Shortly after declaring, “I don't like being right all the time. It would be nice if I could be wrong,” on his August 1 show, Jon Caldara of Newsradio 850 KOA repeated the falsehood that Referendum C was “promised” to voters as costing a fixed amount. In fact, as Colorado Media Matters has repeatedly pointed out, the 2005 Colorado Blue Book specified in its analysis of the voter-approved referendum that the $3.7 billion figure it cited was an “estimate” of the revenues the state could retain under the measure. Moreover, the Blue Book explicitly stated that the “exact amount of the spending increase could be higher or lower, depending on the economy and the amount of money collected.”

Caldara -- who is also president of the free-market Independence Institute -- made his comments about Ref. C after criticizing two other voter-approved measures he said have caused budget problems for the state: Amendment 23, passed in 2000, and FasTracks, passed in 2004. Caldara then stated that in 2005 the Independence Institute “said that Referendum C, which took away our TABOR [Taxpayer's Bill of Rights] tax refunds, that it wasn't going to be the $3.1 billion that they were guesstimating, but it'd probably be closer to double that. He then added, ”I said 5 billion [dollars]; I, I was being conservative. It's now 5.9 billion. So I've got a pretty good track record here, kids. Now, I don't like being right all the time. I don't like being right all the time. It would be nice if I could be wrong."

Although he did describe the original figure for Ref. C as a “guesstimat[e],” Caldara later suggested that it was sold to voters as costing a fixed amount. After stating, "[W]e gave you guys Amendment 23, which guarantees you'll have more education money each and every year," Caldara added, "[W]e passed Referendum C, which is now almost double what it was promised to cost us."

In fact, the Blue Book analysis of Ref. C explicitly described a figure of $3.7 billion as an estimate -- not a promise, as Caldara claimed -- of the state revenues that could be spent under Ref. C's provisions. Furthermore, in approving Ref. C, Colorado voters authorized the state “to retain and spend all state revenues” through 2010, suspending the spending restrictions imposed by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) on state coffers. [emphasis added]

As Colorado Media Matters has noted (here, here, here, and here), Caldara has repeatedly spread misinformation about Ref. C.

From the August 1 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Jon Caldara Show:

CALDARA: Now, let's look at the ones that I lost. In 2000, I ran a campaign against Amendment 23. Amendment 23 was a spending mandate. It says that every year in Colorado we're going to spend more money on education whether or not we have the money to spend it. I said, “This is fiscal suicide. This is nuts. We can't do this. It'll really hurt higher education because that's where they'll have to pull money out if things go bad.” Instead, the proponents said -- and they used a economist to say it -- and I quote, “It would take economic devastation on par with the Great Depression for Amendment 23 to adversely hurt the budget and to take money out of higher ed.” And, of course, most of higher ed stayed silent on this -- these are colleges in Colorado -- because they figure they could just raise taxes later.

Well, I got involved in the fight. It was in the mid-70 percent when I got invited, or involved in it. And we brought it down to 52 percent on, on Election Day, which is pretty amazing -- thinking that we were running against: Jared Polis' multimillion-dollar campaign. But guess what? We were proved right. Amendment 23 did squeeze the budget. It destroyed the budget. It took money out of higher ed. Huh, we were right on that.

What is it? FasTracks, RTD's tax increase. Didn't we say -- and nobody seems to remember -- that not only will this do almost nothing to alleviate traffic congestion, it will be over budget and underfunded. Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. And no one seems to remember we said that. And then in 2005, we said that Referendum C, which took away our TABOR tax refunds, that it wasn't going to be the $3.1 billion that they were guesstimating, but it'd probably be closer to double that. I said 5 billion; I, I was being conservative. It's now 5.9 billion. So I've got a pretty good track record here, kids. Now, I don't like being right all the time. I don't like being right all the time. It would be nice if I could be wrong. So, I tell you what: Do you really want me to be right again? Do you really want me to be right about “Rittery care” coming to Colorado, and how it's going to happen, and what's in, what it's going to cost? Hmm?

[...]

CALDARA: All right, I've got an idea, guys. Since we continue to put more money into education -- we gave you guys Amendment 23, which guarantees you'll have more education money each and every year; since we passed Referendum C, which is now almost double what it was promised to cost us, with a third of that going to K through 12 education; since we've given you in Denver public schools what's known as pro comp, which is a way to give better-performing teachers more money without, without telling, without telling poorer-performing teachers that they'll get less, so it only goes in one direction. So we've given you all these wonderful assets of more money for education, and still our kids are stuck. Reading scores do not improve. Things stay there. Disappointing scores by Colorado students.