The Left has been a hot mess this afternoon about a Colorado Statesman story over job loss projections associated with Rollie Heath’s tax increase. We will be back later today “with the rest of the story” there. But in the meantime, we now resume our regular coverage of Rollie’s errant campaign to raise taxes…
Shortly before Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute filed a complaint against Rollie Heath's (D-Boulder) tax increase initiative for its deceptive signature gathering, he had Rollie Heath on his TV show "The Devil's Advocate" for an interview. During the interview — in a case of delicious irony — Rollie Heath gets caught on the record lying about Prop 103.
The most egregious, and fact checkable, lie that Rollie spews on Caldara’s show is that the General Fund is the exact same now as it was 10 years ago. It's not true.
Sen. Rollie Heath: Jon, the hard truth is the General Fund today is exactly what is was 10 years ago. The General Fund today is $6.8 Billion. The General Fund 10 years ago was $6.8 Billion. So I don't know where you're getting all these numbers, but those are the numbers.
Jon Caldara: I got my numbers from Legislative Counsel.
Sorry, Rollie, but you're wrong.
In the 2001-2002 session the General Fund was $5.61 Billion (PDF – p. 21), not $6.8 Billion as Heath asserts. In growing to $6.8 Billion in 2011-2012 it represents an over 21% growth in the General Fund, while population went up less than 17% between 2000 and 2010, according to the Census.
There is no way to argue semantics on this one. Rollie lied.
The second complete and obvious untruth Rollie spews is that there has been no polling done on the initiative.
Jon Caldara: This doesn't seem to be polling so well out of the box.
Sen. Rollie Heath: There are no polls, Jon.
Wrong again, Rollie.
Public Policy Polling included it in their flawed statewide poll of Colorado a month ago. Despite oversampling Democrats by 8 points, the poll still showed the initiative being defeated 47-45.
We know Rollie doesn’t want to see any facts that contradict his quixotic quest to raise taxes, but facts are stubborn things.
The next time Rollie waxes off about the state budget, reporters might want to check to see if he is just making it up.