Colorado voters should take note of the cost of signature gathering for the $1 Billion tax hike. Questions abound.
Commits Kids (the tax-raising committee) spent $566,198.24 with FieldWorks, a “premier ballot initiative professional.” That’s $3.54 a signature (based on 160,000 signatures submitted). Commits could still owe FieldWorks more money.
One outside pro, Katy Atkinson, had said political experts put the current per-signature cost at $1.50 to $1.75. Compared to that estimate of cost, the tax-raising group is spending twice the going rate. Does that mean – for every other part of the campaign – it will be twice as hard to persuade Coloradans to support a billion dollar tax hike?
Or could it just be that we should expect wasteful, wild extravagance from Democrats?
What we should certainly expect is a multi-million dollar campaign. After all, in 2008 teachers gave $8.53 million to Colorado political campaigns. So spending over half a million bucks for signatures is barely an opening bid.
The petition carrier I saw outside the Arvada library wasn’t getting many takers … and she jawed a lot to get a signature. Are gigantic tax hikes unpopular in Colorado? Or do Coloradans doubt that another $1 Billion tax hike will hocus pocus, presto chango produce substantially better-educated kids?