What Does Proposition NN Mean for Douglas County? Smaller TABOR Refunds, More School Money, and How It Stacks With 5A

Proposition NN is the only measure on your ballot that came from the legislature rather than a petition drive, and it is the one most likely to be misread. It does not raise a tax rate. It changes what happens to money the state already collects above the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights cap: today that money comes back to you as a refund; under NN the state keeps it, and K-12 schools get first call on it for ten years.

What TABOR refunds actually are

Colorado's constitution caps how much revenue the state may keep each year, at last year's amount plus inflation and population growth. Anything above the cap is refunded, in good years through the income tax return and in some years through a sales tax rebate or a temporary rate cut. NN would raise that cap, so the surplus stays in Denver. The surplus above the cap is what is on the table, and it swings with the economy. The Blue Book estimates the state would actually keep about $500 million in the first year, and says that under current forecasts NN would eliminate TABOR refunds in 2026-27 and 2027-28. In a recession there may be no surplus and NN does nothing. In a strong year, the Blue Book says, the refund hit could exceed $1,000 per taxpayer.

What it costs you

The Blue Book's example: a taxpayer earning $100,000 would see about $28 less in their 2027 refund, $56 for a couple filing jointly, because the refund goes to zero; in 2028 the same taxpayer gives up $68, or $96 on a joint return. That grows in years when the surplus is larger. Opponents, citing a Common Sense Institute analysis, put the ten-year total at roughly $7,300 per taxpayer, which assumes large surpluses every year. The truth is somewhere in between and depends on an economy nobody can forecast for a decade. What is certain: a Douglas County household at the county's roughly $145,700 median income gives up a joint refund of somewhere between $56 and $76 for 2027 and between $96 and $162 for 2028, by the Blue Book's table, and more in strong years.

What Douglas County schools would get

The first-tier money, for teacher pay and retention, career and technical courses and smaller class sizes, is about $110 million in the first year and $220 million in the second, distributed by each district's share of statewide school finance funding. DCSD educates roughly 7 percent of Colorado's public school students, so its piece of that would be on the order of $7 to $8 million in year one and roughly double that in year two. The Blue Book also counts about $130 million in first-year K-12 money for disability services, school services and instructional hours, which the legislature allocates however it chooses, so the district's share of it cannot be estimated; if it were split by the same share, DCSD's first-year total would approach $17 million. Those are our estimates from the pupil share, not district figures. The district's charters would receive their per-pupil share through the same formula.

Set that next to the district's own ask on the same ballot. Ballot Issue 5A is a $54 million a year local override, paid by Douglas County property owners, for teacher pay, security, career and technical education and elementary music. NN is state money, paid by every Colorado taxpayer's smaller refund, and in year one it is a fraction of 5A's size for this district. They are not substitutes. A voter who thinks DCSD is underfunded has two different levers here; a voter who thinks it is not has two things to vote against. The one thing NN cannot do is close the specific pay gap between DCSD and Cherry Creek, Littleton and Jeffco (about $7,000 to $19,000 in average teacher salary, per the state's figures), because those districts get money through the same formula.

The case each way

For: Colorado ranks near the bottom of the country in per-pupil funding and, by one state-commissioned measure, last in teacher wage competitiveness, and a state study put the adequacy gap at $3.5 billion a year. NN does this without a new tax or a rate change, and unlike Proposition CC in 2019 or HH in 2023, it is narrow: schools first, preschool and child care second. The Colorado Education Association's president, Kevin Vick, calls the simplicity "the real power of this measure."

Against: a refund you no longer get is a tax increase, whatever the mechanism. "Money that is overtaxed and then turned to retention is just confirming that it is a tax," Rep. Ken DeGraaf said on the House floor. The bill's ceiling of $4.6 billion a year is far above the roughly $500 million the state is expected to actually keep in the first year, and once the cap is raised it does not come back down. And, as Rep. Chris Richardson pointed out, the promises about class sizes and teacher retention are things local school boards control, not the state.

The Douglas County frame

This county is TABOR country. It is also the county with the most expensive housing and, per the district, the lowest-paid teachers in the metro. NN asks Douglas County voters to trade a refund of tens to hundreds of dollars for a few million a year to DCSD and a lot more to poorer districts elsewhere. Whether that is a fair trade is exactly the kind of question TABOR was written to make you answer yourself.

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.