Imagine with me for a minute what will happen if Amendment 21, entitled "Tax Cuts," passes next election.

Your home catches fire so you rush to the phone to call for help. You explain that your residence is engulfed in flames and to please send help! The person answering the call is sympathetic but informs you that you had better get a hose on it since the Fire Department has been closed ... tax cuts. So you grab the hose and begin to douse the fire when all of a sudden the volume drops to a trickle. Your neighbor comes over to help explaining that the water district had no funding and was unable to meet new growth demand ... tax cuts. When the fire is out and much of your home is destroyed, you call your insurance agent only to hear, "Oh, didn't you receive the cancellation notice? We can't insure homes that are not within a functioning fire district."... tax cuts.

Panicking and feeling sick, you feel your chest tighten and a pain in your left arm. You barely make it to the phone to call for an ambulance. The emergency personnel reluctantly instruct you to have someone bring you in because they no longer have an ambulance service ... tax cuts.

Unfortunately, you didn't make it. Now the dilemma for your family will be where to bury you since the cemetery district was dissolved due to, you guessed it, tax cuts.

The scenario goes on and on. And believe me folks, this is NOT exaggerated! These ugly and dire consequences could actually happen if the voters in Colorado do not reject Amendment 21 in November. This ploy by anarchist Doug Bruce in Colorado Springs is the most reckless and mindless attempt at so-called "reducing government" that he has come up with yet. And the incredibly scary part is that an unthinking vote by an uninformed electorate could conceivably pass this destructive amendment.

Claims by Bruce that the state will "back fill" the lost revenue of special districts, local governments and schools is incorrect. He has fabricated and continued promoting this ill-truth, even after the Legislative Council at the Capital made clear that there is no provision in the amendment for back fill.

Moreover, even if the state DID back fill these tax cuts, next year’s appropriations would have to be reduced 7.46% below last year, or a reduction of just under $400 million.

Readers must remember that because of TABOR, the legislature is only allowed to appropriate 6% above the previous year’s budget, even though the general fund revenues are growing at a 7.1% clip. If this amendment passes, next year the budget would be impacted -7.46% or a net change to appropriations of -13.46%. This simply does not make sense. Even if one believes that TABOR is a good idea, Amendment 21 definitely is not.

The devastating impacts this Amendment would have on special districts, including schools, are obvious. What about the state? If Amendment 21 passes, you can forget highway improvements and possibly even repairs.

The recently passed TRANS (Transportation Revenue Anticipation Notes) will have no future matching revenues to obligate since the necessary Senate Bill One transfers will go to zero. That means that none of the corridor projects will be constructed, including the I-25 Southeast Corridor project. How long will rural Colorado be able to fend off the front range scramble to "back fill" this loss so that they can complete this bottleneck? Probably not very long.

Finally, capital construction available funding will also become a goose egg under Amendment 21. Capital construction funding also includes controlled maintenance projects that address the infrastructure needs of our higher education facilities, prisons, state buildings and the state hospital. The Capital Development Committee I sit on is already wrestling with the issue of how to maintain our infrastructure with existing limited funding. The budget projections currently allow $204 million for out-year projects.

The controlled maintenance projections alone forecast a need of $350 million just to keep up our state facilities, never mind any new construction to meet a growing demand. If available funding goes to zero, there is no way the state will be able to keep these buildings from falling down around themselves.