Local Taxing Issues

For those of us living in Boulder, five of six local ballot issues this year include tax increases. Given the current financial conditions, we need to look closely at the short-term and long-term benefits of each before casting our ballots.

County Issue 1A's property tax increase was drafted in response to a confluence of three factors. State legislation required the county to spend down its human services rainy day fund; state funding for human services needs has been cut significantly; and, due to the recession, the rainy day has arrived.

Not only is it wise and humane to help people in our community who are feeling the worst pain of the economic downturn, the county is also required to do so by state law. This measure is responsibly crafted: It has a five year sunset, makes good use of public/private partnerships, and directs the commissioners to reduce the new tax as state funding is restored and conditions improve.

County Issue 1B is a new 0.15 percent sales and use tax for open space acquisition. Most people are not fans of higher sales tax, but most in the county like our open space.


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Take Me to your Leader

Everyone is making a big deal out of Scott Brown's recent victory in the Massachusetts senate race, but I can't figure out why.

The Democrats have the presidency and large majorities in both houses of Congress. One party having this level of control is not unheard of, but it certainly is not the norm historically.

The loss of a filibuster-proof majority is significant, but this supermajority only existed for about six months anyway, after Al Franken took his Senate seat in July.

When Obama ran his campaign, he was very clear about his priorities. In fact, much of his plan to help the economy included dealing with the long-term issues of health care, energy and education.

To summarize, Democrats won the presidency and increased their numbers in both houses of Congress after clearly telling us what their plans were. Then they started working on those plans, but found it hard to get agreement on the details. And now a large number of people are ready to dump the Dems before they even get a chance to put their plans in place.

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ABCDEFG Haiti

I'm pretty frazzled these days. As of a couple weeks ago, I'm organizing a fundraiser for the earthquake victims in Haiti.

The event is Feb 19 at the Elks Lodge in Boulder, and you can get all the details and buy tickets here.

The event is a Mardi Gras party, with live music, food, a silent auction, and lots more, all benefiting the American Red Cross Haiti Relief and Development Fund. Tickets are $25. I encourage all my readers in Boulder to attend, as it will be amazing fun and is all for a good cause. If you're in town, you won't want to miss it.

It all started a few days after the earthquake. I was on my bike, and while riding the pieces all just took shape in my head. When I got home I started contacting people I know who either were energetic and could help or who knew people who could help.

When I started I doubted that something this big could be pulled together so quickly. But so many people feel strongly about the cause that it's been pretty easy (although the number of details is making my head spin -- and my head isn't the only one spinning).

The venue was pretty easy, I just had to ask. After the first musician, the rest followed. Now we have more than we can fit into the time, and are having to turn away some great acts that want to support us. We discovered a sound engineer who could do the event. One of my friends took charge of the food and found a gourmet chef who was willing to help. My friend's brother is an amazing graphic designer (see above). Donations for the auction are starting to roll in.

It's mostly about the music, food, and auction, but we're also working on a number of other surprises, just to keep it interesting and relevant. We'll have a slide show from Haiti, and hopefully some good guest speakers who can tell us what's been going on there.

So, if I seem a little loopy these days, cut me a little slack. It's all for a good cause.

Keep on Clunkin'!

The cash for clunkers program may be many things. However, environmentally friendly isn't one of them.

Look at it this way. Suppose you trade in a car that gets 18 MPG for one that gets 28 MPG, and that you driver 12,000 miles per year. Also, assume that you will keep the new car for the typical six years.

For each of those six years, you will be burning 428 gallons of gas instead of 667 gallons. You save 238 gallons per year, or about 35% of the gas you would have burned.

A study by Toyota showed that as much as 28% of the carbon dioxide emissions generated during the life of a car occur during its manufacture and its transport to the dealer. That means that up to 38% more CO2 is generated than the CO2 generated from the burning of fuel during normal operation.

So, you emit 35% less CO2 during operation, but the act of buying a new car results in up to 38% more CO2 just to get you that car.

Ignoring the economic impact, the very best thing you can do is keep driving that car until it doesn't go any more.

The only exception I can think of is if you put lots and lots of miles on your car every year and plan to keep it a long time. Then, it might make more environmental sense to buy a new, more fuel-efficient car, and donate your old car to charity.

But scrapping the old car, as is required by law under this program, is pure waste.

Strange Combinations

Last weekend I rode in the Bike MS fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. It was a tough weekend, covering a total of 175 miles, and I raised over $500.

This got me thinking. What is the relationship between athletic events and charities, and why are they linked? It's not just the MS Society. Lots of bike rides, runs, walks, etc., are tied to fundraising efforts.

