FISCAL - Publications - Independence Institute

Who Pays Colorado Taxes?0
- September 16, 2015
Linda Gorman writes about the 38 percent increase in Colorado state spending.
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2015 Thumbnail Guide to Colorado’s Spending Problem 0
- July 29, 2015
IB-D-2015 (July 2015) Author: Linda Gorman PDF of full Issue Backgrounder Introduction: Colorado state government has a spending problem. Between FY 1999-00 and FY 2013-14, its inflation-adjusted expenditures rose by 38 percent.1 Its inflation-adjusted revenues rose by just 34 percent. Although Colorado’s working age population grew over the period, its private sector employment stagnated.
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Colorado’s PERA shortchanging state workers and taxpayers 0
- June 23, 2014
Problems with Colorado’s public employee pension system are making it hard for our state government to attract some of the best employees. That’s the persuasive finding of a new study by the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. An employer’s retirement plan is part of an overall compensation package designed to entice and
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Fairness in retirement age a necessary public pension reform 0
- June 3, 2014
Imagine that you and your neighbor are friends and professional peers. You belong to the same professional organizations. You each have worked for your respective employers for a long time as retirement approaches. But one of you works for a private employer, the other for the State of Colorado. The state employee can retire with
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Special interest giveaways burden Colorado taxpayers, muddy tax code 0
- March 12, 2014
Last fall, Colorado officials claimed a $1 billion tax increase was needed to save the state’s public schools. Voters did not approve the tax increase. If officials were telling the truth, one would expect that this year they would be directing every extra budget dollar toward K-12 education. This is not happening. Instead, bills currently
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Amendment 66: More Spending Doesn’t Buy Higher Student Achievement 0
- October 25, 2013
Parents spend their money to benefit their children. School bureaucrats spend other people’s money to benefit the schools and those who run them. Amendment 66 raises taxes to take money from working Coloradans. It gives the broken public school bureaucracy more to spend and leaves parents with less. Taking money from parents harms children.
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