(Quin Hillyer, Liberty Headlines) In a battle raging in Colorado for a full quarter-century now, the conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation last week again weighed in to protect taxpayer rights against leftist challenges.
The left keeps losing these court fights, and it’s driving them crazy.
The case at hand, Kerr v. Hickenlooper, involves Colorado’s groundbreaking 1992 state constitutional amendment known as the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights.
TABOR forbids Colorado state and local governments from raising taxes, or from raising spending beyond a certain formula, without a direct vote of the people of the jurisdiction involved.
The citizens of Colorado adopted TABOR by direct statewide vote, and can modify it (as they have done once, temporarily) or eliminate it by the same democratic process if they so desire.
Tired of their failure to overturn TABOR at the polls, several liberal legislators in 2011 filed suit against the state constitutional provision, arguing – bizarrely – that TABOR runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that each state shall feature “a republican form of government.”
The argument was that any provision that takes away a legislature’s ability to tax thus takes away the chance for the public to act in a small-‘r’ “republican” manner through its elected representatives.
Of course, this ignores the fact that any American legislature acts not instead of, but merely on behalf of, the public….
[Full article, here.]
