The news is surprising, so maybe that’s why the Independence Institute released a new poll on Coloradans’ disdain for new taxes at 5:02 p.m. on a Friday.

Usually that’s when politicos release news they hope the media ignores. I have no life, however.

Are you ready for this? Coloradans by nearly 2 to 1 want something for nothing when it comes to highways and new taxes, the Magellan Strategies poll suggests.

That sounds a bit like Democrats and Bernie Sanders’ free college.

It sure doesn’t sound like the libertarian-leaning think tank I know.

But Jon Caldara and Co. really hate new taxes, and they plan to run the Fix Our Damn Roads ballot initiative in November that will ask voters if lawmakers should find a few hundred million a year to put into roads instead of other programs.

The pollsters, who typically work for Republicans, found that 59 percent would support a new tax-free option to repay $3.5 billion in bonds for major road projects — looking at you Interstate 25 and I-70 through the mountains — if it doesn’t come with a tax increase.

Twenty-seven percent in the poll said no, and 14 percent were undecided.

Here’s how pollsters asked the question:

“Shall state debt be increased by three point five billion dollars ($3.5 billion) with a maximum repayment cost of five point two billion dollars ($5.2 billion) without raising taxes, by a change to the Colorado Revised Statutes requiring the issuance of transportation bonds, and, in connection therewith, shall bond proceeds be retained as a voter approved revenue change, and used exclusively to fund specified road and bridge expansion, construction, maintenance and repair projects throughout the state?”

The new poll is consistent with internal polling advocates have cited in the statehouse committees since March. Sure enough, statewide tax increases have a bad record, just 24 of 72 have passed since Colorado became a state. And voters have shot down two increases for schools in the last six years, with Caldara pulling back the trigger.

With or without statehouse politics, that’s a tough sell, even though several groups are looking at voters to pass a tax increase for transportation this year.

A tax hike isn’t even on the table in the Colorado legislature anymore, however. The Senate Finance Committee killed House Bill 1242 on a Republican-led party-line vote on Tuesday.

The bill would have asked voters to approve a sales tax of a half a penny on a dollar purchase, on top of the 2.9 cents the state already takes (and most municipalities have added local taxes and could push some close to a dime on a buck of goods with a new state sales tax.)

House Bill 1242 was co-sponsored by Senate President Kevin Grantham and Transportation Committee Chairman Randy Baumgartner, both Republicans with sway and, until now, swagger. So it took some legislative … uh, courage to kill that.

Republicans will offer a bill this week to take all the money from existing state budget by using 10 percent of the existing state sales tax, without allowing cuts to things like schools and prisons.

House Democrats won’t go for that, so when the session ends on May 10, legislative leaders will have to explain why they couldn’t find a compromise on what they identified as the most important issue of the session and chief mission in January.

“This is further confirmation of what we all already know,” Caldara said in his 5 o’clock on Friday statement. “Coloradans want our elected officials to do their damn job and Fix our damn roads, without raising taxes,”

“Fixing our roads is a core function of government which the state has purposefully ignored in order to spend our tax money elsewhere.”