The Ridge at Fox Run

Library opposes TaxCut 2000

Tax Cut would decimate library district

This article is from the August 26, 2000 issue of the Coloraedo Springs Gazette

Library issues resolution against 21

By Becca Blond/The Gazette

The Pikes Peak Library District board of trustees declared its opposition to Amendment 21 on Friday with a resolution against the ballot initiative.

The two sides of the issue disagree on the interpretation of the
measure.

"The language of Amendment 21 clearly does not require the state of Colorado to replace the lost revenue from state sources," one section of the resolution says.

Amendment 21, nicknamed TaxCut 2000, would cut taxes by $25 per taxpayer annually on property, income, vehicles and utilities.

The cut would increase by $25 per year indefinitely.

"The amendment just does not state there will be a backfill by the state of any local revenue lost," said president of the district's board of trustees Paul Byer.

Byer said the tax cut will mean the library district will lose $3.8 million in revenue the first year.

He said by the fourth year the loss will have increased to $7.4 million.

However, anti-tax activist Douglas Bruce, who wrote Amendment 21, says the plan will have no negative effect on the library district or other local government because the amendment specifically calls for the state replacement of local revenue.

Bruce said he went through the same problems when his Taxpayer Bill of Rights was approved in 1992.

"They claimed after TABOR passed that the libraries were going to close ... that the roads were going to crumble, and we all know they didn't tell the truth," Bruce said.

"They are hoping that people have a short memory and they can trick people into voting against their families and for bigger bureaucracies."

Legislative economists estimate the first-year impact, in 2002, at $234 million - a $65 million cut in state taxes and $169 million from local governments.

That would translate into a $450 tax cut the first year for a married couple who own their home and two vehicles, according to Bruce.

Byer said the district would be forced to close all nine of its regional branches, leaving only the Penrose Public Library downtown and the East Library and Information Center on north Union Boulevard open.

"It would eliminate the investment the citizens of Colorado Springs have made over the past 97 years. We would lose a bit of history," Byer said.