Colorado lawmakers have finished their work for the year, but they’ve besides created some work for state residents: In the final week, the General Assembly voted to put measures on the November ballot that would legalize sports dissipated and for good eliminate tabor remunerator refunds.
They are two big questions, some of which would raise money for the state, and it’s entirely possible that more measures will find their way onto the ballot before fall.
“This is the Colorado we live in,” House Majority Leader Alec Garnett, D-Denver, told reporters. “Voters are conditioned to be asked these tough questions. They get mail-in ballots and they spend their time. We have one of the most thoughtful electorates in the country, and so we’ll see.”
Not on the ballot: Gov. Jared Polis’ proposed vaping tax and a transportation bond measure the legislative assembly passed in 2018 that’s now postponed until 2020.
Here’s more about the two issues that will be on the ballot:
Sports dissipated
House Bill 1327 creates the framework for the casinos in Colorado’s mountain towns to open a limited number of in the flesh sports books to bet on the outcome of games and individual plays as well as create mobile applications that can accept bets from anyplace in the state. The ballot question will ask voters in November whether they want to tax this new industry at 10 percentage of its net return starting in May 2020.
RELATED:Colorado lawmakers passed a bill asking to keep extra tabor money. Here’s how it would work.
“Coloradans should have the option of dissipated on the Nuggets in the playoffs or the Avalanche in the Stanley Cup,” Garnett aforementioned. “I am confident voters will pass this measure.”
The bipartisan bill sailed through some Chambers in the final weeks of session, but it did have a handful of opponents who thought that bets should be capped at $100, racetracks should be allowed to open sports books and Coloradans should vote on adding sports dissipated the way Amendment 50 added craps to casinos in 2008.
Read more about the sports dissipated bill by clicking here.
tabor refunds
The other question lawmakers distinct to ask voters deals with the Taxremunerator’s Bill of Rights, or tabor.
The amendment says governments have to return all tax dollars they collect above an amount set by a formula that gets deliberate each year. Lawmakers are asking voters for permission to basically remove that cap on taxes collected by the state — a move known as “de-Brucing.”
Those remunerator dollars, if voters let lawmakers keep them, would be split evenly among K-12 education, higher education and transportation, according to some other bill lawmakers passed.
“There is a broad, bipartisan coalition behind this measure,” House Speaker KC Becker, D-Boulder, aforementioned. “Colorado’s state budget should be able to grow with the economy so we can invest in our future.”
Only one GOP lawmaker voted for it as the bill worked its way through some Chambers. They tried with success to change the ballot question from a one-time ask to an annual question.
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“It should trouble all Coloradans that the majority would attempt to keep more remunerator money instead of being in fiscal matters responsible when year after year we have seen billion-dollar increases in the budget annually,” Rep. Dave Williams, R-Colorado Springs, aforementioned.
Estimates vary on how much money this ballot question would keep in state coffers. The economic forecast adopted by the lawmakers who write the state’s budget predicts no tabor refunds for the next two fiscal years.
“This is not an answer to all of Colorado’s fiscal problems,” Becker aforementioned. “But it’s a strong step in making sure our fiscal policy supports our way of life.”
Read more about the tabor ballot question by clicking here.