40 Acres

An acre was traditionally meant to be the amount of land that a farmer could plow in a day with a farm animal's assistance.

40 acres was traditionally the amount of land necessary for a single family of unmechanized subsistence farms to support themselves. It is the most typical economic unit in which farmland and vacant land is sold, even today.

40 acres and a mule was what post-U.S. Civil War advocates for reparations to former slaves had advocated for (and obviously, did not achieve).

A square 40 acre plot is a quarter mile on each side (a.k.a. 1320 feet a.k.a. 440 yards), with a one mile circumference and a 16th of a square mile area.

The population density of subsistence farmers at this traditional pre-modern scale is about 100 people per square mile.

A survey township has 36 square miles (6 miles a side) and was traditionally the presumptive size of the smallest unit of local government, which at subsistence farming population density would have had about 3,600 people, and perhaps a bit more for a hamlet of perhaps 400 people who would make up the 10% or so of non-farmers who would have been present in a predominantly subsistence farming pre-modern society at the technology level that would have prevailed around the time of the American Revolution (250 years ago), so it might have had a total population of about 4,000 people. Non-farmers in hamlets like this would often include clergy, craftsmen in the skilled trades, doctors, veterinarians, and merchants.

In the brief period where there was democratic government and a predominantly pre-modern subsistence farming economy, people under age twenty-one couldn't vote, and neither could women, so perhaps 400-500 of those people would have been eligible to vote and/or participate in town meetings (in areas without slavery, as slaves couldn't vote either and were usually used to farm cash crops in any case).

In townships that were not governed in the town meeting style of New England towns, a typical town council would have had three elected trustees and sometimes an elected town clerk as well, so about one voter per 100 to 167 people would have been elected officials. This rate is similar to the rate at which people serve as precinct organizers in modern political parties.

A community of this size might have a single church that doubled as a community center and while pre-mechanized subsistence farming largely predated universal public education, a township would typically have something on the order of 2,000 school age children.

In that era about a quarter of children would have died in their first year and about half would have died before reaching adulthood. In any given childbirth, about 1% of pregnant mothers would have died in childbirth, and a typical woman would give birth six to eight times in a lifetime, leading to an excess of widowers over widows. There would be post-menopause age grandmothers in the community, but far fewer, proportionately, than there are today. Most elderly people would have lived with extended family. Then, as now, about a third of pregnancies would have ended in a miscarriage or stillbirth.

It would be unusual for a subsistence farming community to have more than a handful of people with post-secondary education (perhaps a priest and a government official or lawyer), and the percentage of people with the equivalent of a full high school education today would have been comparable to the percentage of people with graduate degrees today, although in some regions, a significant number of people without formal second education would nonetheless have been quite well-read autodidacts. Journalists and school teachers and merchants would typically not have a post-secondary education and would often not have the equivalent of a high school diploma today.

Against Municipal Courts In Colorado

The Denver Post has an article highlighting the problems of having municipal courts not of record incarcerate people who aren't represented by lawyers with no record of the proceedings, and notes that a bill this session seeks to change that. The bill is HB26-1134:

Fairness & Transparency in Municipal Court: Concerning measures to ensure that municipal court defendants are subject to conditions similar to state court defendants.

The bill clarifies that municipal court defendants have a right to counsel and that municipal defense counsel have the same notice, case information, and opportunity to meet with their clients as do state-level defense counsel. Current law prohibits paying indigent municipal defense counsel on a fixed or flat-fee payment structure if the municipality prosecutes domestic violence cases. The bill applies the prohibition to all municipalities.

All municipal court proceedings are required to be open to public observation. Virtual observation is required for all in-custody proceedings, and prompt resolution of municipal cases is required.

Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that municipalities with ordinances that parallel state crimes can't have higher penalties than the state crimes, in the wake of the state legislature reducing penalties for misdemeanors, and in the wake of Governor Polis vetoing a bill that would have mandated the same result.

A different bill last legislative session addressed the problem with municipal court judges abusing failure to appear warrants in a way that led to disproportionately harsh punishments.

None of these bills address yet another problem with the municipal court system, which is that municipal court judges are not nearly as independent of the municipal legislative bodies as state court judges are because they are appointed by the Governor in a merit based system that makes state court's independent of local governments (except for Denver County Court which is quasi-municipal).

Municipal courts also leave people arrested languishing in jail for longer than the U.S. Constitution allows because they hold court less frequently than state courts.

The simple and best solution would be to abolish municipal courts entirely and to give county court's jurisdiction over ordinance violations (which could still be prosecuted by City attorneys). 

Perhaps parking violations could be made administrative proceedings of municipalities limited to fines, boot, and tow orders instead of municipal violations.

Empirical Tests Of Economic Theories

Experience tells us which economic theories are right and which are not, often with unexpected results.

* In theory, a higher minimum wage should greatly increase unemployment. In reality, the effect is almost immeasurable at U.S. levels.

* The evidence from Brexit and from Trump 2.0 and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs demonstrate that globalism is very important for a healthy economy and that departing from free trade does great harm, as does discouraging immigration.

* While a shallow microeconomic analysis would suggest that immigration hurts the job market for native born Americans, experience shows that immigration has the opposite effect, improve the job market and prosperity.

* The evidence from Eastern Europe in the post-Cold War era illustrates that securities laws to reduce the likelihood of things like Ponzi schemes are actually very important even when other protections of property laws and contract laws are in place.

* Economic development studies tend to show that economic development is quite localized and culture driven, rather than being primarily driven by national laws, although national laws do matter quite a bit as shown by comparing the economies of communities on either side of a national boundary where the laws are quite different.

* Notably, lots of the litmus tests for economic development: municipal water quality, roads in good repair, regular trash collection, effective legal enforcement of debts, unambiguous real estate ownership, good quality K-12 education, and the availability of trauma center hospitals, are mostly provided at the local government level, rather than at the regional or national level.

* During the Financial Crisis, two different methods of managing the risk of high loan to value residential loans were compared which have very different regulatory regimes. 

One approach was to make a conventional mortgage at 80% loan to value, and then to have a second mortgage for the next 10-15% of loan to value that was subordinate to the conventional mortgage. This is subject to securities regulation of mortgage backed securities, with risks assessment mostly delegated to thinly regulated and thinly capitalized bond rating agencies (which are basically just credit reporting agencies for the bond market).

The other approach was to issue a single mortgage for the entire loan and to secure mortgage insurance, paid for by the borrower to protect the lender, which covered the lenders' losses if the value of a foreclosed home resulted in a deficiency judgment. This was subject to state insurance regulation.

In the financial crisis, insurance regulation was decisively proven to be superior, with no mortgage insurance firms going out of business, while essentially all of the subprime lenders, mortgage backed securities firms that packaged second mortgages for investors, and investment banks that organized this activity either ceased business entirely, underwent bankruptcy reorganization, or were saved only by bailouts with purchases of the failed firms by healthy large financial companies.

A Shorter Ballot Would Be Better

There is a new controversy in the news regarding the CU Board of Regents. I'm not going to discuss it because I haven't investigated it enough to provide an intelligent opinion on it, and I'm not bothered to do so.

What I will say, is that voters in the State of Colorado vote on way too many things, about which voters are ill-equipped to provide intelligent input.

