Statehouse insider Martin Hawver raised a statistical concern about the Taxpayer Bill of Rights proposal that failed in the Legislature this session. He noted in a commentary in Wednesday’s Eagle that “TABOR lite” would have required two-thirds majority votes in both chambers in order to raise taxes. That would mean, Hawver calculated, that as few as 14 state senators (just more than a third of the 40-member Senate) could determine the state’s tax policy. “That’s a lot of power to hand over to less than 9 percent of the 165-member Legislature,” he wrote. Of course, even with the current simple majority requirement, it only takes 20 senators — or just 12 percent of all lawmakers — to block a tax increase.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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