FISCAL - Publications - Independence Institute

Amendment 66: Spend More, Get Less (Part 2)0
- October 25, 2013
More spending does not create better schools. Many well-funded districts have lower graduation rates. Colorado Springs spent $1,500 less than Denver. It graduated 76 percent of its students, while Denver only graduated 46 percent. If passing Amendment 66 lets Denver spend $4,000 more, it might end up matching Indianapolis’s 30 percent graduation rate.
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Amendment 66: Spend More, Get Less 0
- October 10, 2013
IB-G-2013 (October 2013) Author: Linda Gorman PDF of full Issue Backgrounder Introduction: Amendment 66 will take the money you spend to benefit your children and give it to public education bureaucrats. Education bureaucrats do not necessarily use higher funding to benefit children. They will spend it on things that they like – generous pensions, higher
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A Billion Dollars Worth of Bad Ideas: Amendment 66 Tax Hike 0
- October 3, 2013
Amendment 66 would replace Colorado’s flat income tax of 4.63 percent of federal adjusted gross income with the two bracket system shown in Table 1: Colorado Income Tax Rates if Amendment 66 Passes. Passing Amendment 66 also passes SB13-213, the new 141-page state school finance law.
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PERA’s Problems in 2013 0
- September 18, 2013
The trajectory of the Public Employee Retirement Association of Colorado’s (PERA) financial condition has been anything but linear. From times of seeming excess to times of projections for failure, the public employee pension scheme has changed radically over time. As of 2013, expected improvements to the system’s outlook have not materialized, and PERA is once again in crisis. While far from alone in the gov- ernment employee problem, Colorado may be facing one of the worst current circumstances.
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Will increasing Colorado’s top income tax bracket by 27 percent affect incomes?0
- August 6, 2013
At present, everyone in Colorado pays the same marginal income tax rate, 4.63 cents out of every additional taxable dollar earned. Colorado officials and their allied interest groups support a constitutional amendment both to increase the state’s income tax and to create two tax brackets. They say the additional funding will improve K-12 education, although
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Denver’s proposed disposable bag ‘fee’ obviously a tax 0
- August 5, 2013
Members of the Denver City Council are proposing an ordinance that would impose a 5-cent charge on disposable (paper and plastic) bags used to carry purchases at point of sale at grocery and convenience stores with “over 1500 square feet” of retail space. Proponents call this bag charge a “fee.” But with even a little
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