2026 Voter Guide

This year we have 22 ballot measures at the state, county, and local level to vote on. That's a lot. Part of the reason we have so many is TABOR, which requires all questions of taxation to go directly to voters. Another part of the reason is because our state politics are heavily tilted towards Democrats, which means that conservatives feel they have to circulate ballot measures in order to get their initiatives heard. I don't personally agree with this strategy, but it is what it is. Some of these measures will shape the city I'm asking to help run as much as anything council does in the next four years. Others are statewide and have nothing to do with the job, but you're filling them out anyway, so here's where I landed and why.

The city

2K, the $400 million bond: No. 2M, the debt limit: Yes.

These two travel together, so I'll take them together.

I want every building on the 2K list. Fire Stations 1 and 5 are past due, and South Boulder Rec has been limping for years. I'm still voting no, because wanting something fixed and being ready to borrow $400 million for it are different questions, and the city hasn't answered the second one. The ballot caps the principal at $400 million and the total repayment at $650 million. Nothing caps the interest rate the city gets on the morning each piece of that debt goes to market, and when rates move the wrong way, what gives is the buildings. Meanwhile it took a records request and a column in the Boulder Reporting Lab this summer before the city assembled a full accounting of what it has spent on Alpine-Balsam, eleven years and well over $200 million in. You can't manage what you've never added up.

What I'd do instead: take the two pieces nobody argues about, South Boulder Rec and the public safety buildings, size them on their own, publish the estimate and initial designs, then pitch them as their own ask to voters. Deliver those on time and close to budget, under the watchful eye of an auditor, then come back for the rest.

2M is a different question. Our charter caps city debt at 3 percent of the assessed value of property in Boulder. State law for cities uses actual value, and so do most Colorado cities. The gap between the two opened up over decades as the state kept cutting residential assessment rates, which shrank our borrowing ceiling to roughly $151 million without a single Boulder voter deciding it should. Raising a ceiling doesn't borrow a dollar. Any real debt still has to come back to you for a vote because of TABOR, and that's the control that matters. So I'm a yes on 2M and a no on 2K, and I don't see any tension in that. Fix the yardstick, and decline the ask.

2J, the vacancy tax: No.

The city's own counts of vacant homes have ranged from about 500 to about 4,000, depending on who counted and how, and the low number came from water data, which can't tell a lawn sprinkler from a person living there and doesn't see condos at all. If the goal is getting homes back on the market, $4,000 a year is a rounding error to someone who owns a $3 million house and leaves it empty in February. Vancouver, the example everyone points to, charges 3 percent of the home's value. If the goal is revenue, the revenue is a guess, and it goes to the general fund rather than housing anyway. I'd rather spend that political capital on what actually adds homes: making it simple to turn empty offices into something useful, and letting the missing middle get built in our neighborhoods.

2L, firefighter bargaining rights in the charter: Yes.

Firefighting is one of the jobs this town can't do without, and the people doing it accept risks the rest of us don't. They already bargain collectively under a contract and a city ordinance. 2L writes that right into the charter, so their ability to negotiate pay that keeps up with the job doesn't depend on whoever holds the contract or the council majority in a given year.

The county

1A, early childhood care and education: Yes.

If we want families to live here, we have to support them, and that means supporting child care. 1A is a real tax, about $115 a year on a $725,000 home, and it goes directly to making child care and preschool affordable and to keeping the people who do that work.

Question 200, five commissioners instead of three: Yes. Question 201: three by district, two countywide.

Three is simply too small. At that size, any two commissioners make a quorum, so two of them can't sit down one-on-one to talk through county business without it legally becoming a public meeting. Five lets the board work the way a board should. On 201, three district seats keep most of the board tied to where people actually live, so the bigger towns still carry most of the voice, and two countywide seats open the door to people with new skills who would never win a single district but would make the board better.

The rail district

7A, Front Range passenger rail: Yes.

A train needs to run more than three times a day to work. The service already planned for 2029 is three round trips, and nobody builds a commute around three trains. 7A pays for the additional trips that give the line a chance to bootstrap real ridership, and the northern line runs through Boulder.

The state

None of the fourteen statewide measures is something a city council member gets a vote on. I've read every one anyway, and I'll tell you where I landed on each, including the two I leave up to you.

First, the rule that did most of the work for me: Amendments change the state constitution while Propositions change state law. A law the legislature passes can be fixed next session if it doesn't work. An amendment takes another statewide election to undo. So I hold amendments to a higher bar: they should be about the structure of government and our basic rights, not policy that belongs with the legislature.

Amendments 81 through 85: No on all five.

You'll notice a pattern here: three of these five were written by Advance Colorado, a conservative group that doesn't disclose its donors, and the other two come out of the law firm Advance uses. Every one takes a question that belongs with the legislature and tries to settle it in the constitution instead, and the money behind every one comes mostly from out-of-state and national groups. Each also has its own problem.

81 would require local police and prosecutors to report certain charged noncitizens to federal immigration. By the best estimate from state filings, about 96 percent of the money behind the yes campaign came from outside Colorado. How our police and prosecutors work with federal agencies is a criminal justice question, and it belongs with the legislature, where it can be debated and fixed when it doesn't work.

82 would create a constitutional right to natural gas. How we heat our homes and what goes into a building code are legislative questions. What I find most telling is who isn't here: the gas industry's own trade groups don't show up anywhere in the state's campaign finance records backing it. If the people who sell the gas won't put money behind this, I'm not sure why the rest of us should put it in our constitution.

