Aguilar: City reckons with ruling, faces $42M fiscal hole
Repost from John Aguilar, Denver Post
Lakewood is about face a costly reckoning with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights — to the tune of more than $42 million.
That’s the amount the state’s fifth-largest city has calculated it owes to dozens of cell phone carriers and telecommunications companies it wrongfully taxed for years. The bill is now coming due after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled last year that the city had violated TABOR, a state constitutional amendment, by levying a business and occupation tax without first obtaining voter approval.