Colorado Supreme Court Validates Ritter Ed Funding Bill

Colorado Governor Ritter came up with a plan, that the General Assembly adopted, to increase the local share of education expenses in school districts that had waived TABOR limitations on tax increases. A lower court invalidated the plan, finding it to be a new tax, but the Colorado Supreme Court reversed that decision today and found SB 07-199 to be valid under the state constitution.

If SB 07-199 had been invalidated, a new and bigger hole would have appeared in the state budget, as the state constitution also mandates minimum levels of K-12 education funding, so the lost revenue would have had to have been made up from another source in the state's general fund.