Denver’s 7A: Voters say RTD can keep taxes, remove TABOR cap
RTD Question 7A was poised to pass with 69% of the vote from eight metro counties, as of 8:50 p.m. Tuesday.
"It's still early but I'm excited to see the support so far for 7A," said Danny Katz, CoPIRG executive director, said around 8:30 p.m. "Transit cuts pollution and is a safer and cheaper way to travel without a car. We started the year with the legislature and Governor investing historic funding in transit and we're ending the year with voters across our region appearing to say yes to keep RTD's transit moving forward."
RTD's past authority to keep excess TABOR money is expiring, and 7A allows RTD to keep it again for coming years. The current RTD sales tax rate would not change.
The so-called "de-Brucing," named after TABOR author Douglas Bruce, is a common ballot request from local taxing agencies.
In RTD's case, a "yes" vote on 7A allows RTD to keep projected revenue of about $50 million to $60 million a year above the expected TABOR cap instead of refunding that amount to millions of taxpayers.
Local elected officials and pro-transit nonprofit groups aligned behind 7A, with no real organized opposition. Some individuals, including at least one former RTD board member, did raise pointed questions about RTD's recent performance and wondered whether rejecting the de-Brucing would signal to current leadership that riders demand improvements.
RTD, one of the largest transit agencies in the West, gets only about 5% of its budget from riders paying fares. By far the great majority of RTD money, $932 million or 75%, comes from the 1% RTD sales tax consumers pay in the eight-county district .
If sales tax revenue rises above the cap placed each year on local government revenue by the TABOR, RTD would have to return $50 million to $60 million a year to individual consumers. (The cap is determined by annual increases in population and inflation.)
Current RTD Board Member Lynn Guissinger gave big-picture and practical reasons why the transit agency deserved to keep any money over the cap. RTD has made good progress recently, she said, in hiring to bolster its driving and train controller corps to begin restoring routes and frequency cut back in past years.
The agency is also embarking on the highly anticipated East Colfax Avenue "Bus Rapid Transit" rebuild, which creates dedicated fast lanes for transit and increases bus frequency to every few minutes, Guissinger noted. Construction will begin this year. The Colorado Department of Transportation is also working with RTD to study similar formats on busy Colorado and Federal boulevards.
Taking away a significant chunk of RTD revenue would have hurt agency efforts at a time when local officials, air pollution activists and nonprofits are all demanding more transit options, not fewer, Guissinger said.
Voters have previously approved long extensions of RTD's TABOR exemptions, she said.
And on the practical side, returning $60 million a year would have been a nightmare, she noted. The RTD sales tax is paid by tourists, business travelers, children buying candy or other nonessentials, as well as millions of metro-area residents. Tiny checks or ride vouchers or some kind of compensation would have had to go out to 2 million or more locations, Guissinger said.
A group called Keep Colorado Moving organized the endorsements and support for a "yes" on 7A. CoPIRG, a consumer-oriented nonprofit working on transit, air pollution and recycling issues, made a strong endorsement, and in it mentions others in the coalition including AARP, the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, the NAACP, Downtown Denver Partnership, Servicios de la Raza and Denver Streets Partnership.
Former RTD board member and current Jefferson County Commission candidate Natalie Menten was one of the few who spoke out against RTD keeping the tax money.
"My time on the board was pulling my hair, often actually, in frustration with what was a transportation model created back in the early 2000s, and that transportation model has changed so much since then that that model really does not work very well anymore," Menten said.
COVID and affordable housing demands shifted potential riders away from the expensive hub-and-spoke light rail system focused on downtown Denver that RTD created starting in the 1990s. Regional bus and rail fares became so expensive, though lowered recently, that riders found other means of commuting.
RTD's ridership has dropped dramatically, falling to 65 million boardings in the past year from 103 million in 2015.
Now the agency is locked into systems that are very difficult to reform, she said.
Ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft can provide individual rides cheaper than RTD's most heavily subsidized, infrequent fixed routes in areas like the Jefferson County foothills that Menten served, she said. (Though advocates note those services are not always accessible to RTD riders most in need.)
Meanwhile, RTD's route and frequency cutbacks have made the service impossible to ride for regular workers frustrated by having to wait an hour between buses, or make multiple connections to get home.
Getting a TABOR refund back would have helped residents find "a transportation mode that fits them best, and that's what TABOR's about — not overcharging taxpayers, and letting them make the best choices," Menten said. In leaving the money with RTD, Menten said, "I don't see good return on the dollar for the taxpayers."
