On June 17, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 260, removing a bond issue that was supposed to appear on the ballot in the 2021 general election.

The Colorado State Legislature passed Senate Bill 260 on June 2, 2021. It included a provision to remove the bond issue that was scheduled to appear on the 2021 ballot. adopted largely along party lines with Democrats for and Republicans against.

The bond measure was designed to issue $ 1.337 billion in bonds to fund statewide transportation projects with a maximum repayment cost of $ 1.865 billion over 20 years. The measure was originally passed by the state legislature as Senate Bill 1 in 2018. It entered the 2019 ballot after two 2018 citizens’ initiatives designed to allow bonds for transportation projects: Proposition 109 (“Fix Our Bloody Roads”) and Proposition 110 (“Let’s Go Colorado”) – have been defeated.

In 2019, the measure was postponed until the 2020 poll. Lawmakers feared that the bond issuance appearing on the 2019 poll alongside the CC proposal, which was designed to allow the state to retain revenue at transport purposes, could cause both measures to fail. In 2020, the measure was again postponed to the 2021 polls due to economic concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The new transportation bill provides for transportation spending of $ 5.4 billion over 10 years. About $ 3.8 billion of the funds will come from new fees that take effect in July 2022, including fees on gasoline and diesel purchases, retail deliveries, Uber and Lyft trips, vehicle registrations. electric and car rentals.

The bill was also designed to create four new state-owned enterprises: the No-Reach Air Pollution Mitigation Enterprise, the Clean Transit Enterprise, the Clean Fleet Enterprise, and the Community Access Enterprise.

Businesses were established under the Colorado Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) Amendment of 1992. Businesses are public enterprises that provide goods or services for a fee or surcharge paid by individuals or corporations that purchase the goods or services. This contrasts with government agencies or programs that provide goods or services that are paid for by tax revenues. The company’s income is not taken into account in the TABOR limit. TABOR limits the amount of money the State of Colorado can collect and spend. Any money raised above the TABOR limit is returned to taxpayers unless voters allow the state to spend it.

The 2020 Proposition 117, which was approved by voters, was designed to require statewide voter approval of new state-owned enterprises if the companies’ projected or actual revenues from fees and surcharges are over $ 100 million in their first five years. Under Proposition 117, the income received for companies which were created at the same time or which have essentially the same objective are aggregated when calculating the application of this restriction. The four companies are expected to collect less than $ 100 million over five years.

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