March 24, 2004

Amended TaBOR

For those of you who are interested, I said in my last TaBOR post that the bill (SJR88) had been amended. The bill was re-written with a few changes in it (this was done by Senator Bryson, and not another lawmaker seeking to kill or harm the bill).

If you like reading bills, here is a PDF of the amended text. It's 2.3MB in size (I apologize for the poor quality...I had to scan it in).

The original bill text can be seen here.

I haven't had much time to go delve off into the differences, but here's a quick and dirty rundown on the changes that stand out to me...

-The TABOR Cap definition was changed...it says that the TABOR Cap "means the total state tax revenue expenditures for the fiscal year in which this amendment is ratified plus the estimated rate of growth of the state's ecomony, as defined by law, for each fiscal year following ratification of this amendment plus the amount of any duly authorized TABOR cap exceptions." (exceptions being tax referendums or overriding the cap with a 2/3 vote of the General Assembly)

The original definition was that the TABOR cap would be the rate of household-consumer inflation for the prior year, plus the net percentage increase in population for the prior year along with any exceptions in the previous year. (ie...inflation plus population)

It seems to tie the TaBOR cap to the growth (or lack of growth) of the state ecomony instead of inflation plus population .

-I see is that it provides for the TABOR cap to be exceeded if the General Assembly has a 2/3 majority vote to override it (or by a majority of voters participating in a statewide referendum) without it being declared an emergency (the original version said that such a vote was considered an emergency). It also took out the binding text that said no such declaration could be made if it is in relation to "revenue shortfalls or salary or benefit increases for educational personnel or public employees."

-There was an increase in the size of the TABOR Reserve Fund in relation to the estimated state tax revenue appropriations from 5 to 7 percent.

-One other small change I noticed was there was an exception to taxes being voted on by the population as long as the tax was revenue neutral to what the state takes in.

-There was additional text at the end of the bill which would change the wording in the state constitution in relation to shared costs with city and county governments.

Replacing the following text:

No law of general application shall impose increased expenditure requirements on cities or counties unless the General Assembly shall provide the state share in the cost.

...with this:

No law of general application shall impose increased expenditure requirements on cities or counties unless, within such law, the General Assembly provides that the state will share in the cost and specifies the portion of the state share.

Again, that's just a quick and dirty version of the differences between the original TaBOR bill and the newly amended one. There are several other things that are different throughout, but nothing else that major. Of course, I'm sure that I missed something. Bill Hobbs will probably have something on this later on as well.

Comments:

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Already do.

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at March 24, 2004 03:30 PM

And the changes aren't all good.

Posted by: Bill Hobbs at March 24, 2004 03:34 PM