Education advocates, standing outside the downtown building which houses the secretary of state’s office, turned in 142,160 signatures Monday to place Initiative 25, which would inject almost $3 billion into preschool through higher public education during the next five years, on the Nov. 1 ballot.

Surrounded by children, parents, volunteers, colleagues from the state Legislature, and dozens of boxes filled to the brim with signature packets, state Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, laid out the Bright Colorado coalition’s case for voters to approve what would amount to a tax hike.

“People understand that education, jobs, and economic development go together,” Heath said. “It came across loud and clear to me that people in this state value education, are willing to invest in it, and are willing to make this modest investment to accomplish this objective.”

The signature gathering campaign, which was completed in a period of about two months, was a mixture of grassroots volunteers led by political activists and organizations, and paid petition circulators — not uncommon in statewide petition drives, where 86,105 valid signatures from registered Colorado voters must be certified by Secretary of State Scott Gessler for the initiative to earn placement on the ballot. However, that paid circulation did not come cheap, as campaign finance records show the committee Support Schools for a Bright Colorado raised just over $151,000, and spent over $111,000. The vast majority was paid to Samuel Lopez, Jr. of Westminster for “consulting and professional services.” According to Heath, it was “to get the signatures.”

According to standard policy in the secretary of state’s office, a five percent random sample of the petitions will determine if enough of the signatures are valid. If, however, the sample does not have enough valid signatures to “project” sufficiency, workers will then proceed to go through the petitions booklets line-by-line until the threshold is met, or they run out of signatures.

It seems unlikely, however, that this initiative will fall short given the history of previous signature gathering efforts for ballot initiatives in years past. In 2009, for example, advocates for the controversial trio of anti-tax ballot initiatives, Amendments 60, 61, and Proposition 101, gathered roughly the same number of signatures as Initiative 25 and were easily placed on the November 2010 ballot.

Those initiatives were all shot down by wide margins by voters in 2010, but the anti-tax atmosphere that spurned their creation still stands as a major roadblock to the passage of Initiative 25. Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is often quoted as saying that the state currently “has no appetite” for tax increases — a fact that is not lost on the proponents.

However, other education-oriented groups have recently come forward to endorse the proposal, including the Colorado Association of School Boards and the Colorado Association of School Executives. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce has not weighed in on the issue yet.

“Many people didn’t think we would be able to do this,” Heath said, referring to doubts from conservatives that the coalition would get enough signatures for the ballot. “I think the overwhelming response,” he said, “sends a very clear message that people are ready to support education and make that investment,” adding “we have the opportunity right now to take a giant step forward and do something positive.”

Eric Brown, the Governor’s communications director, said Heath has done an “impressive job” with his signature gathering efforts. “We appreciate the passion behind [Sen. Heath’s] commitment to education funding,” but added that “the Governor made a promise to Colorado voters in 2010 that he would balance Colorado’s budget without seeking a tax increase, and he is keeping his word.”

If Initiative 25 passes, taxes would return to levels not seen since the late 1990s, when sales and income tax rates were lowered to current levels because a then-booming economy was creating large annual surpluses. Constitutional requirements in the Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR) demand that all surplus revenues be returned to the taxpayers, and lawmakers thought it prudent at the time to reduce tax rates on the front end rather than issue large TABOR refunds every year. Under Initiative 25, the state sales tax would be increased from 2.9 percent to 3.0 percent, and the corporate and personal income tax rates would be increased from 4.63 percent to 5.0 percent.

TABOR isn’t the only constitutional amendment factoring in to the education funding debate. In 2000, Colorado voters approved Amendment 23, which mandated an annual increase in money for K-12 education. However, with two recessions in the past decade, such spending increases have not occurred according to Lisa Weil, director of policy and communications for Great Education Colorado, a non-profit group that advocates for increased funding for education. “Because of the budget crunch,” she said, “the legislature reinterpreted Amendment 23 from the way that it had been interpreted for nine years,” to allow for reduced spending.

Great Education Colorado was one of more than forty groups that helped collect petitions for the campaign — in particular gaining notoriety for their use of online tools to allow volunteers to print out petition packets from home, and then organizing meetings at large events, often publicized via social media sites like Twitter, to get their petitions notarized. “We got a petition from Calhan [population: 896] with fifty signatures,” Weil said. “I doubt they’ve ever even seen a petition in Calhan because paid petitioners just don’t go there.”

Not everyone sees the initiative with the same excitement, though. Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, a free market oriented think tank, told The Colorado Statesman that he thinks the initiative is “the wrong tax increase, at the wrong time, for the wrong state.” Noting that Gov. Hickenlooper is unlikely to endorse the measure, Caldara said, “it speaks to the likelihood of this thing getting absolutely tubed.”