Ritter's arrogance, undeterred

Face The State Staff Editorial

Give credit where credit is due. Gov. Bill Ritter is gutsy these days. Even after having a controversial tax increase he championed slapped down in district court as unconstitutional, he remains undeterred. The Governor will use your tax dollars to backfill his endless promises to taxpayers.

RitterFTS File Photo

On Friday, Denver District Judge Christina Habas sent shock waves throughout Colorado when she ruled that Ritter’s 2007 tax “freeze”, passed into law by the state’s Democrat legislators and which raised $118 million in revenue this year alone, amounted to an unconstitutional tax increase. Under Colorado law, all tax increases must be approved by voters, not simply adopted by a majority of state legislators. Ritter’s plan, according to Habas’s reasoned ruling, was a tax increase.

Ritter has only been emboldened, telling The Denver Post, “We’re still confident in our position here, we really are...We understand this is in greater flux than it was, but we have to still go forward and budget with what we believe will be in place.”

In other words, Ritter is banking on the likelihood of the Colorado Supreme Court to overturn Habas’s ruling on appeal. And maybe he’ll win his gamble with a notoriously liberal high court. (Last month, under the direction of Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey, the court issued an opinion that gives unions free reign to ignore important coordination prohibitions under Colorado’s campaign finance laws).

But he may lose. Habas declined to refund to taxpayers the $118 million already collected, saying it was potentially outside the scope of her authority and an issue that both sides didn’t have time to thoroughly litigate. The justices may disagree, however, and if this battle drags on into the next fiscal year, taxpayers could be owed upwards of $300 million. What then?

Ritter took a gamble. He lost. And now he is expecting you to pay for his poor political gamesmanship. While several proposals were introduced in the legislature that would have set the revenue aside until the lawsuit was decided, Ritter declined to back such a cautious approach.

Lawsuit organizer Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, summed up Ritter’s approach moving forward. “They’re going to say, ‘You’re going to hurt the children,’” he told the Post. “No. These people hurt the children by passing an unconstitutional tax increase.”

But to Ritter, constitutionality is just about finding the right court.