What Does Proposition 137 Mean for Douglas County? $175 Million a Year in Sporting-Goods Tax for Water, Land and Wildfire, Paid Out of Your TABOR Refund

Proposition 137 is the quietest large-dollar measure on the ballot. It does not raise a tax. It takes the sales tax the state already collects on sporting goods, about $175 million a year, out from under the TABOR revenue limit, and sends it to conservation, water and wildfire work instead of to the general fund or your refund check.

Why this one is concrete in Douglas County

Most statewide measures are abstractions here. This one is not. Unincorporated Douglas County spent August 20 to September 17 under Stage 1 fire restrictions. The county commissioners approved a $4.2 million contract this year to build a hangar for the county's helitack helicopter, the only county-run helitack team in the state. The wildland-urban interface runs from Roxborough through Sedalia, Perry Park and Larkspur to the Palmer Divide, and the county's open space program sits in the middle of it. A Common Sense Institute analysis cited by Colorado Politics estimates the measure would add about $65 million a year to state wildfire mitigation. Douglas County would be a natural applicant for that money and for the GOCO conservation share.

Set against that: Douglas County households buy a lot of sporting goods, so they pay a disproportionate share of the tax being redirected, and they collect TABOR refunds that would shrink by tens of dollars in surplus years.

Who is behind each side

The yes campaign, Protect Colorado's Land and Water, Prevent Wildfires, had raised about $3.5 million by the September filings, led by The Nature Conservancy's $1.4 million, and is fronted by former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, former Sen. Mark Udall and former Gov. Bill Ritter. Its core claim, citing Pew, is that a dollar of mitigation saves six dollars of disaster cost.

Opposition comes from two directions. A committee called Protect Colorado's Land, Communities and Tax Dollars argues the wildfire money would fund "industrial logging" and that thinning does not prevent fire, citing peer-reviewed research. The League of Women Voters opposes it on process grounds, because it locks up general-fund revenue outside the legislature's control. The Gazette's editorial board has come out against it as "the wrong way to care for forests."

The arguments

For: the money already exists, the uses are popular, and the wildfire share is the kind of spending that is cheapest before the fire. GOCO, funded by lottery money since the 1990s, already puts state dollars into local open space; this adds a second stream.

Against: it is a permanent earmark that shrinks TABOR refunds and takes $175 million a year out of a general fund that pays for schools and Medicaid in the years the state is under its cap. And if you doubt that thinning and prescribed burning reduce fire severity, you doubt the premise of half the spending.

The Douglas County frame

This is a county that benefits from wildfire mitigation money more directly than almost any Front Range county, and that dislikes earmarks and refund reductions more than most. Proposition 137 asks it to choose. The number to hold in your head is the trade: $26 to $83 a year off a refund in surplus years, against a share of $83 million a year in fire and water work, some of which would be spent within sight of your house.

More: all 14 statewide measures for Douglas County, every race and measure on your ballot and the full November ballot guide. We do not tell you how to vote on measures; we tell you what they do here.