GUEST COLUMN.

In 1992 Colorado voters passed the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, better known as TABOR. It's an amendment to the state constitution that gave residents unprecedented authority over revenue at every level of government. If the state, a city, a county or a school district wants a new tax or a higher rate, it has to ask the voters. In effect, TABOR made residents the setters of tax policy.

With that kind of power, you would hope voters would pay close attention to the cost of services and the state's finances. But they don't. Colorado voters are like most of us. We follow news about our schools, cities, counties and state, but rarely closely enough to really understand what we are voting on.

That's a problem, and it isn't unique to Colorado. According to the Tax Policy Center, 31 states had some kind of tax and expenditure limit as of 2020, and many keep adding limits on local governments. In 2025, Ohio restricted local property tax increases and capped revenue growth. This year Iowa capped city and county property tax revenue growth at 2%.

In my view, the spread of these limits is, at least in part, a vote of no confidence. Government is increasingly being put on a leash, by voters and by state legislatures. Local leaders feel it. For four years running, they have named a breakdown of trust as their top challenge in a biennial survey by Government Leadership Solutions, Envisio and others.

Taxes were the original American public engagement issue. "No taxation without representation" was, after all, a demand for a seat at the table. But voting is a blunt instrument. Vote no, and it's your dough. Vote yes, and government gets more money. Neither vote says which services matter, what should be cut or what new money should buy. Populism is good at getting people involved. It is usually not so good at governing.

This fall Colorado voters will decide three big tax questions: Amendment 87, a graduated income tax; Proposition 136, which would lock in the current 4.4% rate; and Proposition NN, which would let the state keep some TABOR refunds for schools and children. They come as the state projects a General Fund gap of roughly $1.6 billion for 2027-28.

A new effort called Colorado Tradeoffs, launched in mid-September 2026, widens the conversation beyond "more" versus "less" and, for a few minutes, invites voters to take seriously their role as setters of tax policy. It's a short online simulation built by the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs, the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) and my company, Weigh In. We consulted with Joint Budget Committee and Legislative Council staff, but the project is independent. The state didn't produce it and hasn't endorsed it.

Since 2008 I've been involved with building more than 200 budget simulations for more than 150 governments. Colorado Tradeoffs let me put what I've learned to work.

·        Don't flood people with choices and data. The whole budget is too much for anyone who doesn't do this for a living. We picked ten areas big enough to matter and familiar enough that people could weigh them.

·        Neither path is free. Everyone starts with the gap. If you vote for new revenue, you decide where it goes. If you vote against it, you have to say what you'd cut. Every option is tied to a service and what it costs, and at the end people see how their choices compare with everyone else's.

·        Make it hard. We held ourselves to two tests. You had to be able to close the gap with cuts alone, and new revenue had to have somewhere real to go. If one side is easy, it stops being meaningful public engagement.

So far, the results are encouraging. Over 8,600 people opened the simulation and 435 finished a budget, with a median time of about six and a half minutes. Given a real limit, most people picked the middle options rather than the extremes, and nearly two-thirds paid to rebuild the state's reserve to the level the law requires. One participant wrote, "I had to balance the budget, otherwise I believe funding for education should increase." Those are the words of someone understanding what it means to govern.

Perhaps most important, people were asked to answer the ballot questions twice, once at the start and again after working through the budget. Getting an understanding of the budgetary impact made a difference. As of October 20, 51 changed at least one answer after seeing what their vote meant.

For those of us who work in and with local government, the lesson is to start building a relationship with taxpayers before the hot-button issues arrive. Marriage counselors will tell you that money conversations are among the hardest for any couple, and that handled badly they can end a marriage. The couples who make it have those conversations early. The same is true for taxes and spending.

It’s important for government leaders to identify the most important financial challenges, on both the revenue and spending sides. Describe them in a way a regular person can understand and let residents wrestle with them alongside you. No one will get everything they want. But research on procedural justice shows that when people see a process as fair, they are more likely to accept the outcome, even when it isn't what they wanted.

Colorado voters will keep setting tax policy, and more voters across the country are joining them. The question for the rest of us is whether we help them do it well. That's public engagement for doing hard things, and it's how trust gets built.

The contents of this Guest Column are those of the author, and not necessarily Barrett and Greene, Inc

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