Politics

David Harsanyi: "i don't think you want to move to colorado …"

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I take it all back about wanting to move to Colorado!

Denver Post and Reason.com columnist David Harsanyi counts the many ways that Colorado legislators have gotten around the tax-limiting legislation known as TABOR. A snippet:

This year, the Colorado Dem. legislature lifted the statutory provision on the general fund's annual growth to 6 percent forever—without going to a vote of the people. (They already lifted that cap for a five-year window with the passage of Referendum C in 2005). The Governor is already talking about forming one of his ubiquitous committees to look into overturning TABOR in 2011.

Instead of raising taxes, our imaginative legislature simply kept raising fees (like $250 million on vehicle registration fees, $600 million on hospitals and the elimination of the state sales-tax exemption on cigarettes, to name a few). A property tax "freeze" was also lifted that has the potential to cost taxpayers many $1.7 billion in new taxes.

More on this here. And this isn't even factoring in the likely (though unfortunate) ultimate choking of the Denver Nuggets vs. the Los Angeles Lakers!