Face The State Staff Report
COLORADO SPRINGS - Despite being drastically outspent, a ragtag coalition of anti-tax activists is celebrating two victories from this week's city election: the defeat of a property tax extension and the passage of a measure that allows the city to accept federal funds for local projects without changing tax-and-spend limitations.
First on the group's agenda was defeating Issue 1A, which would have extended a city property tax to spend $3 million on "job creation business subsidies." Proponents claimed it would have put people to work in a down economy, but skeptical opponents called it corporate welfare, believing it would have been bad for small businesses already saddled with high taxes. It was defeated in Tuesday's mail-ballot election, earning less than 40 percent of the vote.
Sean Paige, a former editorial page editor at the Colorado Springs Gazette, led the fight against 1A, with support from Dan Cole and Citizens for Cost-Effective Government.
"As a concerned citizen, I've been watching for years as the corporate welfare racket grew in size and scope," Paige told Face the State. "A few corporations find out they can shake a few people down for incentives by playing our communities against each other and threatening to leave, and I didn't want to see that happen here. Anxiety over the local economy could have caused voters to break, but I'm glad to say they didn't. It's a virtue rather than a vice and I think that's a great thing about this community."
Behind 1A was a coalition of city leaders, members of the construction and real estate community, and a political committee named Jobs Now. Just days before the election, supporters had pumped $168,475 into the Jobs Now coffers, while opponents had come up with just $4,000, used to assemble a series of talking points distributed to voters.
Paige thinks his small but strong coalition of government watchdogs, along with an informed voting population, was successful in more ways than one this election. Besides defeating 1A, Paige and Cole also worked to keep a repeal of the city's Taxpayer Bill of Rights off the ballot. Instead, they supported Issue 1D, which addressed a problem with the city's TABOR spending cap that counted federal funds for local projects against the limit.
Voters passed 1D with a 2-1 margin.
Paige and his allies also faced a feisty Republican opponent in eccentric former state legislator and TABOR author Douglas Bruce.
According to Paige, Bruce urged Springs residents to simply vote no on every issue Tuesday, a strategy that worked well in the November 2008 election when voters faced 18 different ballot issues, but failed to resonate with voters this week.
"Now, we can focus on the things we need to do for economic development and to have a strong economy," said Paige. "We can become the city that created a great economy without paying incentives. We can serve as a model for a lot of other cities in the state and even across the country. We're the city that didn't play the game but still won."