83 would create a constitutional right to hunt and fish. About 79 percent of the money on the yes side came from out of state, most of it from a single Wisconsin organization. Beyond that, the amendment never defines what "traditional methods" means, which is the part that would actually matter in court. Given who's paying for it, I wouldn't assume they mean groups of men heading out with spears.

84 would add an ID number to mail ballot envelopes. According to the state's campaign finance records, the yes campaign is funded almost entirely by national conservative groups, most of them from outside Colorado. On its face, another check could be a reasonable way to add to the security of our elections. But the right way to do that is a change in state law, which can be adjusted quickly if it isn't working. An amendment can't.

85 would require ballot titles at an 8th-grade reading level. That's five for five, y'all. If Advance Colorado worked this hard to get sane conservatives elected to the statehouse, we'd all benefit, starting with shorter ballots. The asymmetry is what gives this one away. The rule applies to citizen initiatives but exempts the legislature's own measures, and its practical effect is to strip the "here's what this tax cut costs" disclosure off exactly the kind of tax-cut measures its backers like to run. I'm all for plainer ballot titles. I'm not for this.

Amendment 86, mid-decade redistricting: No.

Finally, an amendment that actually belongs in the constitution. Our independent redistricting commission is already there, so at least that part is right. That said, I hate that national political gamesmanship has reached the point of redrawing congressional maps in the middle of a decade. Some states are doing exactly that to tilt their delegations, and this measure would tie Colorado's hands while they do it, further disenfranchising Democratic voters in the pursuit of power. I don't think Colorado should stand by while that happens.

Amendment 87, the graduated income tax, and Proposition 136, the 4.4 percent cap: Your decision.

These two are a pair. 136 exists only to collide with 87, and if both pass, the state's own analysts say a court may have to sort it out, so whichever way you land, ensure your votes align. This one is your call, and the ballot language is clear enough to make it. Odds are it will pass, given the language, but that passage will mean the state avoids a significant budget crisis in the coming years. I don't like tax hikes any more than the rest of us, but I understand why this is on the ballot.

Proposition NN, keeping TABOR refunds for schools and kids: Yes.

Which brings me to NN. Supporters put Colorado's school funding gap at about $3.5 billion, roughly $4,000 per student, and NN puts real money against it for named purposes: teacher pay, class sizes, preschool, and child care. It protects the property tax exemptions for seniors and disabled veterans, and what it costs you in the first year is a refund about the size of a dinner out. It also passes the test I applied to everything above. The legislature referred it, it changes state law rather than the constitution, and TABOR requires that voters approve it. Nobody is going around anybody. And it puts real money toward kids and schools without raising anyone's tax rate.

Propositions 132 and 133, fentanyl and trafficking sentences: No on both.

These two share a flaw. Both replace a judge's judgment with a mandatory sentence.

On 132: go after the dealers, absolutely. But this would send someone to prison for a mandatory eight years for sharing a trace amount, and judges couldn't weigh whether that person even knew it contained fentanyl. It also hands the state a bill of about $68 million a year by year five with no funding source attached, on top of a budget that's already short. I'd be glad to vote for something aimed squarely at the people actually moving this drug.

On 133: I want the people who traffic children locked up, and I'd support longer sentences for them. What I can't support is a law that could hand a coerced victim the same mandatory life sentence as the person who trafficked her. Children who are trafficked are often forced to recruit other children, and under this measure no judge could weigh that once they turn 18. Mandatory minimums that take discretion away from judges are the wrong tool, even for a crime this serious. Maybe especially for a crime this serious.

Propositions 134 and 135, school sports and surgery for minors: No on both.

I read both of these the way I'd read anything as an auditor: what does it actually require, and does it fix a problem that exists?

134 creates a statewide mandate for sex-based school sports teams with no method for verifying anyone's sex, no enforcement at all against private schools or colleges, and an unresolved conflict with Colorado's anti-discrimination law that guarantees a lawsuit. And it isn't needed to do what its supporters say they want. Between the Supreme Court's June ruling, last year's CHSAA settlement, and the NCAA's own rules, schools that want sex-separated teams can already have them. What 134 adds is a mandate down to elementary school with nobody able to say how it would work.

The same lens applies even more strongly to 135. The state's own analysis says Colorado's three major pediatric surgical providers already don't perform these surgeries on minors, and a national study of insurance claims found none at all for children 12 and under. So 135 bans something that, as far as anyone can document, isn't happening in Colorado's major hospitals. Meanwhile its wording turns on the purpose of a surgery rather than the surgery itself, which creates real uncertainty for doctors and insurers handling procedures that have nothing to do with gender. This is a medical-practice question, and the Colorado Medical Society opposes it.

Proposition 137, sporting goods tax for conservation and wildfire: Yes.

Wildfire is one of the three things I'm running on, and this is the biggest increase in wildfire funding on any ballot this year: about $83 million a year to the state agencies that do forest and watershed work, roughly four times what they get now. Most of the mitigation that protects Boulder's neighborhoods along the wildland edge is city and county work, but state forest dollars and grants reach Boulder County, and the forests that burn toward us don't stop at the city limits. It doesn't raise anyone's tax rate, and it changes state law rather than the constitution.

That's all twenty-two

You won't agree with me on every one of these, and that's fine. I'd rather you know where I stand and disagree than guess. If I got a fact wrong, email [email protected] and I'll fix it and say so on the page.

Ballots are due by 7pm on November 3. If you're mailing yours, get it in the mail by October 26. After that, use a drop box or a vote center.

The quick list