term costs that will come from the passage of Proposition 128 – an initiative that increases the amount of prison time certain prisoners will need to serve before being eligible for parole. That measure will likely lead to significantly more spending on corrections officers, prison beds, and even the building of new prisons in the future to accommodate the increased length in prison sentences.

Conclusion

In Colorado, voters mostly understood the need to improve funding for key community programs. Lifting outdated revenue caps, increasing taxes for local services, and supporting schools were widely popular throughout the state. It is clear that voters understand that our communities have inadequate funding for many important resident priorities, and that the best way to fix those funding issues is to increase revenue. While TABOR makes it difficult to raise taxes on the wealthy without harming those just getting by – TABOR prohibits a graduated income tax, a local income tax, real estate transfer taxes, and puts many obstacles in the way of spending the revenue that government collects – Coloradans understand that there are needs that can be addressed. While not everything in Colorado moved toward greater economic mobility, it is heartening to see Colorado progressing. But it is clear that more work needs to be done to truly meet existing needs.