But there's nothing inherent with bike riding or any of these other activities that has anything to do with the causes they support. I would have been happy to ride 175 miles without the charity tie in. But they wouldn't let me ride without raising at least $300. I didn't have a problem doing it, as it is a good cause. I know people with MS, and anything I can do to help is worthwhile.

But I wonder about the people I asked for money. Did they contribute because they thought they were supporting me, even though I never even saw the money? Or would they have contributed anyway? Probably not. Something about me riding my bike 175 miles caused people I know to contribute $511 to a good cause, and I'm not sure what it was. I guess I have to go with guilt -- since I made a personal request it made it harder to say "no".

And that's what these charities are counting on: Someone like me to do their job of making people feel guilty enough to contribute money, in exchange for being able to participate in an athletic event.

This is kind of like the strange combination of health insurance and employment. If you think logically about it, it really doesn't make sense for people to get their health care through work.

I guess it probably started with companies trying to attract workers by offering something of value beyond wages. But pretty soon it became expected that they would provide this benefit to their employees. Employers have now gotten trapped in a cycle of increasing health care costs that are not directly related to doing business but which they can't cut back on without big ramifications. And employees are stuck with whatever insurance is (or isn't) provided by their employer, unable to afford their own insurance, and unable to leave a job if they have any significant health issue.

So, just like I have to suck up to everybody I know to guilt them into contributing to a worthy cause so I can participate in a bike ride, my employer has to provide insurance to all its employees so it can participate in the job market.

Kind of makes you want to scrap this system and just start over from scratch.

How Did I Do? Better than the County Clerk!

Every year after the election I compare how I recommended and voted with how all of the ballot issues actually fared at the ballot box. This time, it took three days for the county to finish counting votes in Boulder County, the slowest in the entire state.

What went wrong? Well, apparently the folks doing the counting were paying attention and noticed some anomalies in the optical scanning that was picking up votes that weren't made. It took hand checking each ballot for paper dust and ink smudges, a very slow process. I guess no other jurisdictions were doing the same type of check, so they were able to finish faster. Please, nobody tell them that their vote counts may not be accurate.

Anyway, back to my own report card. First, I got 100% on the City of Boulder issues. That's right, the city voted with my recommendations on all seven of the questions on the ballot. Are that many people reading and agreeing with my blog, or are the people here just that much smarter? Basically, people agreed to continue funding the city at the current level, but not to give council more powers.

At the county level, I got one out of two. I recommended a NO vote on extending the Worthy Cause tax, and it passed with flying colors (which I could have predicted.) Oh, well. I don't think the money from this sales tax will go to any group that doesn't deserve it. I just wish people were trusted to make their own decisions on who to give to.

We did pass, in line with my recommendation, the new clean energy district, a novel way to fund, with no public expense, small renewable energy and efficiency projects. Boulder folks are smart AND generous.

On the state level, I didn't do as well. State voters ignored my recommendations on nine out of fourteen issues.

My successes: Luckily, Amendment 48, which redefines "person" in parts of the state bill of rights went down narrowly. Amendment 52 also failed -- it would have taken money from water projects, pine beetle mitigation, and other priorities that will be getting more urgent with global warming, and spent it on getting more people in their cars to ski resorts. Two out of three of the attempts by business to cripple unions also failed. Less critically, voters agreed with me that 21-year-olds are not old enough to run for state legislature.

Big losses: Referendum O would have protected our state constitution against the continued onslaught of amendments, but failed because too many people were convinced (incorrectly) that it would decrease their ability to write initiatives. Amendment 50 won, giving state casinos the right to not only stay open all night and increase bet limits, but also prevent their own taxes from going up. Two measures that would have helped with education funding went down -- Amendments 58 and 59. Amendment 51, a sales tax to help people with developmental disabilities failed; I guess Coloradans as a whole are not as generous with their sales tax dollars as Boulderites. Amendment 54 passed. Like Amendment 41 in a previous election, it takes a semi-reasonable idea (in this case preventing undue influence by government contractors) and pushes it way beyond reasonable, probably way beyond constitutional.

Mixed blessings: Also failing was Amendment 46, which would have ended affirmative action in the state. No doubt it is still useful, but symbolically it still grates. And Referenda M and N also passed contrary to my recommendation. These remove so-called obsolete clauses from the state constitution, although I wasn't convince in either case that we had the whole story.

Yes, this Insomniac is out of touch with the Colorado voter, and proudly so!

