On a ranch, you read the fine print before you sign. A grazing lease. A cattle contract. A land deal. This year’s ballot deserves the same care. While there are a total of 14 statewide measures, a handful hit home hardest for farm and ranch families, both good and bad.
Here they are:
Amendment 87 and Proposition 136: Your Income taxes. Amendment 87 replaces our flat 4.4% state income tax with six new brackets, topping out at 8.4% on income over $500,000. Supporters say most families get a small cut. Here’s what they leave out: ranchers don’t earn steady paychecks. We earn in lumps. Sell ground or sell the calves in the fall, and one year pushes you over the line. And once brackets are in the constitution, the legislature can raise the rates later. Proposition 136 caps the existing flat tax rate at 4.4%. Vote no on 87 and yes on 136.
Proposition NN: Your Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) refund. NN permanently raises the state’s spending cap in the name of schools. Nonpartisan staff estimate it costs the average taxpayer about $7,300 in refunds over ten years. A Joint Budget Committee member found roughly three-quarters of that money wouldn’t reach schools. Vote no.
Proposition 137: Wildfire funding. This one is hard for me. It keeps about $175 million a year in sales tax on outdoor gear, money 
that would otherwise come back as refunds, and sends it to wildfire prevention, water and conservation. As a fire chief, I know what that money could do on the ground. As a former treasurer, I know a TABOR carve-out never shrinks, and part of this one goes to land trusts and new state parks. Wildfire deserves a line in the state budget, not a raid on your refund. Difficult as it is, vote no.
Amendment 83: Right to hunt and fish. It writes hunting and fishing into the state Constitution as the preferred way to manage wildlife. Ranchers who watch elk eat their haystacks every winter know why that matters. It doesn’t cover endangered or nongame species. Vote yes.
Amendment 82: Right to natural gas. It protects your right to buy natural gas for heat and cooking, and would likely force changes to codes that push electric conversions. Plenty of ranches run on propane, which this doesn’t address, but the principle is right. Vote yes.
Ask four questions of every measure. What does it ask? What does it cost you? What’s missing? What does the ballot actually say?
Ballots are in the mailbox. Read yours at the kitchen table, not in a hurry.
Brita Horn is fire chief of Rock Creek Volunteer Fire Department, a former Routt County Treasurer and Public Trustee, former chair of the Colorado Republican Party, and a ranch wife in Routt County. She founded Western Firebrand, a voice for ranchers and rural families built on Faith, Fire, Farm, Freedom and Finance. She writes here as a private citizen.
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