Amendment 21: Death to Services!

Constitutions are an amazing development of the modern representative democracy. They frame the fundamental laws by which we choose to live, enumerate our most basic rights as citizens, and dictate the will of the citizenry to our governments, setting limits of rule and power and telling them how exactly we wish to be governed. Constitutions are not sacrosanct; they may be amended by the people as the needs and dictates of the people change. That is their special utility.

Yet some constitutions seem more sacred than others. The United Sates Constitution has been amended a mere twenty-seven times since its ratification in 1788, most recently in 1992 when an amendment introduced by James Madison in 1789 was finally ratified by the required three-fourths of the states. I suppose there is yet hope for the ERA.

The Colorado Constitution, on the other hand, has been amended nineteen times since it was ratified in 1876, about half again as often as the U.S. Constitution gets amended. Many of those amendments have been less than, well... constitutional. The current crop coming before the voters provides no exceptions. Putting one’s personal or professional opinions about marijuana use aside, for example, is there a reason to include a proposed medical use exemption in the Constitution? On November 7, we face six proposed amendments, nearly all of which are designed to tackle issues that might better be labeled legislative, regulatory, or statutory, not constitutional. I support some of the ideas behind some of the proposed amendments, but I may have a difficult time voting YES for any of them simply because I don’t believe they belong in the Constitution.

But I won’t vote NO for all of the proposed amendments out of principle. I’ll vote NO on at least one because it will cause serious and perhaps irreparable harm to both the community and state in which I reside. If you’ve been paying attention to the media, you’ve probably guessed that I’m talking about Amendment 21.

I know little about Amendment 21’s driving force, Douglas Bruce, but his words and actions have fired my imagination. In his obvious hatred of taxation, he has for no clear or justifiable reason proposed a constitutional amendment that would eliminate almost all essential rural services within five years. This statement is not hyperbole. The math speaks for itself.

Among other things, the two convoluted sentences that make up Bruce’s addition to his earlier TABOR amendment would cut each taxpayer’s taxes by $25 per year, per tax bill, per taxing agency in perpetuity. Setting aside for simplicity’s sake yearly adjustments for inflation, that means that if a taxpayer under the current schedule were to pay $100 to the Mesa County Public Library District in 2000, under the Bruce plan that taxpayer would only pay $75. In 2001 the tax bill would be $50, in 2002 it would be $25, and in 2003 the bill would be $0. That’s it. No more library. But in reality, the doors will have likely closed due to lack of staff and resources at least two years before that.

So what? You don’t use the library? Fine. How about the fire department, how about the schools, how about Ute Water? Thirty-eight different taxing agencies in Mesa County provide us all with essential services, and all thirty-eight would lose most or all of their property tax revenues within five years if Amendment 21 passes.

The Colorado State Fire Chiefs’ Association knows the upshot, and they know it will be disastrous. On the Association’s web site (www.coloradofirechiefs.org), they have provided an exhaustive table detailing the damage that would be done to nearly every fire protection district in the state.

Here are some frightening numbers: The Clifton Fire Protection District will lose 54.7 percent of its revenue from property taxes in the first year. By the fifth year, the district will have lost 85.4 percent of that revenue. In raw dollars, that’s $427,591 less than the projected non-Bruce revenue of $500,705. How many fires can the district put out with only $73,114 to pay salaries, buy and maintain equipment, conduct training, pay for fuel, and pay health insurance?

The numbers are equally frightening throughout Mesa County and the state. The Grand Junction Rural Fire Protection District would lose 80.3 percent of its property tax revenue by the fifth year, the Lower Valley Fire Protection District (Fruita) would lose 75.7 percent by the same year, and the Palisade Rural Fire Protection District would fare a bit better with a 25.4 percent loss, but Orchard Mesa would be hit hard: The East Orchard Mesa Fire Protection District would lose 94.3 percent of its property tax revenue by the fifth year, and the Central Orchard Mesa Fire Protection District would suffer a 94.8 percent loss.

It’s not just fire departments that will suffer. Tom Brown, Ph.D., made a study for the Colorado Department of Local Affairs which details the damage that would be levied upon nearly every one of Colorado’s 1,600 special districts. The report is broken down by county and can be viewed on the Web at www.dola.state.co.us/tech/amendment21/BrownStudy.htm. Revenue losses are projected over five years for all thirty-eight of Mesa County’s special districts, and no district escapes double-digit losses after the third year. Water and sewer districts are particularly hard hit, but at least they can raise rates (although how rate increases translate to taxpayer savings is a bit of a mystery). I know many advocates of small government and privatization encourage the growth of private for-profit schools, but does Bruce really expect we should turn back the clock to the eighteenth century and re-establish private for-profit fire brigades? The thirty-eight special districts in Mesa County facing the budget axe provide services as varied and essential as schools, libraries, cemeteries, irrigation, drainage, sanitation, sewage, water, hospitals, and mosquito control. The Brown study should be examined thoroughly by all voters before November 7.

Bruce has claimed the state would pick up the difference and fill in the revenue gap created by Amendment 21. But how? The original TABOR Amendment prohibits the state from using any surplus revenue over a projected six percent growth per annum without voter approval, and just to eliminate any doubt, Bruce made sure that restriction was made explicit again in the text of Amendment 21.

Douglas Bruce has drafted an amendment supposedly designed to limit Big Government spending (and thus its power) by limiting its income, but when we noticed the burden falls more heavily on the shoulders of small government, he tried to tell us all the state would step in to save the day. Why create a law that destroys services and reduces local control while creating the potential for more state control? We shouldn’t have to worry about the last part of that scenario, however: The State Legislative Council, the Senate/House committee that writes the “Blue Book” we all received in the mail this past week, has stated formally that there is no provision or requirement for the state to pick up the tab. If Amendment 21 passes, we’re on our own.

Copyright © 2002, Steve & Denise Hight