Independence Institute President Jon Caldara and Policy Analyst Nash Herman recently appeared before the Title Board to expose the deceptive ballot language for Senate Bill 135. They received title approval for Initiative 2025-2026 #282, a near-carbon copy of SB-135, this year’s attempt by the legislature to eliminate TABOR refunds and permanently alter the state’s spending limit under the guise of funding education.
Both measures would yield the same fiscal outcomes, but present dramatically different stories to voters. Independence Institute sought title approval to highlight the double standard between legislative and citizen-initiated ballot measures. The difference in how SB-135 and Initiative 282 would be presented to voters is stark.
Different Ballot Language
The official title of SB-135 is “State Public K-12 Education Funding.” If passed, the bill would direct the Secretary of State to place a ballot measure before voters in the 2026 election. The ballot measure would ask voters:
Shall state investment in K-12 public education increase two percent each year for the next ten years, with investments used to increase teacher pay, improve teacher retention, lower class sizes, and increase access to career and technical courses, without raising taxes but instead funded by raising the annual limit on state fiscal year spending only by the amount the state spends on public K-12 education as a voter-approved revenue change, and requiring an annual publicly released, independent audit to show how the new investments are spent?
However, the Title Board’s approved title for Initiative 282 reads:
Shall there be a change to the Colorado Revised Statutes allowing the state to keep and spend an amount of state revenue equal to one year of state public K-12 education funding as a voter-approved revenue change under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, and, in connection therewith, requiring the state to use a portion of the money to increase state funding for public K-12 education for ten years; and allowing the state to use the rest of the money for any purpose determined by the state legislature?
Side by side, the average voter would not know that these measures would yield the same outcome. One sounds like a narrow and accountable boost for teachers and classrooms. The other reveals a massive and open-ended expansion of state spending.
Why the Huge Discrepancy?
Colorado law requires the Title Board to review proposed citizen initiatives to determine if they have a single subject. If the initiative complies with the strict single-subject requirements, the board is directed to set fair, objective, and easily understandable ballot language for voters.
This reflects a clear difference in standards between legislatively referred ballot measures and citizen-initiated measures. In this example, the title board determined that the extra retained revenue was not guaranteed to be used for teacher pay, retention, lower class sizes, and increased access to career and technical courses, and thus struck the language from the measure.
Additionally, after discussing with the proponents, the board determined that education funding was a relatively small component of the total revenue expected to be retained in the first year, and substantially smaller than the new TABOR limit, based on prior-year education funding.
According to the legislative analysis, only approximately $200 million of the total $1.1 billion in expected retained revenue would go to education in the first year. Additionally, the new TABOR cap would be expected to increase by $4.8 billion in the first year, similar to a Referendum C-styled TABOR limit increase, far more consequential than the Senate Bill advertised. Rather than funding education, much of the money would likely go to healthcare, the largest and fastest-growing segment of the state budget.
Ultimately, this highlights a troubling sleight of hand and double standard between the citizens of Colorado and the government that is supposed to represent them. The legislature is allowed to obfuscate the real intent and impacts of the measures, all to erode Coloradans’ constitutional rights and expand unchecked spending. If the legislature were held to the same standards as citizens, SB-135’s ballot language would look more like Initiative 282’s, and it would likely look far less appealing to voters.
