BANGOR (AP) – A group of Colorado business leaders cautioned their counterparts in Maine against supporting a Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which will be on the November referendum ballot. A letter sent this week to several chambers of commerce and trade organizations in Maine from a group called Concerned Colorado Business Leaders warns of unintended consequences.
“TABOR is a proven failure in Colorado. We strongly encourage that you do not repeat Colorado’s mistake,” said the letter signed by the Colorado Hotel and Lodging Association, Denver Downtown Partnership and Denver METRO Chamber of Commerce, among others.
The group wants to educate Mainers before they vote this November on the so-called TABOR proposal that limits state and local government spending to the rate of inflation plus population growth. It also requires voter approval for all tax and fee increases.
Colorado is the only state to adopt the TABOR proposal. But in 2005 Colorado voters suspended it for five years when faced with declining revenues and the prospect of more than $400 million in cuts to state programs.
“We don’t have a dog in your fight,” said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce. “We just want to say that while the message might sound sweet at first, the consequences – many of them unintended – are not.”
Clark said the spending limits actually hurt the Colorado business climate by hindering investment in education and transportation. Clark said his group’s effort is not limited to Maine, and has contacted business leaders in Michigan and Oregon, where voters will consider similar spending initiatives this November.
Maine tax activist Mary Adams, who sees TABOR as the antidote to Maine’s high taxes, put little stock in the letter from the Colorado business leaders.
She has her own allies in Colorado including Republican Gov. Bill Owens and former Senate President John Andrews, who’ve visited Maine.
“We are in a drastic economic situation and TABOR is our solution… It’s one thing for them to sit over there with a very good economic situation and say, Don’t do it,”‘ Adams said. “But when you’re in the shape we’re in, you’d better do it.”
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