Job creation, budget stabilization top CACI's legislative priorities.

• Author: Berry, Chuck
• Position: Guest column - Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry

TO LAY THE FOUNDATION FOR COLORADO'S future economic success, stabilizing the state's budget and creating jobs top the legislative agenda of the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry this year. The CACI board of directors selected these two critical objectives to guide CACI's lobbying at the Colorado General Assembly.

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If Colorado is perceived by business investors to be in a continuing budget crisis, this perception will significantly hurt our state's ability to recruit, retain and create new jobs. To address that issue, the CACI board approved nine policy principles that we will use to evaluate various budget-stabilization proposals in the legislature:

1. CACI supports the right of the people to vote on any proposed tax increases, which is a provision of TABOR.

2. TABOR should be amended to eliminate the "ratchet-down effect" for state and local tax revenues caused by economic downturns.

3. Any proposal to capture lost revenue from the reduced spending base caused by the recent recession should require voter approval.

4. Proposals to abolish the TABOR refund should contain a permanent phase-out of the local business personal property tax to replace the less reliable state corporate income tax credit received by companies when there is a TABOR surplus.

5. Any proposal to ask voters for authority to spend the TABOR surplus in coming years should include a portion to provide funding for Colorado's transportation infrastructure.

6. If the voters are presented with a proposal to abolish the TABOR surplus and refunds, the statutory Bird-Arveschoug 6 percent general-fund spending limit on annual operating expense increases should remain in place and should only be exceeded with voter approval.

7. The long-term solution to the state's budget dilemma must address not only TABOR but also Amendment 23 and the Gallagher amendment.

8. We discourage the General Assembly from adopting any more short-term measures (which some have called "gimmicks") to deal with the budget dilemma on a year-to-year basis.

9. We oppose the creation of new ways to tax business.

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