Building a Better Colorado released a report of the townhall meetings that the group held across the state to gauge interest in enacting Democratic ideas a few center to left-leaning ideas. Amazingly, most of the ideas that the people wanted just happened to be the things that Governor Hickenlooper and his merry band of faux independents have been pushing.
Color us shocked.
Here a few of the ideas that BBC claims “everyone” wants. (Of course, we were never invited to any of these townhall meetings – neither was anyone we know. Guess our invitations got lost in the mail, but we digress.)
- Take the hospital provider fee out from under TABOR limits (like the Governor was begging to do)
- Get rid of TABOR (like liberals have been trying to do for, well, since TABOR was enacted)
- Have an open primary that includes independents
Here’s why these are bad ideas.
- The hospital provider fee idea is a violation of TABOR – essentially, it allows the state to spend more money that taxpayers put into the system. It’s pretty black and white.
- If we get rid of TABOR, legislators can spend your money like drunken sailors. As if it’s not bad enough that they spend taxpayer dollars on junk within the current budget, but without TABOR, legislators could raise taxes without your input. In 2013, without TABOR, liberals would have raised your taxes by $1 billion.
- While having a primary as opposed to a caucus process might be a good idea in light of recent disputes, why should Republicans (and Democrats) allow people who refuse to affiliate with a party choose that party’s nominee? That doesn’t make sense at all. If someone who is registered as an independent wants to have a say in the Republican primary, they should affiliate as a Republican and participate. Nobody is stopping them now.
If these are the big ideas to come out of surveying Coloradans throughout the state, we have to ask which Coloradans were surveyed. If all Coloradans believe this, then it’s a miracle that any Republicans get elected statewide at all. But, more seriously, the group claims to have interviewed 2,000 civic leaders and “interested Coloradans”. Seeing as nobody we know received an invitation, how do they know that they had a representative sample of Coloradans across the political spectrum.
Also, how do we know what questions were asked? For example, if someone asked, “do you think K-12 education should get more funding?” you might get more positive responses than if you asked, “do you want to pay more in taxes to fund education?” That question was answered in 2013 through Amendment 66. An overwhelming number of Coloradans said no.
We’re not saying that this process is flawed and is crap, but…actually, that’s exactly what we’re saying. We’d have more faith in the system if BBC was more transparent about who was invited, what their party affiliation is/was, etc. As it stands, this just looks like a government boondoggle to give credence to some of the ideas that Governor Hickenlooper and his cronies have been floating for some time.