This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
Colorado Democrats have been trying for more than 30 years to dismantle the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. But seven consecutive years into their universal control of state government, the party has barely made a dent in the conservative fiscal policy, a relic of a different political universe.
Voters have twice rejected attempts to eliminate or raise TABOR’s cap on government growth and spending. Democrats in the legislature have even resorted to using the policy to carry out their social safety net and electoral agendas.
But now, with the state facing an increasingly tight financial outlook and federal policy changes threatening to make things exponentially worse, Democrats’ interest in trying to do something lasting about TABOR is again gaining traction.
The party just can’t agree on which direction to take the momentum.
Ask voters to eliminate the cap? Use some of the money in excess of TABOR’s revenue limits to fund specific programs and services? Pursue a graduated income tax code? Try to invalidate the 1992 constitutional amendment altogether?
They’re all on the table. But, depending on whom you ask, they’re not all politically viable options.
The situation underscores just how intertwined TABOR, which no other state has copied, is with government finances in Colorado. In addition to capping governmental growth and spending, TABOR requires voter approval for all tax increases.
The lack of direction also highlights how Democrats have struggled to gauge voters’ temperature on the policy, which polling shows is broadly popular.
“You have all these different theories of the right policy to put in place to try to help address the harms of TABOR,” said Chris deGruy Kennedy, a former state representative who now leads the Bell Policy Center, a liberal fiscal policy nonprofit. “You also have all these different beliefs about the politics of what it takes to be successful in this effort. The problems that TABOR has created for our state, and the inequities that TABOR has locked into our tax system, have been stuck so long that people really have a hard time uniting around a solution.”
A TABOR conversation at the Capitol this year
What happened in the Colorado legislature was emblematic of the disagreements about TABOR within the Democratic Party.
A pair of representatives introduced a resolution that would have directed the legislature’s lawyers to file a lawsuit aimed at invalidating TABOR. The resolution argued that TABOR violates Colorado’s ability to operate a republican form of government and therefore runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution. (A similar lawsuit brought by a group of active and former elected officials, as well as some local governments, failed after about a decade of litigation.)
The measure cleared its first committee, but it was never brought up for a vote before the full House, which meant the resolution died on the Capitol calendar.
The resolution likely had the votes to pass the House, but the holdup was the Senate — the legislature’s more moderate chamber. Democratic senators who represent swing districts didn’t want to weigh in. They were worried about the political consequences.
During a caucus meeting, some Democrats in the Senate urged their colleagues to take up the resolution.
“People can vote how they want on it,” said state Sen. Cathy Kipp, D-Fort Collins. “I think it’s really important.”
State Sen. Tony Exum, a Colorado Springs Democrat who represents a swing district, fired back: “You’re in a safe seat.”
“TABOR is killing us,” Kipp replied.
House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat, told The Colorado Sun earlier this month that she thinks any changes to TABOR need to be made through a vote of the people.
“One of the comments I heard from members when the TABOR resolution was moving through the system is ‘TABOR was enshrined by the public through a vote, those are the people who should have a vote on any changes that come next,’” she said at The Sun’s post-legislative-session event on May 15. “I really honor that and believe that we do need for it to be more than just a legislative solution.”
McCluskie called the resolution “a really powerful conversation starter,” but said the future of TABOR is "ultimately a public decision.” She also said the TABOR debate is really just the beginning.
"I don't think it's the end of what folks are going to hear about TABOR,” she said, declining to share more about what’s on the table.
State Rep. Sean Camacho, a Denver Democrat and one of the lead sponsors of the failed TABOR lawsuit resolution, sees things differently. The outcome of the case may not be as simple as win-lose. It could result in parts of TABOR being struck down and others being upheld.
Camacho also pointed out how not everything passed by voters passes legal muster. There have been several examples in Colorado history of ballot measures approved by the electorate being overturned in court. For instance, Amendment 2, which prohibited Colorado from passing laws protecting gay and lebsian people from discrimination based on their sexual orientation, was overturned.
“There’s a difference between popularity and legality,” he said. “Let’s ask the courts to give us direction.”
Camacho said he plans to bring the lawsuit resolution back in 2026.
The governor said at The Sun’s post-legislative-session event that he likes the idea of putting a measure on the ballot that would ask voters to increase the TABOR cap by a set amount and let the state use the money for specific purposes, like schools and health care. A measure doing just that was almost debated at the Capitol this year.
That approach would be similar to Referendum C, which the legislature placed on the ballot in 2005 and was backed by then-Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican. It passed, creating a five-year lifting of the cap and then resetting the cap at a higher level than it was before the measure was approved.