Council Calls for a Do-Over -- Boulder Ballot Questions 2A and 2D

Last year, City Council put a couple of issues on the ballot that didn't pass, and this year they included variations of the same issues. Ballot Question 2B in 2007 asked us to give council members a raise of almost 200%, granting them up to $1,000 per month (based on attending two council meetings per month). At the time, I recommended voting for the change, but the measure did not pass. This year, Ballot Question 2A asks for a similar raise (including annual cost-of-living increases), with the exception that it is not tied to the number of meetings attended.

In principle, I agree with this. Being a council member is about a half-time job. Raising the pay from about $4/hour to about $12/hour makes it easier to recruit from a broader base of candidates. However, there is also the fact that one year after the voters rejected an almost identical measure and during a down economy the council is asking us for a huge increase. I would be much more comfortable with this with one simple change: Make it effective after the next council election.

Ballot Question 2A in 2007 asked us to allow City Council (with a 2/3 majority) to lease public property for up to 40 years (currently limited to a maximum of 20 years). I recommended a no vote on that measure and it failed. This year, Ballot Question 2D resurrects the issue in pretty much the same form.

The argument for this one is that nonprofits that lease space from the city can better borrow money, plan, and raise funds if they have the certainty of a 40 year lease. The examples given are The Dairy Center for the Arts, BMOCA, Chautauqua, the Boulder History Museum, Eco-Cycle, Boulder Day Nursery, Farmer's Market, and Meals on Wheels. However, no specific example has been given of even one of these organizations that has actually suffered because of the current 20 year limitation (although most of them do support this measure).

Meanwhile, paranoids in the community suspect the council is putting this in place as part of a scheme to ram through an unpopular project such as the suggested downtown conference center. I'm not sure this is a valid concern, but then I haven't seen an example of a valid reason for this expansion.

I suppose my bottom line is I'd like to see a better explanation of why this one is necessary. You'd think that after is was rejected a year ago council would have learned the lesson and told us more about why they need this power. But maybe they just figured the odd-year election was an anomaly and they'd have better luck this time.

Oh, and a message to City Council: Changing the question number on the ballot will not confuse us enough to remember that we voted on these same issues just twelve months ago.

Vote NO on Question 2A.
Vote NO on Question 2D.

It's All for a Worthy Cause - Boulder County Issue 1B

Issue 1B is the extension, for an additional ten years, of an existing 0.05% county sales and use tax which would otherwise expire at the end of this year. The proceeds from this tax have funded and will continue to fund capital expenses for a number of local nonprofit agencies. These agencies provide services such as low-cost health care, transitional and affordable housing, childcare, early childhood education, food and clothing assistance, and services for the elderly and people with disabilities.

Some organizations that may be getting money in the next five years for capital projects under this fund: Boulder Day Nursery, OUR Center, Mapleton ECE Center, Clinica Campesina, Mental Health Center, Special Transit, Sister Carmen, and Salud.

Boulder Day Nursery Association exists to provide and promote high quality child care, early learning programs and family support services for low-income families, in environments that respect diverse ethnic, cultural and social traditions.

Outreach United Resource Center, Inc., OUR Center, has a mission to unify community resources to help people in the St. Vrain region meet their individual needs and move toward self-sufficiency.

Mapleton ECE is the proposed conversion of the site of the former Mapleton Elementary School into an early childhood care and education center.

Clinica Campesina is a community health center that is committed to providing affordable, high-quality medical care to low-income, unemployed and uninsured people.

In partnership with others, The Mental Health Center improves quality of life and reduces the burden of illness by providing comprehensive, community-based mental health services for those with the greatest need.

Special Transit is a private, nonprofit organization located in Boulder that promotes independence and self-sufficiency for people with limited mobility by providing caring, customer-focused transportation options.

The Sister Carmen Community Center provides clients with emergency food assistance through their food bank and additional assistance through their various community support services.

Salud Family Health Centers's ultimate goal is to provide quality, comprehensive primary health care services, and to improve the overall health of the communities it serves by reducing barriers to health care.

Each of the above organization is currently slated to get somewhere between $500,000 and $900,000 in the next five years for capital and equipment costs. Every one of these organizations is a great (even worthy) cause helping local people who are in need.

Why would anybody vote against extending a tiny sales tax that helps such worthy causes? Well, here's the deal. These are but eight of the dozens or hundreds of local worthy causes. To earn this money they will have to convince the County Commissioners (or their designees) that their causes are more worthy that anybody else's.

And a penny on a twenty dollar purchase may not be much money, but for the very people that most need these services, and others that may need other help, those pennies will add up.

Shouldn't those people that want to help worthy causes get to decide for themselves which causes are worthy or their contributions?

Vote NO on Issue 1B.

(And be generous with your personal contributions to the local causes of your own choice.)