Arapahoe County and Jefferson County voters decided on Tuesday night to allow their local governments to retain and spend taxes they have collected, bringing the two counties up to speed with many others that have already done so.

Issue 1A in Arapahoe County received 71% of the vote, with 218,970 votes counted, the unofficial count on Wednesday morning showed. Meanwhile, Issue 1A in Jefferson County led by a smaller but still comfortable margin, 57.5% to 42.5%, with 332,545 votes counted.

Under Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, voters may allow their respective governments to “de-Bruce” — that is, permit a county, municipality, or school district to eliminate TABOR’s revenue limit and use all the taxes it has collected for spending priorities. The phrase references the constitutional amendment’s author, Douglas Bruce.

Arapahoe County and Jefferson County were two of just a handful of counties that still operated under the TABOR limits. 

Arapahoe County officials said they placed the measure on the ballot after years of insufficient tax revenue and increased demand for services. Its approval allows the county to retain roughly $74 million more tax revenue in some years.

The proposal technically does not raise taxes, officials said. 

Commissioner Carrie Warren-Gully, who was re-elected to another term by a wide margin Tuesday night, said the county’s budget was one of the biggest challenges she faced going into her next four years on the commission. 

Warren-Gully and her fellow commissioners said they did a lot of outreach to residents about the county’s budget and the option to ‘de-Bruce,’ and she is pleased with the result of their work. 

“It’s gratifying that our voters in our community see that we provide a lot of essential services and that they believe that we’re doing the right work with those essential services,” she told the Denver Gazette on Wednesday. 

Residents likely won’t see the impact of the ballot measure until 2026, she said, since the 2025 budget is already balanced, which required cutting about $29.5 million. 

Over the years, the budget challenges have created a backlog in county work, and county officials will need to be “thoughtful” about how they use the new funding to fill that backlog, Warren-Gully said.

The money will largely go toward infrastructure and public safety, she said, and residents will start seeing the funding midway through 2025, when the county starts its budgeting process for 2026.

“There’s a lot of need, and this seems like a big pot of money, but we have to be really judicial with it,” she said.

As the county has grown, so did the need to “de-Bruce,” she said, explaining the delay in following suit with other counties breaking away from the TABOR limits.

“Arapahoe County has always prided ourselves on being fiscally responsible and using our taxpayer dollars in the best way possible,” she said. “As we’ve gotten bigger and inflationary measures have put pressure on our budget, we’ve just recognized that there’s just no way to keep up.”

The funding won’t change the focus on being efficient with taxpayer dollars, Warren-Gully said, but it will help them keep up with growth.

“I don’t see a real mind change in being efficient and wise with taxpayer dollars, but it does give us a little bit of a cushion to be able to keep up with the growth and changing needs of Arapahoe County,” she said.

Looking west, folks in Jefferson County also voted to remove TABOR restrictions by a margin of 57.46% to 42.54%, a difference of almost 50,000 votes, according to the latest tally.

This was the third time in five years that officials asked voters to keep and spend revenue collected above the limits imposed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

For the county of 593,000, which is facing a $20 million budget shortfall in 2025, the passing of 1A will keep an estimated $54.5 million in the government’s coffers. A significant portion of that would have been refunded to taxpayers.

Newly elected District 1 Commissioner Rachel Zenzinger said that problems began when the TABOR cap was artificially reduced during the pandemic. Once lowered, the cap cannot be restored to its original level without voter approval. As a result, she said, Jefferson County has been operating under a restricted revenue cap, even after implementing spending cuts.

County officials said that if passed, the funds from 1A would be used primarily for essential county services, such as public safety, transportation, county infrastructure, wildfire and flood mitigation, mental health programs and crime prevention.

“The needs of the county did not diminish, but Jeffco was expected to, somehow, pay the same number of bills with less money,” Zenzinger said, pointing to what county officials described as $600 million in transportation needs. “Passing 1A is the first step in addressing that backlog of needs.”

“This means that we will have more resources to dedicate towards fixing potholes and plowing roads,” said Cassie Pearce, Jefferson County Public Affairs Director. “We can also improve much-needed support to our first responders and emergency management personnel.”

However, some critics of the ballot measure remain skeptical of the county’s ability to control spending.

Natalie Menten, a TABOR Foundation board director who ran unsuccessfully for the District 2 commissioner seat, said, “The ballot language and financial disclosure were misleading and didn’t include known financial impact.”

Measure 1A includes language that calls for regular audits to ensure funds are spent exactly as specified on the ballot.

The biggest win for the county, Zenzinger said, is that it can now pursue more state grant money, which would have put it over the limit under the TABOR cap.

Jeffco dodged budget cuts for a few years due to the availability of federal ARPA funds, which Zenzinger said did not count toward the revenue cap calculation. But without those federal dollars, the county would have to consider serious cuts to the general fund, impacting services such as public safety, she said. 

The proposal’s passage means taxpayers won’t get a tax refund check.

In 2019, the commissioners voted to place a similar ballot measure, but nearly 55% of voters shot down the proposal. The measure appeared again on the ballot in 2022 and the result was close — with 50.53% of voters saying “no.”