Polis said voters have clearly and repeatedly rejected proposals to eliminate the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights cap on government growth and spending, and so he wouldn’t support any attempt to try that again. Polis said he favors making a “discrete ask” to voters to increase the cap for specific purposes, such as education, housing and health care.
“If I was designing something to win, I would say, ‘Why don't we do $100 million for teacher salaries?’” he said.
What’s coming down the pike
A bill that would have followed Polis’ formula was almost introduced in the legislature this year.
It would have asked voters in November to let the state keep 10% of TABOR refunds to pay for rural hospitals and transportation projects.
State Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat and chair of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, was behind the proposal. He said the aim was to make sure the state doesn’t have to cut more services to balance the budget.
“This legislation could potentially be part of that answer,” Bridges said, vowing to bring up the proposal in 2026.
The bill wasn’t introduced at the Capitol this year because the idea came together too late in the 2025 legislative session. Part of the delay was the competing TABOR measures being considered by Democrats, Bridges said.
Senate President James Coleman, a Denver Democrat, thinks his party needs to do a better job of educating people across the state about how TABOR works and its effect on state finances.
“What we have to do is a better job of an awareness campaign about our current financial situation in the state of Colorado,” he said.
DeGruy Kennedy said the Bell Policy Center is partnering with other like-minded organizations to try to put a measure on the 2026 ballot that would amend the state constitution to impose a graduated income tax code. Sometimes also called a progressive tax structure, it would increase the income tax rate for higher earners and decrease the rate for lower earners.
“I think it's the right policy answer,” deGruy Kennedy said. “It is very straightforward.”
DeGruy Kennedy said the other options Democrats have been talking about pursuing around TABOR — increasing or eliminating the cap or doing away with the amendment altogether — are not politically expedient and don’t solve what he thinks are the inequitable parts of the state’s tax code.
“What has been especially difficult here is this is not an issue where our governor wants to lead,” deGruy Kennedy said. “When you don't have the person in that office saying ‘this is the thing we’re going to do’” it leaves a power vacuum.
When Polis did try to lead on changing TABOR, he was unsuccessful. Proposition CC, which would have eliminated the cap, was rejected by voters in 2019. In 2023, voters rejected Proposition HH, which would have expanded the cap as part of a property tax overhaul. CC failed by 11 percentage points while HH went down by 18 points.
“The one moment that he really did try to lead it was with HH — and it was a colossal failure,” Kennedy said, pointing to how it confused voters.
Polis, however, is approaching lame-duck status. He will only be governor for one more legislative session before his term ends in early 2027.
His likely predecessors have TABOR in their sights.
“We are long overdue (for) a conversation in Colorado about how our state government is funded,” said U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat running for governor in 2026.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, another Democrat running for governor, said changing the TABOR cap is his preferred way to address how TABOR affects the funding of state programs and services.
Count Republicans out
Republicans, who have complained about the state’s current level of spending within TABOR’s limits, will certainly fight any attempts to roll back the state’s fiscal constraints.
“I would say it's a nonstarter for Republicans,” state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican and member of the Joint Budget Committee, said at The Sun’s post-session event.
Kirkmeyer said the difference between Referendum C in 2005 and the budget situation now is that Owens built major coalitions of support for the measure in response to economic downturns. At the time, the TABOR cap would shrink during recessions — a different problem than the state faces now, which is a cap that grows too slowly to keep up with the demands of programs like Medicaid.
Now, Republicans see the state’s budget issues as the result of Democrats at the Capitol overspending, not TABOR.
But the reality is Republicans are in the minority in the House and Senate. They have the numbers to stop the legislature from referring a constitutional amendment to voters, which takes a supermajority in both chambers. But they can’t halt something like Bridges’ proposal, which just needs a simple majority to be placed on the ballot.
Conservative fiscal activists have been focused in recent years on slashing the state’s income tax rate — and they’ve had some success. They’ve also led successful opposition campaigns to Propositions CC and HH.
Now they’re attempting to limit the legislature’s ability to impose fees, which have been used as a workaround to TABOR’s voter-approval requirement for tax increases. (Fee revenue can only be spent on government services with a direct connection to the charge, whereas tax dollars can be spent more broadly.)
State Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who sits on the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, thinks there is room for bipartisan work on TABOR. Just maybe not with Republicans at the Capitol.
“There are a lot of options on the table for addressing TABOR,” she said at the event. “I think that there are a variety of things that could garner bipartisan support, maybe not under the dome, but perhaps the voting public.”
Colorado Capitol Alliance
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