Easy Ways To Shorten The Ballot

We should not have an elected CU Board of Regents. We should not have an elected state school board. The C.U. Regents could be either appointed in the same manner as the governing body of the Colorado State University system, or partially in that manner and partially by University of Colorado alumni. The state school board should be appointed by the Governor with terms staggered so that a single Governor could only appoint a majority of the board after two full four year terms, so maybe one seat would be open every two years and there would be seven seats.

These boards shouldn't be inherently partisan and voters in the general public are simply ill-equipped to evaluate how well those board members are doing their jobs and how qualified the candidates for those positions are. 

We should not elect a state treasurer. We should not have elected county surveyors, county engineers, county treasurers, county assessors, or county coroners,  As an aside, the work done by coroners should be handled at the state or judicial district level, rather than the county level, because small counties don't have the resources to do that important job right. 

These are technocratic, non-partisan jobs that should be filled by civil servants selected on a non-partisan basis.

We should not have judicial retention elections (at least without some rare circumstance flagging a seat for needed one). And, as an aside, we should entirely abolish municipal courts.

While the way that we appoint judges is Colorado is very good, the retention elections product a 99% retention rate, and even with a government sponsored information packet, voters are simply not qualified to determine if judges are doing their jobs well enough to be retained. Routine retention decisions should be made be a body more qualified to evaluate the issues, such as by judges who have direct supervisory appellate authority over them, and a strengthened judicial discipline system. It would make sense to have recall elections on a basis comparable to that of recall elections for elected public officials, when a large group of citizens petitions for the recall of a particular judge, but they should not be held as a matter of course. Retention elections are the single greatest factor that makes Colorado ballots too long, and add very little value.

Municipal courts are problematic in multiple ways. They aren't appointed in the meritocratic way that state court judges are appointed. They are independent of the municipal government and can be removed promptly if the municipality appointing them is dissatisfied with their rulings even if those rulings are right on the merits of the law. And, there is a well demonstrated track record of abusive and irregular judicial decisions by municipal judges. Municipal courts not of record are particularly lawless. 

We should not elect a state secretary of state, county clerks, county election officials, or local government clerks. In part, this is because we should not have partisan elected officials conducting election administration as the state's Secretary of State and county clerks do. In part, this is because non-partisan technocratic tasks shouldn't be done by elected officials.

We should eliminate the post of Lieutenant Governor, eliminating this additional impotent and rarely relevant post from serving as static in the Governor's race, and instead have a order of succession in which other members of the Governor's cabinet, perhaps the attorney general (whether elected or appointed), and then other members of the cabinet, serve if the Governor cannot.

At the state level, this would leave the Governor, the state attorney general, and state legislators on the ballot. There would also be an elected district attorney in each state judicial district (most of which are multi-county).

At that county level outside of Denver and Broomfield which are consolidated cities and counties, this would leave only county commissioners and a county sheriff as partisan elected officials. Personally, I'd prefer that the number of county commissioners be increases from three to five in larger counties and perhaps even seven in the largest counties, with a politically appointed sheriff, rather than an elected sheriff, mostly because this would make it easier to remove a sheriff who was clearly behaving badly. But this is a closer call, because the county sheriff makes policy decisions and is not merely a technocratic civil servant, and because the county sheriff's performance is easier for the average voter to judge.

At the local level, this would leave a local council, a mayor in some larger cities, and in Denver, a city auditor.

Removing all of these partisan races from the ballot would also, indirectly, reduce the burden on voters by reducing the number of races for which nominees would have to be chosen in the state's caucus plus primary election system.

Regional Transportation District directorships are a necessary evil to some extent. This is a body that makes political decisions on how to run RTD that don't neatly correspond to partisan categories, with taxes it raises on its own, which voters should have a direct say upon the spending of, but doesn't neatly correspond to any other political subdivision with general purpose elected officials, since it involves multiple counties (some partial and some full). Making the directorship elections non-partisan is also a good choice. But, we would be better served if the RTD director elections were held all at once for four year terms, rather than being staggered, so that the press and the public could collectively think about RTD politics all at once, rather than piecemeal in a way that dilutes attention from the races. Perhaps this would make the most sense in the year following a Presidential election, so that these elections wouldn't have to compete for attention with partisan local, state, and federal political contests.

I actually support the TABOR requirement to have citizens vote on tax increases, which insulates candidates running for public office from opposition out of fear that the candidates would raise taxes. But, we should not have TABOR elections to determine if increased revenues, from taxes that have already been approved by voters, should be retained - the state should be "de-Bruced" across the board.  

We should not have ballot issues to approve renewals of already approved public debt levels that involve no new taxes and no increases in the nominal amount of outstanding voter approved government debt. I favor ballot issues to approve increases in taxes to pay for government bonds, or increases in the amount of debt incurred that will necessarily have to be paid for with taxes at some point. But, voters shouldn't be required to routinely reapprove existing taxes and already approved debt levels.

Lots of provisions of the state constitution, and of county and city charters, which require voter approval to change, should be in state statutes or local ordinances that can be changed by elected legislators.

For example, details like the organizational chart of the City and County government and election deadlines, both of which are found in the City and County of Denver's charter and have been the subject of recent ballot issues, shouldn't be in the city charter.

Those are the easy ways to shorten the ballot. 

Extra Credit 

There are also other ways that it could be shortened that are closer calls.

We should end the use of property taxes to fund public schools and should replace those with state legislature approved spending from revenues from state income tax dollars. I've explored why this is a good idea in other posts at this blog. If this was done, it would also make sense to have local school boards elected by the parents of public school students, on a one student, one vote basis, rather than by members of the general public.

The state legislature should have the state senate elected by a party list proportional representation system. A bicameral body in which both houses are elected on the same single member district plurality system adds little value, compared to the burden it adds to voters researching who to voter for in state legislature elections. Proportional representation in the state senate would provide a structural check against gerrymandering, would facilitate a multiparty system that isn't entirely beholden to the internal baggage of the two major political parties, and would allow diffuse minority political views to receive a voice. State senators could continue to serve four year terms with roughly half of its 35 members elected every two years, but the entire state would cast their ballot every two years. The limited number of seats: 17 or 18 in each state general election, would also impose a de facto minimum level of support of 5.5%-5.8% to be elected, denying truly fringe parties a vote. And, it doesn't take much effort for a voter to decide which of half a dozen or so political parties they support. Party lists could be drawn up through each political party's internal caucus system.

One could also make the state attorney general appointive, and/or could have district attorneys appointed by the state attorney general. There are pros and cons to this approach. An elected attorney general eliminates the need for independent counsel to investigate the executive branch and would provide a better mandate to serving as a Lieutenant Governor ex officio and to appoint district level attorneys general. But, similar arguments to RTD and county sheriffs apply to elected district attorneys and would make it harder for a single partisan elected official to decide criminal justice priorities for an entire state with diverse views on that issue.

The Proposed Mega Sports Complex For Douglas County

Artist's rendering from Douglas County via the Denver Post

The Project

The controversial Zebulon Regional Sports Complex in Douglas County is set to break ground this fall. It is a $1.3 billion project planned for a site near Chatfield Reservoir in a brownfield development with "an old dynamite-making plant that operated for decades at the proposed Zebulon site" although it purportedly has been fully remediated. The state signed off on that conclusion in 2022.

The plans for the Zebulon Regional Sports Complex are huge.

On the drawing board are four baseball fields, three ice rinks and a pair of soccer fields. Eight to 10 basketball courts — which can be converted into 20 volleyball courts or 30 pickleball courts — are also in the mix. Add in a 400,000-square-foot, domed indoor sports facility that will house more fields for year-round play. . . .

And that’s just the first phase, which could break ground as soon as this fall on a 50-acre parcel just southeast of the master-planned Sterling Ranch community. Later phases could bring as many as eight additional sports fields, along with restaurants, shops and a hotel[.]

Does It Pencil?

I've worked with clients to help vet a similar proposals on a smaller scale, so I have so familiarity with the economics of these deals. For the life of me, I can't see how this could pencil as a "for profit" private sector venture at this scale in this location.

Sure, there is unmet demand in the area, which has had and continues to have large subdivisions rolled out over the last few decades (like 12,000 homes in Sterling Ranch which will house 35,000 people when completed that is only 20% built out), without sufficient government investment or HOA in community amenities. So, a much smaller private non-profit or public sector recreation center run by Sterling Ranch's metro district might work.

But, the demand just isn't there for something of this scale, and a similar but smaller complex in Centennial isn't thriving.

[A] citizen survey conducted last year by Douglas County ... revealed [that] a “mega-sports complex” was identified by 33% of respondents as the “least appealing option” of a list of potential amenities. The survey also showed that just 22% of respondents were dissatisfied with the number of youth sports facilities in the county.

Another smaller recreation center is already on the drawing board for Highland's Ranch which would be between the South Suburban Recreation Center twenty minutes to the east and the Zebulon complex.

The county investment is about $800K in engineering planning for infrastructure (realistically, a drop in the bucket) and a portion of the about $22 million a year in revenues for the the next 15 years from the county's 0.17% sales tax for its Parks, Trails, Historic Resources and Open Space Fund established in 1994.

But even this investment is controversial, in part, because the county leadership whose home rule county proposal epically crashed and burned in June, and which has a history of infighting and political posturing, isn't popular and doesn't have much public trust.

Moreover, as a "for profit" it probably isn't eligible for municipal bond financing with private activity bonds. This project would probably have, at best, a BBB credit rating implying roughly a 6.1% corporate bond interest rate, while a comparable municipal bond would have roughly a 3.6% interest rate, which is a $32.5 million a year difference for an investment of this size. Municipal bond eligibility, that it could receive as a non-profit, would be worth more than all of the sales tax revenue that could be diverted to the project.

There are a few other sports complexes with a similar (but slightly smaller than the proposed full build out) scale in the metro area, the South Suburban complex further east in Douglas County, one in Arvada, and one in Jefferson County (IIRC). But those are strictly government owned and funded, and the most similar South Suburban Parks and Recreation District facility further east, in Centennial, doesn't seem to be thriving.

Bottom Line Analysis

Philosophically, the fact that it is a brownfield development is a good thing, the fact that it provides amenities in a rapidly growing community with unmet needs is a good thing, and the fact that the risk that it will be an unprofitable money pit will fall mostly on wealthy, private sector, for profit, investors with only modest public subsidies is a good thing. It is also estimated to create 1,800 temporary jobs to build it, which is a good thing in what is mostly a bedroom community, where construction work for its huge sprawling suburban subdivisions is winding down due to factors like a limited supply of water for new taps.

But the fact that the proposal appears to be vastly bigger than the realistic demand for recreational facilities, the fact that the public is subsidizing a for profit company (even if it isn't a professional sports team), and the fact that it doesn't have much public support when the public will be providing significant sales tax funding support to the project, aren't good things.

An independent non-profit project, or metro district, or South Suburban Parks and Recreation District (with annexation of additional territory, if needed) sponsored project, that is less ambitious, with more phases to allow experience to determine if demand justifies something larger, would make more sense, in my opinion.

Selected Lesser Grievances

There are lots of big issues facing the United States, the biggest of which is the existential threat to its continued functioning as a democracy posed by Donald Trump's candidacy in this year's Presidential election. And, this blog spends plenty of time thinking about those big issues.

But, the world is also full of things that aren't "big issues" but are minor annoyances and lesser grievances that it would be nice to see remedied, even if they aren't really make or break issues. This post recounts some of them.

Computer System Treatment Of Hyphenated Names And Similar Issues

* There ought to be a law that mandates that government and big business computer systems accommodate people who have hyphens, apostrophes, spaces, and just one or two characters in their names. This may have been an issue at the start of the computer age, but we have reached a point where it is no longer that hard to do.

Fraud

* We do a poor job of dealing with fraud perpetrated by phone, text message, email, social media, the Internet more generally, and the financial system. It should be possible to click a 9-1-1 style universal fraud reporting code and send reports of fraudulent activity instantly to the appropriate law enforcement agency and telecommunications providers, with no further effort from the person reporting it required. This should shut down the fraudster's phone number, and email accounts, social media accounts, and freeze any associated financial accounts almost instantly, and launch investigations as a matter of course into the perpetrators and into the institutions used by them to perpetrate the frauds. The cost of an individual fraudulent communication is small and the fraudsters count on that to shield them from investigations, which when they do happen aren't nimble enough to address it because the perpetrators are long gone. Yet, we have a system that is much better a dealing with the much less serious problem of copyright infringement than it is at dealing with fraud. 

* We should do a better job of dealing with deceptive business practices by credit reporting agencies that try to trick you into paying for services that they are required to provide for free.

* We should do a better job at shutting down businesses that dupe people into paying to get government services that are available cheaper or for free from the actual government.

* Credit cards should have PIN numbers the way that ATM cards do. This would dramatically reduce credit card fraud and reduce the incentive to steal credit cards.

* Food labeling should be more tightly regulated to discourage spurious and misleading health claims like "antibiotic free" in foods where antibiotics aren't allowed anyway, or claims that a food that ordinarily would have sugar but not fat anyway is "fat free".

Regulated Occupations

* We should have a central database of people who are sanctioned or "disbarred" from particular professions in a particular state or local jurisdictions, so that these people are prevented from going to some other state or local jurisdiction, or some other licensed occupation where the same conduct would also be disqualifying.

* The construction trades should be regulated at the state level, not the local level. This prevents an unreasonable barrier to entry for legitimate reputable construction contractors, which causes construction trade licensing to be ignored or overlooked, while also making it too easy for someone who has had their construction trade license rightfully revoked to just go to another locality that hasn't caught up with them yet.

Arrest Records

* We should also have a way of purging the official arrest records of people who are arrested or charged, but are ultimately not convicted of anything, from public records and databases (that do not at least disclose the exoneration with the arrest record report). Similarly, there should be a better process to purge or annotate criminal convictions that are vacated.

Mail, Package Delivery, And Porch Piracy

* The U.S. Postal System and all other package delivery firms should be liable for damages when it delivers a package to the wrong address (or doesn't deliver it at all), preventing the intended recipient from receiving it, even without requiring the sender to procure insurance, at least up to a certain dollar amount. 

* A parallel and similar system for dealing with fraud via mail to the one suggested above for telecommunications fraud should also be put in place. Violators (both firms and their managers and principals) should have their right to send mass mailings suspended for some period of time in addition to any other relief.

* A certain percentage of packages should have tracking chips that can be used to locate the packages if they are taken by porch pirates, allowing the perpetrators to be found, and creating too high of a risk for people contemplating porch piracy to consider doing so.

* Mutual funds should be required to make information about their funds publicly available, but mailing prospectus-like disclosure documents to their investors on a regular basis just kills trees without providing meaningful improvements in investor knowledge.

* The same is true of privacy policies. Require them to be made available in some standardized place, but don't mail them out to everyone connected to a business.

* Low advertiser postal rates for "junk mail" that don't reflect reduced costs for the postal system due to, e.g., pre-sorting, should be abolished and instead, all mail should have to pay first class mail rates. If it isn't worth sending a first class mail rates, it isn't worth bothering people with the unsolicited junk mail.

* Congressional franking privileges should be abolished and replaced with a budget for postage for each U.S. House and U.S. Senate office, based upon the population of the state in question for U.S. Senate offices. This privilege is widely abused by office holders and undermines the economic viability of the U.S. Postal Service.

* Mail-In Ballots should have business return postage type treatment so that the voters doesn't have to attack any postage to return their ballot through the mail, paid for by the governmental body conducting the election.

* Registered voters should indicate (in a database that is not public record at an individual level, just at a statistical level), their preferred language for election related information and communications. Thus, election related disclosures and ballots would go to voters only in their preferred language rather than in both English and Spanish with other language versions available upon request. This would make ballots more readable, and cut in half the amount of paper wasted in pre-election disclosures. It would also significantly reduce the burden on voters who need to receive translations into languages other than English or Spanish.

Long Ballots 

Ballots are too long, in part, because we have voters do too much. But long ballots discourage voting generally and lead to uninformed decision making.

* We should not elect, at any level coroners, surveyors, engineers, dog catchers, assessors, treasurers, clerks, or secretaries of state, who are supposed to be carrying out technocratic tasks with only limited discretion.

* Elections should not be administered by partisan elected officials, or by partisan political appointees.

* Judicial retention elections like the ones held in Colorado make ballots much longer (just short of half the questions on my ballot this year are judicial retention elections) and demand a great deal of effort from voters who try to make those decisions in an informed manner, but provide very little benefit. Typically only one or two judges in the entire state are not retained in any election cycle, and sometimes, none are. Only about 1% of judges are ever removed this way, which inadequate purges inadequate judges. And, a significant share of judges who are removed are removed for decisions that are legally required but unpopular. Simply put, the general voting public is ill-equipped to make this decision even with state supplied information pamphlets, and it is a great burden on voters that makes ballots too long. There might be a place for retention elections, but only in cases which are singled out as "high risk" in some reasonable manner, for the voting public to focus upon.

* In Colorado, the Taxpayer's Bill Of Rights, requires voters to approve tax increases and to authorize retention of revenues from existing taxes if those revenues grow fasters than a formula in the state constitution. I don't have a problem with the first kind of voting requirement for new taxes. But, votes on retention of revenues from existing taxes (called "debrucing" ballot issues, after Doug Bruce, the author of TABOR in Colorado) should not be required and make our ballots unnecessarily long.

* Similarly, while voters should have to authorize increased debt limits for local governments, they should not have to authorize incurring debt at levels previously authorized by voters and paid for with existing taxes, after the original debt is paid down, at least in part.

* The CU Board of Regents and the state school board, should not be chosen by the general public in elections, let alone, in partisan elections.

* Perhaps in addition to petitions to establish a minimum threshold of support for a ballot measure before putting it on the ballot for the general public to consider, citizen's initiatives should face a public opinion poll test and only be granted ballot access if it can garner at least, say, 35% support, in a public opinion poll conducted by a reputable and certified firm.

Notarization

* The requirement that statements made under penalty of perjury be presented in a notarized affidavit made under oath should be replaced with a rule allowing unnotarized declarations made under penalty of perjury in court documents, something that is already the case in the federal court system, and the court systems of Colorado and Utah, at least.

* Notarized but not otherwise witnessed wills are valid in Colorado. This should be the norm nationally.

Copyrights, Rights Of Publicity, And Privacy

Copyright laws are too strong for a digital age. Some examples:

* There should be more legally binding safe harbors for fair use. Far too many cases are in gray areas decided on a case by case basis by a particular judge and jury.

* Some version of a fair use defense or dramatic remedy limitation should be available in the cases where someone is sharing content made available by a copyright holder or a licensee for free on the Internet or via freely available broadcast television or radio.

* There should be a mechanism for mandatory licensing of orphan works and for translations of works that are not available in a particular language.

* There are overly expansive protections for derivative works in areas such a fan fiction that should be dialed back.

* Statutory damages in lieu of actual economic damages, and the availability of attorneys' fees in actions for copyright infringement, should also be greatly curtailed. In general, copyright remedies and rights should be closer to an unjust enrichment tort remedy and less like a property right. 

* Rights of publicity should be governed by a single, preclusive, federal law, not by a mishmash of state laws.

* Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is far too expansive and far too protective of privacy rights to the detriment of other legitimate interests.

* The scope of the applicability of the GDPR to people who are not in Europe, but can have dealings with Europeans over the Internet is far too unclear.

Traffic Laws

* Speed limits should reflect the speed that an ordinary reasonable driver would travel on a road as it is designed. Local governments should not be allowed to set lower speed limits than the road conditions reflect in response to local community pressure. If a local government wants traffic to move more slowly than the legally authorized speed limit given the road conditions, it needs to redesign the road, rather than just creating a speed trap.

* When push comes to shove, bicycles should be regulated as pedestrians not as motor vehicles. They should go on sidewalks and designated bike paths in most cases, rather than being expected to share designated highways and arterial streets with automobiles. A bicycle crashing into a pedestrian is much less serious than a car crashing into a bicycle.

Debt Collection

* It should be a serious offense to try to collect zombie debts that are barred by the statute of limitations or have been discharged in bankruptcy.

* It should be a serious offense to try to collect debts from the next of kin of debtors who have not guaranteed the debt in writing, rather than the decedent's probate estate.

Medical Billing

* Until the day when we have universal health care, health care providers to patients with health insurance should be forbidden from trying to collect their bills directly from the patient beyond a health insurance policy authorized co-pay to be paid at the time of service. Any provider that accepts any payment from that patient's health insurance should be required to honor the health insurance company's disallowance of their charges. And, health insurers should have to pay the full allowed charge to the health care provider and then collect the patient's share of that charge under the insurance policy from the patient. Patients shouldn't be put in the middle and as a guarantor in the face of disputes between health care providers and health insurers. A patient should be able to know exactly what he or she will owe simply by reading their health insurance policy.

* Emergency rooms shouldn't be allowed to charge more to someone who errantly went to an ER instead of an urgent care facility for the same services. The task of getting someone to the right level of care takes medical knowledge and should be the responsibility of the health care provider.

* Health care providers shouldn't be allowed to charge different rates for the same work done at a hospital affiliated facility (which is often billed at a higher rate) than at another facility.

* When there are contingent fee lawsuits for personal injuries, health care providers with health care liens on the recovery should have to share the risk in a way that afford the injured person some benefit of the lawsuit according to a standard formula that doesn't have to be negotiated on a case by case basis.

Court E-Filing Discrepancies

* Court E-Filing systems should have much less authority to just reject filings. Instead, if there is problem with the way that the filling was put into the e-filing system, that correction should just be made by the system, and if there is a problem with the document filed itself, it should issue an order to show cause directing the filer to correct it in a clearly described manner before a reasonable deadline to prevent it from being stricken with a loss of the original filing date.

Municipal Ordinances

* Municipalities and local governments should not be permitted to punish ordinance violations with incarceration or arrest. Incarceration should be limited to violations of state laws.

* Colorado should abolish municipal courts and require municipal ordinance violations to be enforced in civil actions brought by city attorneys in county courts that are part of the state court system.

Denver's 2024 Ballot Issues

This year there are 14 state ballot issues and 11 Denver ballot issues. This post addresses the Denver ballot issues with brief summaries and my recommendations. A previous separate post will addressed the 14 Colorado ballot issues.

While I am a Democratic Party precinct organizer, these opinions are purely my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Democratic Party of Colorado or of Denver.

* Referred Denver ballot issue 2Q - increases sales taxes by 0.34 percentage points to raise $70 million a year for Denver Health.

Yes. Denver health is a critical cornerstone of our health care system and a Level One trauma center that needs more funding to function.

* Referred Denver ballot issue 2R - increases sales taxes by 0.5 percentage points to raise $100 million a year for affordable housing for low and middle class families with rental assistance and first time home buyer assistance.

Weak yes. Unaffordable housing is a huge problem in Denver. Subsidies are probably not the optimal solution (relaxing land use regulation is the most important step that can be taken), but it would still make a big difference to many people who are struggling right now.

* Referred Denver Ballot Issue 2S - creates a Mayoral cabinet agency of Human Rights and Community Partnerships.

Yes. This shouldn't require a vote of the people, and the Mayor and City Council want it. This housekeeping measure should be approved.

* Referred Denver Ballot Issue 2T - allows lawful permanent residents who aren't U.S. citizens to be police officers and firefighters.

Yes. There is no legitimate reason to exclude people from these positions simply because they are immigrants. The U.S. has a long and storied history of immigrant law enforcement officers and firefighters.

* Referred Denver Ballot Issue 2U - Allows most non-managerial Denver employees to unionize, bargain collectively, and strike (but prohibits strikes by police officers, sheriffs, and firefighters who already have collective bargaining rights and are prohibited from striking, and prohibits strikes by certain county court and Denver Water employees).

Yes. These employees should not be prohibited from having unions because they work for a local government instead of a private sector firm.

* Referred Denver Ballot Issue 2V - Allows for binding arbitration in lieu of an advisory fact-finding process when an impasse occurs between the City and Firefighters during collective bargaining.

No. Arbitration is a horribly bad way to resolve disputes, and is even worse in a situation like this one where it is entirely unprincipled.

* Referred Denver Ballot Issue 2W - Replaces salary setting for elected officials in the City and County by the city council for the post-election set of elected officials with a one time set of salaries adjusted for inflation over time.

No. Salaries for elected officials should not run on autopilot. The existing system works fine.

* Initiated Denver Ordinance 308 -  prohibiting the manufacture, distribution, display, sale, or trade of certain animal fur products in the City beginning July 1, 2025.

No. Animal fur products are no worse than eating meat. They should not be banned.

* Initiated Denver Ordinance 309 - Prohibiting slaughter houses in the City.

No. There is nothing wrong with eating meat and slaughter houses are a necessary part of a society that eats meat.

* Referred Denver School Board Issue 4A - Allows the school board to borrow up to $975 million financed with existing property taxes for capital improvements to school buildings.

Yes. Denver's K-12 students deserve to go to buildings that are modern and don't need major deferred maintenance, particularly to the extent that this can be achieved without raising taxes.

* Referred Regional Transportation District Ballot Issue 7A - Debruces RTD sales tax reveues.

Yes. This measure simply allows RTD to keep all of its existing sales tax revenues, even if they increase.

Good Government Colorado's State and Local Government Reforms

Alcohol Regulation

* It is absurd to regulate beer, wine, and liquor differently.

Construction Regulation

* The construction trades should be regulated at the state level rather than at the local level as they are now. This may have made sense when construction markets were local. Colorado currently has 273 active municipalities (comprising 198 towns, 73 cities, two consolidated city and county governments), and 62 unconsolidated counties, for a total of 335 different bodies licensing the construction trades. Most of these professionals should not exclude people with felony records unrelated to the construction trades.

* Each of these jurisdictions also has its own building code, based upon privately promulgated building codes that aren't even available for free which is unconscionable for binding laws. There should be a single state building code, that is a matter of public record. If localities want to deviate from it, they should have to seek permission from a state body to do so, and the local modifications ought to be a matter of public record on a state website. Aesthetic building code requirements should be tightly limited.

TABOR Elections And Taxes

* Elections over retaining growth in revenue not derived from new taxes should be abolished.

* Excess TABOR revenue should, by default, placed in a rainy day fund, rather than refunded. A supermajority would be required to touch a rainy day fund in excess of declines in revenue from the previous peak revenue year.

* The state 2.9% sales tax would be repealed and replaced with a revenue neutral income tax increase. Only local sales taxes would remain. But, all local sales taxes would be collected by the state and would be required to use the uniform state definition of taxable sales.

* School districts should be funded by state taxes and not by property taxes. As a result, there would no longer be elections for local property tax levies and bond issues for school districts.

* Higher educational institutions would have tax funding solely by state taxes, not local taxes.

Election Administration

* Elections should be administered by non-partisan civil servants, under the supervision of a partisan balanced board or boards. This task should be severed from the partisan elected offices of state secretary of state and county clerk, and from the non-partisan elected office of city clerk.

Elected Offices

* City clerks should not be elected.

* Statutory cities and towns have a city manager with the mayor elected by the city or town council as its chair, and do not have a have separately elected mayor or auditor.  Charter cities can do what they want.

* County coroners should not be elected and the institution should be replaced with a state medical examiner's office.

* County surveyors should not be elected.

* County treasurers should not be elected.

* County assessors should not be elected.

* County clerks should not be elected.

* County sheriff should be a non-partisan office. It is desirable not to give the local administration of criminal justice system a partisan tinge. This is less alienating between elections to the losing party members. Counties are often often politically homogeneous areas where intra-party competition is really more important the partisan competition anyway. This gives minority party members in a county more say in the outcome.

* County commissioner should be a non-partisan office. It handles local government issues like municipalities do. Counties are often politically homogeneous areas where intra-party competition is really more important the partisan competition anyway. This gives minority party members in a county more say in the outcome. In large counties there would be five seats elected from single member districts, all at once, for four year terms. In small counties, county commissioners would serve for six year terms with one elected every two years.

* District attorney should be a non-partisan office. It is desirable not to give the local administration of criminal justice system a partisan tinge. This is less alienating between elections to the losing party members.

* The state treasurer should not be elected.

* The state secretary of state should not be elected.

* The state attorney-general should not be elected.

* Uncontested elected offices should not appear on the ballot unless there is a declared write-in candidate before ballots are printed.

* School boards should be elected by the parents, except possibly by the students instead, in the case of high school students.

* The state school board should be appointed.

* The University of Colorado Board of Regent should not be elected by the general public. It would be better for these positions to be elected by alumni. The state still controls the purse strings, but this would strengthen academic freedom and ease the burden on the voters.

* Any other currently elected higher education district boards should be elected by alumni or appointed.

State And Local Judges And Courts

* Judges should be required to be lawyers with at least five years of experience. The four non-lawyer rural county court judges currently in office in Colorado should be grandfathered for their current terms, but not retained.

* The county courts should be consolidated to have a single limited jurisdiction division of the district court in each judicial district called the county court division of the district court, with a court house in each county and should be staffed with full time judges only.

* Judicial retention for judges not on the state supreme court should be decided by a vote of the judges at the next higher level, not the voters. So, county court division judicial retention should be decided by district court judges, district court judicial retention should be decided by court of appeals judges, and court of appeals judicial retention should be decided by state supreme court justices. These are the people best qualified to evaluate the performance of lower court judges.

* State supreme court justices should be limited to a single fourteen-year term of office, with one new justice appointed in the current process every two years in the absence of vacancies. 

* Vacancies in the state supreme court should be filled for the remainder of the term of the vacating justice (without prejudice to a further appointed term) by a court of appeals judge elected from the sitting judges of the court of appeals.

* The judicial discipline process should be more transparent.

* Court facilities and budgets, district attorneys offices, and public defender's offices should be financed at the state level, not the county level, to keep the judicial branch and district attorney's office independent from municipal and county government.

* Municipal courts should be abolished, with the ordinance violations previously in their jurisdiction prosecuted by city attorneys in the county court division of the district court before state appointed judges.

* County court appeals should be to a single judge of the court of appeals, not to a single district court judge otherwise on the same basis as under current law. There would be no municipal court appeals because there would no longer be any municipal courts.

* Colorado Appellate Rule 21 petitions (i.e. discretionary requests for extraordinary relief granted only when no other adequate remedy, including relief available by appeal or under C.R.C.P. 106, including petitions in the nature of mandamus, certiorari, habeas corpus, quo warranto, injunction, prohibition and other forms of writs cognizable under the common law) should be made to a designated panel of seven judges of the court of appeals (rotated annually) rather than to the state supreme court.

* The number of judges on the court of appeals should be doubled to allow it to process appeals more swiftly.

* Review of attorney regulation disciplinary hearings should be made to the court of appeals rather than to the state supreme court.

Remaining Elections

Candidate Elections

* There would be one election every November on election day, and a primary election (in parties and districts with contested races) in every even numbered year for state and federal offices. A partisan caucus would precede each primary election every even numbered year. Ballot issues would be restricted to November elections except for local recall elections and emergency local tax and bond measures.

* There would be one non-partisan local election in November in each odd numbered year. 

* In the year following the Governor's election there would be statutory municipal elections (with all municipal offices elected at once), and district attorney elections (and county commissioner elections in small counties) for a total of one or two offices plus city council races for each voter in statutory cities and towns. 

* In the odd numbered year two years after that there would be elections for county commissioner, sheriff and special district elections in the other (usually two or three races per voter). 

* Charter cities do what they want, but limited to odd numbered year elections except for recalls and for emergency ballot issues for referred tax matters or legally required referred charter amendments held when needed.

* There would be partisan caucuses and primaries (with unaffiliated voters allowed to participate in a primary of their choice, but not caucuses) in each even numbered year followed by a partisan general elections in November for state house, state senate, U.S. House, U.S. Senate, the Governor-Lieutenant Governor, and the President. The Governor-Lieutenant Governor election would be two years after the Presidential election. No election would have less than three or more than five offices to vote upon at a time, unless there was a U.S. Senate vacancy to be filled at the time, in which case there would be four to six offices. 

* Write-in candidates would not be allowed in primary elections and uncontested primary elections would not appear on the ballot. 

* All elected offices except the U.S. House and state house with two year terms, and the U.S. Senate with six year terms, would be for four year terms.

* All single member elected office races would require a majority to be elected, with a runoff of the top two candidates otherwise.

* City councils would fill municipal office vacancies. County commissions would fill county commissioner and sheriff vacancies. Special district boards would fill vacancies on their boards. State legislature vacancies would be filled by partisan vacancy committees. Governor vacancies would be filled by the Lieutenant Governor. Lieutenant Governor vacancies would be filled by the Governor (unilaterally). The law would provide for Governor's succession in other cases. The Governor would fill U.S. Senate vacancies until the next even numbered general election at which time a vacancy election for any remaining part of the vacant seat's term would be held.  U.S. House vacancies would be filled in special elections as under current law.

* Recall elections of particular local elected officials (city elected officials, county commissioners, sheriff, special district, district attorney), held promptly in the time frames allowed by law.  Vacancies created by recall elections would be filled like any other vacancy. Do not allow the recall of state legislators or the Governor, although the state legislature could impeach the Governor in a mirror of the federal process.

Ballot Issues

* Referred municipal or special district tax increase or bond issue ballot issues (during municipal or special district elections as the case may be, unless an emergency is declared by a supermajority of the city council or board, two-thirds unless there are just three members in which case it must be unanimous).

* Referred county tax increase or bond issue ballot issues (during county elections only, unless an emergency is declared by a supermajority of the county commission - unanimous if there are three members, four out of five if there are five members).

* Referred local charter amendment ballot issues (during municipal or special district elections). Legally required charter amendments would be adopted by the city council or special district board by majority vote.

* Local charter or legislation citizen initiatives (during municipal elections only for municipal measures, and during county elections only for county measures).

* State ballot tax increase ballot issues (referred only, during even numbered year elections in November only).

* State ballot issues on the state constitution or state legislation referred by the state legislature (during even numbered year elections in November only).

* Citizen initiated state constitution and legislative ballot issues (not impacting taxes, during even numbered year elections in November only).

* Newly passed state legislation would not be subject to referendums.

About Mayor Hancock

Denver's outgoing Mayor Hancock started out on a promising note, but Denver needs to new blood, including a new Mayor who will be selected in this June's municipal runoff election. For whatever the reason was Hancock's has really stumbled on multiple fronts, especially in the second half or so of his service. 

There are the corruption issues. But also there has just been a decline in bread and butter management of things from trash collection to contract management in connection with DIA to continued weak building code/zoning administration (especially in terms of just having the staff and processes that are capable of getting it done in a timely and careful fashion), to stumbling in terms of getting the police to behave, to failing to build a cohesive relationship with city council. 

His handling of the pandemic wasn't horrible but wasn't exemplary (like the liquor store closing fiasco, that at least he didn't dig in his heels about, and poor communications about what the city would do next or was doing in the present), and he's been a follower tugged in one direction and then the next without the leadership we need on homelessness. His handling of just defeated Denver ballot issue 2O, and the Park Hill golf course issue more generally, has not been politically astute. 

Yes, we're spoiled by having had a string of very good mayors from Pena to Webb to Hickenlooper who were supported by other good city level elected officials. Yes, the latest rounds of land use reforms have been a net improvements and some issues like drainage in North Denver have finally gotten addressed. Yes, we haven't had to deal with the clusterf**k that GOP controlled places have seen. Yes, he's done a decent job responding to the migrant influx of the last six months or so. 

No, his service as a whole has not been a total failure. But, he's run out of steam overall and the quality of his service has discernibly slipped. Four more years of Hancock would have been worse than his last four years. Term limits have been a good thing in this case.

Republicans Still Mendacious, Delusional, and Weird

One of the most appalling aspects of the current Republican Party is its utter lack of respect for reality, using illegitimate and improper means to achieve it ends. 

Absurd and malicious cases like this one that call into question the sanity of the local elected sheriff pressing it, alas, are increasingly not uncommon in a party that has still pledges its soul to serial fraudster Donald Trump.

Utah Republicans, as a whole, were among the least support of Trump in his two Presidential races, but ultimately, they too seem to have fallen for his spell. The county in question is home to Utah's second biggest city, Provo.

Earlier this week, the Utah County Sheriff's office announced their reinvestigation into a supposed child sex trafficking ring they claim was involved in "ritualistic child sex abuse" between the years of 1990-2010, asking victims and those with knowledge of the crimes to come forward "so that they can be offered all the assistance possible."

If this sounds a tad suspect to you, it is probably because you have lived through some part of the last several decades or are perhaps familiar with the Satanic Panic, the 87,000 documentaries on people falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned over this nonsense (highly recommend Southwest of Salem, Witch Hunt and Fall River), or even the FBI Behavioral Science Unit's 1992 report on "ritual abuse." Or perhaps what really tipped you off is the fact that no actual instances of it have ever actually been proven to have happened outside the imaginations of people like Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith and the man who reportedly sparked the current investigation, a convicted sex offender/incel rights activist who faked his own death and moved to Scotland, where he was identified after turning up in a hospital sick with COVID.

Following the Utah County Sheriff's press release, Utah County Attorney David Leavitt called for Sheriff Smith to resign and for the Sheriff's Department itself to be investigated, due to the outlandish nature of the so-called investigation. Leavitt also noted that he and his wife were cited in the official "report" on the investigation, which accused them of not only ritualistically abusing children, but of eating them.

“I am calling upon Sheriff Mike Smith to open his office to an outside investigation,” Leavitt said in a statement, “where outside, independent investigators are able to investigate and confirm or deny that documents from a debunked investigation from more than a decade ago were or were not used for political purposes in a Utah County Attorney’s race.”

From here (corroboration here).

The Smallest Towns Are The Most Corrupt

My first real job was for a firm that had a contract to provide legal services for CIRSA, a self-insurance pool for local governments in Colorado that like an ordinary insurance company hired law firms to serve as insurance defense counsel for member governments facing covered litigation. 

It was our experience that the smaller and more rural the government was, the less competently it was run, with the most outrageous cases of misconduct and mismanagement we had to litigate consistently coming from the local governments with the smallest population. This was because these governments had the least qualified people have to serve as politicians because no one else is available and because, even per capita, more qualified people for this kind of work tended to migrate to bigger cities. 

Competence and lack of corruption go hand in hand, and the reverse is also true. 

[T]he small town of Corsica, in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, was compelled to double its property tax rate. According to this story, the town did so because the town secretary embezzled so much money over a eight-year period that the town was unable to maintain a children’s playground or fix its deteriorating roads. The town went so far as to borrow money from its mayor so that its government did not shut down. The scale of the embezzlement is evident from two facts. The town secretary stole $306,000. There are 319 people living in the town. After being caught and indicted, the embezzler repaid about $41,000 of the embezzled funds. . . . 

She issued checks from the town’s bank account and from the state’s Local Government investment Trust to herself, her husband, and her father. To do this, she forged the name of the vice-president of the town’s council. She also made electronic transfer payments from town accounts. She used that money to pay bills. She used the town’s account at a store to purchase a camera, an iPad, and other things for herself. To hide this activity, she prepared and submitted false bank records to the town council and to state auditors.

Rejecting a request for probation, the judge sentenced her to 21 months of prison and also ordered her to repay the other $265,000 that she had embezzled. Though the secretary, her lawyer, family members, and friends cited health problems in asking for probation, the judge concluded that the secretary’s actions were motivated by greed and that a prison sentence was consistent with the sentences handed down to other embezzlers. Perhaps the judge was also influenced by the fact that after being indicted and released on bond, the secretary was arrested on multiple counts of retail theft for five separate incidents at another retail store.

From Mauled Again. 

How To Restructure PK-12 Education In Colorado

The preschool to high school (PK-12) education system in Colorado would benefit from a major restructuring of its governance and finance. I've provide my proposal first, and then review the status quo for those not already familiar with it.

My Proposal

1. Finance PK-12 education entirely from state revenue with the increased state revenue demand financed with an income tax increase. This would require an increase from a 4.5% state income tax to a 6.53% state income tax.

2. Eliminate all property tax and car tax funding of schools. This would reduce real property taxes, business personal property taxes, and motor vehicle property taxes by an average of approximately 60% across the board statewide, although the reduction would vary by school district and by locality within school districts. Districts will low property tax rates due to large property tax bases per student would receive the least benefit.

3. The State of Colorado would guaranty all school district municipal bonds to which property tax revenues had previously been pledged.

4. Replace the elected state school board with a school board appointed by the Governor with approval from the state senate, with staggered terms. (While we are at it we should do the same thing in the case of the CU-Regents, which are also elected statewide on a partisan basis.) This would reduce the number of statewide elected officers per voter by four.

5. Replace existing school board elections for the general public, with internal elections conducted on a one enrolled student, one vote basis, in which parents or guardians vote as proxies on behalf of their children of less than high school age (the vote for a student with two parents would be split in half, one for each parent), and high school students would vote for themselves. A single transferrable vote system would be used (and would be more feasible given the smaller number of voters involved). In Denver this would reduce the number of school board posts per voter to vote upon per election cycle by three. A set of rules and processes related to school district campaigns would be developed to fit this new kind of election.

6. Future bond issues would have to have the support of the same people who vote for school board (so that major capital projects get parent-student approval), but could only be made if the Colorado Department of Revenue certifies that the school district will have enough revenue to service the bonds for their term and agrees to guaranty those bonds. 

7. End all state and local elections in odd numbered years, outside home rule cities or cities and counties that can make their own rules.

Why?

* It resolves inter-district school funding level and tax burden disparities in a fair way.

* It provides a stable funding base for education that is appropriate to what it funds.

* It makes Colorado's state and local tax system less regressive.

* This is a boon to lower income property owners and vehicle owners, and tends to make housing more affordable.

* It eliminates conflicts between state government and local government in school finance.

* It is basically neutral in terms of tax administration costs since the process of collecting property taxes and the process of collecting income taxes would remain largely unchanged with only the amounts due changing.

* School boards make decisions on how to spend school funds (they don't have the power to raise funds with taxes without state legislature or voter approval), which are only salient to students and people not related to students shouldn't have a say in that matter. But, it gives a say to non-citizen parents and parents of students from outside the district who make school choice decisions to attend there.

* Frequently, the combination of the different voter base for school boards, and the use of a single transferrable vote system, would provide a voter base that would appropriately reflect the greater diversity of children enrolled in schools in an area than the local community as a whole.

* Giving high school students a vote in real school board elections is an excellent way to build habits of good civic participation, and high school students are old and wise enough to participate in making these decisions.

* It substantially reduces the burden imposed on voters by eliminating elections for the general public in odd numbered years.

* It substantially reduces the burden imposed on voters by ending general public elections for local school boards, the state school board, and local bond and mill levy issues that impose a significant burden on voters to investigate and vote upon. It would reduce the number of candidate races per four year election cycle per voter by seven and would also reduce the number of ballot issues each voter would have to evaluate.

* Elections for Governor, the State House, the State Senate, and state TABOR voters would provide an adequate protection to taxpayers in the general public and adequate general public supervision of the educational process, in a manner with a similar political lean.

* While this is a substantial overhaul, it wouldn't require federal legislation or changes in federal appropriations. This is a major improvement in public policy that could be achieved despite gridlock on most policy issues at the federal level. 

* It isn't likely to result in meaningful positive or negative externalities outside of Colorado, something that is a major consideration for high education financing reforms where interstate travel by students is common.

Background: The Complex Status Quo In Colorado

PK-12 Governance

Currently, the state is divided into school districts that provide PK-12 education that are governed by school boards elected in odd numbered years by all registered voters in the district. These voters also vote on requests from school boards for property tax funding and in order to authorize significant debt financing of capital expenditures with municipal bonds to which property tax revenues and other revenues of the district are financed. 

Neighboring school districts may established Boards of Cooperative Education, which are joint ventures of two or more neighboring school districts to cooperate to provide services such as vocational schools or special education services that smaller school districts could provide more efficiently with the economies of scale provided by a joint venture. These BOCES, as they are called, are governed by officials selected by representatives of the member school districts and are financed with funds from the member school districts' funds.

Some PK-12 education policy issues, other than school finance, are handled by an elected state school board. For example, the state school board sets statewide curricular standards, approves certain charter or voucher school applications, and can intervene to place school districts that are in crisis in a receivership type status.

School Choice

The default rule is that students in a public school district are assigned to attend the school appropriate to their grade in the system in their neighborhood with each elementary school, middle school, and high school having its own territory within the district. Many schools have multiple programs that have distinct student bodies for most classes and different curricula and teachers, while sharing things like sports teams, school dances, and cafeterias, and students in those schools, on a space available or applicable basis, can be placed in one of these programs at a neighborhood school. 

But, students can attend a school outside their assigned territory within the school district is there is more than one school at their grade level using a school choice system, and a system of statewide school choice exists to allow students who reside in one school district to attend a school in another school district. To utilize the school choice system, one applies to attend a neighborhood school outside your own neighborhood to the extent that there is space available there. Sometimes one can apply more specifically a special program in a school of choice. 

Also, the school system has authorized "charter schools" and "voucher schools" which are public schools with almost no district level supervision that don't have an assigned neighbor and admit students who choose them based upon applications and the choice system rules. 

PK-12 Finance

School boards are financed through a combination of local property tax collections and from state funds appropriate from the state general fund budget that is raised predominantly from state income and state sales taxes. 

State PK-12 funds are distributed to school districts based upon a formula established by the state legislature which begins with a per enrolled student dollar amounts, with adjustments for certain higher need enrolled students, and is further adjusted at the aggregate level based upon the property tax revenues that the district raises. The mix of PK-12 funding in the Denver Public Schools (from here) is fairly typical:

In fiscal year 2017-2018, in the Denver Public Schools, total expenditures per K-12 student were $11,476.

Property taxes to finance the operations (mill levies) and municipal bond payments (redemption mills) for the local school district typically make up a majority of the property tax burden. There is a certain baseline mill levy rate that a school district can impose without voter approval. There is also a maximum amount of property taxes that the state allows a school district to impose. Voter approved property taxes above the minimum amount are called mill levy overrides and the extent to which local taxpayers approve them varies considerably.

Because some school districts have a larger property tax based per student than others, the amount of money raised by a given mill levy varies. Some school districts can generate more tax revenue than they need from a low mill levy, while others generate very little tax revenue even from a maximum level mill levy. Schools with less property tax revenue generating capacity (generally rural farming based areas, areas heavily impacted by tax exempt government property, and low income urban areas) receive more state funding than schools with more capacity to fund themselves with property taxes (such as ski resort towns). For this reason the state funding component of PK-12 funding to school districts in Colorado is called a "state equalization payment."

Specifically, as a March 3, 2020 article from the Colorado Sun explains:

Currently, Colorado sends about $453 million in state funds to districts where school property tax rates are below the level needed to fully fund themselves, or below 27 mills. . . .

Colorado’s history of inequitable school funding was set in motion in 1988, when property tax rates were all over the place, similar to how they are today. . . .

The legislature aimed to establish a consistent level of investment in schools through a uniform tax rate, mandating all districts levy the number of mills at which they would be fully funded, or at most 40 mills. That would have resulted in local communities covering half of the funding needed for K-12 education with the other half contributed by the state. . . .

By 1991, all districts had reached 40 mills or the number that would enable them to be fully funded with local property tax revenues. But in 1992, Colorado voters passed the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which capped the amount of revenue the state government and local governments could generate and spend. In K-12 education, that cap was dictated by growth in inflation and student enrollment. . . .

That posed a problem for school districts in communities where the assessed value of properties was rising rapidly, causing them to generate revenue amounts above their constitutional limit.

The solution: decrease property tax rates.

In some communities, particularly those experiencing an oil and gas boom, property values soared, causing property tax rates to plummet, [for example in] Primero RE-2 School District in rural Las Animas County. That district’s property tax rate dropped from 40 mills in 1993 to 1.68 mills in 2006.

Some districts in Weld County also cut their property taxes and mill levies and are fully funded because of oil and gas values. Those districts include Pawnee School District Re-12, Prairie School District and Platte Valley School District RE7.

In 2007, after property tax rates had continued to fall, the legislature stepped in and froze the rates to keep them from ratcheting down. At that point, some districts were approaching 0 mills. . . .

That legislative decision, she said, also froze inequities in place with no way for districts to resolve them and no incentive to change because they can count on the state to backfill budget gaps.

The resulting system has been an unbalanced one in which wealthier school districts are in many cases receiving state funding at the expense of districts in lower-income communities, and the state’s role in funding public education has become increasingly outsized.

The scales have tipped so far that the state is now providing 61% of education funding while local communities cover the remaining 39%, according to figures provided by the Colorado Children’s Campaign.

State funding per student varies greatly in across Colorado's 178 school districts: 

Rural districts receive large upward adjustments in per pupil funding, despite their low cost of living due to the diseconomies of scale associated with having small schools with low enrollments, and because their property tax base is anemic.

School districts typically own the buildings and facilities used to provide education in their district which are funded with municipal bonds that are repaid with voter approved bond redemption millage. Sometimes, school districts made their buildings available to charter schools or voucher schools in their district which rent the spaces from their budgets.

A lot has changed since October 24, 2005 (including the state income tax rate) when I summarized state and local finance in Colorado, but some of the broad outlines remain the same:

A single comprehensive solution can solve the problems above to a great extent.

Colorado currently collects the following amounts of taxes:

State Income Tax-------$3,972M at a 4.63% flat rate.

State Sales Tax--------$1,849M at a 2.9% rate.

Local Sales Taxes------$1,862M at an average 2.95% rate.

School Property Taxes--$2,048M

Other Property Taxes---$1,366M

About 25% of Colorado's aggregate property valuation is business property now assigned to bear 55% of the total property tax burden. About 75% of Colorado's aggregate property valuation is reisdential property assigned to bear 45% of the total property tax burden.

The gas tax currently brings in about $900 million a year, with no funds currently being contributed for transporation spending from general revenues, but the Department of Transportation needs $1.4 billion a year to maintain state roads in a way that will match growing expenses and traffic.

As of 2019-2020, state K-12 education spending was $4,405.2 million of general fund money and $1,780.7 million of other state funds. The total state general fund revenues are $12,641.4 million, of which $8,387.6 million comes from state income taxes (net of diversions to the state education fund which funds K-12 education outside the general fund).