Opinion: Sorting out the 2020 ballot issues

A number of people have asked me about this year’s bumper crop of ballot measures. Here’s my brief take.

The big money ones are Amendment B, repealing the Gallagher Amendment; Proposition 116, reducing the state income tax; and Proposition 117, requiring voter approval for certain new state enterprises.

The argument for repealing Gallagher started with some small districts that are predominantly residential and where property values have not risen like in the majority of the state. So Gallagher’s mechanism, which lowers residential property taxes to keep a statewide balance between residential and commercial taxes, has cut into their revenues.

But eliminating Gallagher will just raise everyone else’s residential property taxes even faster. The solution needs to be focused on solving the small districts’ problems, not just throwing out what has worked so well in keeping residential and commercial taxes in balance.

Prop 117 requires voter approval for many fee-funded “enterprises.” This would make it much harder to impose development impact fees, which could equitably fund our $1 billion per year transportation capital deficit and provide hundreds of millions of dollars to build the new schools needed because of Colorado’s rapid growth.

Prop 116’s reduction of state income taxes will cut into already strained budgets, and so will make things even more difficult, and our tax rates are nowhere near as high as in some states. I’m voting “no” on all three.

Proposition 113, dealing with the national popular vote, is really important. If passed by enough states, it will ensure that the presidential candidate who gets the most votes wins.

What a notion! It would eliminate the current campaign focus on “swing states,” where all the state’s Electoral College votes go to the candidate who gets a bare majority, and everyone else’s votes become essentially irrelevant.

It would also end the gross unfairness of, for example in 2016, Wyoming voters having well over three times the clout of Colorado voters, even thought right next door. The Electoral College counts the number of representatives plus senators, so is not proportional to population (or vote count). In contrast, Amendment 76, dealing with the citizen qualification of voters, seems gratuitous, since the state already manages voting quite well, IMO.

Amendment C, on the conduct of charitable gaming, and Amendment 77, requiring local approval of betting limits, are both bad bets. Gambling provides what the famous behaviorist B.F. Skinner called intermittent reinforcement, an effective way to train animals (including humans) to repeat a behavior over and over again hoping for their reward.

Letting paid staff be involved in involved in running local charitable gaming makes these nonprofits seem more like businesses. Black Hawk, Central City, and Cripple Creek are already big enough operations, and don’t need increased betting limits, which will just cause people to lose money even faster.

Proposition EE, adding taxes on nicotine products, seems OK, though I’d prefer if the revenues were focused just on tobacco education and addiction. Proposition 118, the paid family leave and medical leave insurance program, is an important concept. The Legislature can fix problems that may emerge since this is statutory, not constitutional.

Proposition 114, the reintroduction of gray wolves, appeals to the wilderness lover in me. Proposition 115, prohibiting abortion after 22 weeks, would criminalize doctors for doing what a woman can legally choose.

Boulder’s ballot measures are all flawed and should be rejected, with the exception of 2F, which would expand the arts commission to seven members. 2B, No Evictions Without Representation, still fails to provide proper oversight on how much attorney time tenants can demand. Money will be wasted in court that would be better spent on rental assistance.

2E, direct election of the mayor, is still fundamentally unworkable, and ranked choice voting can lead to extremes rather than consensus.

2C, the public service company franchise, in spite of all the hype around its supposed benefits, guarantees nothing that would actually improve our carbon footprint. It’s basically an agreement to talk. Worse, it goes into effect Jan. 1 as written, and so forces abandonment of much of the city’s legal work on municipalization.

But it only binds Xcel to whatever version the Public Utilities Commission finally approves, so there may be an expensive legal battle over the differences. And mandatory Boulder charter requirements appear to have been completely ignored.

2D, repurposing the utility occupation tax, is hypocritical: The City Council majority said that that COVID-19 revenue losses make pursuing municipalization too costly, yet here they are asking for more tax money to pay for programs that any good municipal utility would be doing as standard procedures.

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