Opponents of a ballot measure to allow Colorado to spend already-collected tax dollars are saying Colorado’s budget has increased by 306% since 1990, but they won’t show their math backing up the claim.
“Since 1990, population has grown by 60%, and because of TABOR, government has only been allowed to grow by a very anemic 306%,” Arapahoe-County-area District Attorney George Brauchler told moderator Aaron Harber during a HarberTV debate on the ballot measure.
But proponents of Proposition CC can’t figure out where the 306% figure comes from.
Brauchler is a leader of the No on CC campaign, which did not respond to a request from the Colorado Times Recorder for their accounting.
“We cannot find any scenario in which the budget has grown by 300 percent,” said Bell Policy President Scott Wasserman in response to Brauchler during the HarberTV debate. “And the only way we think we can approximate that is if you don’t adjust for population and inflation, if you use only raw numbers, and you use very large numbers that look at federal funds, cash funds, and general funds. So let’s argue about the facts rather than just making up really big numbers that completely distort the reality of the state budget which on average has only grown about 4% when you adjust for population inflation.”
WATCH Wasserman and Brauchler on HarberTV: