Lakewood and Jeffco To Spend Money To Keep Your TABOR funds

When you run out of money for your expensive spending habits, you might self-evaluate. Responsible people, find ways to cut costs or perhaps hire a financial advisor. Lakewood and Jefferson County have both opted for a different path – spend money on a consultant to research potentially successful ballot arguments to let the government keep taxpayer TABOR refunds.

The government cannot legally spend money campaigning on ballot initiatives. However, by starting before they put the measure on the ballot, Lakewood and Jeffco have months to figure out how to shape the narrative – and use your tax dollars to do it. As long as they don’t know it will be on the ballot, use of funds in what could be a “pre-campaign” or “fact-finding” effort is legal. Once the measure is on the ballot, use of funds must be stopped immediately.

“no public funds, including County staff time working with the Consultant under the contract, will be expended as of the moment in which the Board of County Commissioners makes a decision to move forward with any ballot initiative. no public funds may be spent advocating for a ballot issue once a decision has been made. Therefore, all terms of this contract must be completed before the Board of County Commissioners decides whether or not to move forward with any ballot recommendations made by the Consultant.” – excerpt from Jeffco draft contract

excerpt from the Jefferson County draft contract

Lakewood’s Budget and Audit Committee has already agreed the City needs to keep future TABOR refunds. They recommend hiring a specialist to find out what voters would be willing to sacrifice their refunds for. The Budget Board did not recommend a specialist to find ways to cut spending or to find out if voters would be interested in keeping their refunds if they made cuts.

Jefferson County is following the same play book. They propose a “fact-finding” mission, during which they will inform residents of all the challenges they see and the only solution they can determine at this point.  Jeffco calls this implementation of “an educational outreach plan”.

The outreach plan, as currently discussed, does not educate residents on any merits of TABOR restrictions, refunds, or ways to operate within current budget levels.

No ballot language is needed to make internal spending prioritization. Ballot language is only necessary for retaining TABOR funds. However, one of the county deliverables is for different versions of ballot language and survey results to show what the public would be interested in voting for.

In any other situation, that would be termed a campaign strategy analysis.  

An alternative strategy is to ask residents to vote… Do you approve the government retaining your TABOR refund?

Neither government can answer what the money is NEEDED for specifically. The consultant is being hired to find out what you WANT to spend on money on. Winning the vote means framing the argument. Research shows how much the right words matter, making hiring these government consultants critical if they want a ballot measure to pass. For instance, Jefferson County found out that jails are critical so that’s what they used as a ballot issue last time. Lakewood found that residents wanted to spend money on parks. No research was done on controversial programs that would be easier to cut or spending prioritization.

Both Lakewood and Jefferson County will be voting to approve these expenditures at a future meeting, date not yet set.