As if Coloradans needed another reason to vote against the tax hikes of Propositions LL and MM — placed on this November’s ballot by our free-spending legislature — a new analysis released this week provides as good an argument as any. 

The Common Sense Institute’s latest report on the subject reminds us the fundamentally misguided state program that LL and MM are intended to bail out — “Healthy School Meals For All” — is a money pit. Adding tax dollars to it is like pouring water on quicksand.

That harsh reality was inevitable from the time the free food giveaway was created in 2022. That was the year ruling Democrats at the legislature evidently got bored with providing free meals only to the low-income children who actually needed them in Colorado’s public schools — and decided to feed all kids instead. Nearly a million of them daily. No matter what it cost.

So, it asked voters to ding the state’s upper-income households to pay for free school meals for all kids regardless of household income. Yes, even for kids from the same well-off homes that were taxed extra to fund the program. Whether it was the allure of soak-the-rich politics or simply the universal appeal of feeding kids — voters obliged.

What happened next shocked absolutely no one except, perhaps, the members of the legislature who had authored the program: It ran out of money. In a big way. 

As the Common Sense report points out, the program took in more than $100 million last year by slashing tax deductions for higher-income earners — yet ran a $56 million deficit, anyway. Lawmakers backfilled the gap that year out of the state’s general operating budget. Common Sense predicts the program could be running annual deficits topping $72 million by 2033.

Hence, the legislature’s gambit to hit up the public again with LL and MM. And lawmakers went back to the same well, for the most part, by asking voters to tax upper-income households even more. If MM passes this fall, those making at least $300,000 will give up more of their tax deductions, with resulting tax hikes amounting to $377 for single filers and $560 for those filing jointly. MM will rake in another $95 million a year in total for the program.

LL, meanwhile, will allow the program to withhold from taxpayers and spend $12.4 million in refunds of surplus revenue that was collected above constitutional taxing-and-spending limits under the program’s original, 2022 levy.

Incredibly, lawmakers decided in August’s special legislative session to siphon off some of MM’s revenue to fund another food assistance program to offset federal budget cuts. 

That’s right: Lawmakers plan to rob some of the proceeds from a tax hike voters have yet to approve — and that is supposed to cover a shortfall left by a previous tax hike, which, in turn, was intended to expand a meal program that made no sense to begin with. 

The Common Sense report suggests the program never will be solvent no matter how much money taxpayers pour into it: “Without consideration of the costs of the program and the possibility of revenue shortfalls, the program could easily run into more budget deficits requiring the state to ask for more money from taxpayers in the future.”

And maybe next time, lawmakers will seek to raise taxes on Coloradans of more modest means — having run off too many of the “rich” to states that don’t tax income at all.