July 26, 2011 07:33 PM UTC

Partisan Divide (Surprise!) on TABOR Lawsuit

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• by: Colorado Pols

From The Durango Herald:

Senior legislators declined to get involved Monday in a lawsuit that claims the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights violated the U.S. Constitution.

Speaker of the House Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, wanted the Legislature’s Executive Committee to oppose the lawsuit, but his idea deadlocked on a 3-3 tie, with Democrats opposing him.

Five Democratic lawmakers are plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit, Kerr v. Hickenlooper, which claims that TABOR violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee that every state have a “republican form of government.” TABOR requires all tax increases to pass a popular vote, and the plaintiffs say that makes Colorado more like a direct democracy, rather than a republic, as the framers of the Constitution had envisioned.

McNulty is quoted in the story talking about protecting taxpayers, but he and other Colorado Republicans may find themselves on the wrong side of public opinion these days. Recent national polls have shown that the public is not opposed to tax increases and does not believe that budget problems can be solved only with cuts. Being a champion of TABOR doesn’t hold the same appeal today that it did 10 years ago.