In a December 3 article about the Mesa County Commission's vote to join a potential lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 199, the state legislature's mill levy freeze, The Daily Sentinel of Grand Junction failed to identify the “free-market” agenda of the Independence Institute. Further, despite having reported that Mesa County would “join the Golden-based Independence Institute in a legal challenge commissioners insisted wasn't politically motivated,” the Daily Sentinel failed to report the think tank's history of lawsuits and ballot initiatives.

As the Daily Sentinel reported, “Mesa County will be a major plaintiff in a lawsuit to stop a plan by Gov. Bill Ritter and the Democratic-controlled Legislature to freeze local property tax rates that would otherwise drop.” The article continued:

The Mesa County Commission voted Monday to join the Golden-based Independence Institute in a legal challenge commissioners insisted wasn't politically motivated.

The mill levy freeze, signed into law in May, is projected to cost Mesa County residents an additional $7.8 million in property taxes.

The commissioners said the suit is an effort to deal with constitutional issues around whether they have the authority to certify the mill levy they contend would undercut the constitutional provisions in the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.

In addition to not identifying the Independence Institute as a “free-market, pro-freedom” policy research organization, the article, by Gary Harmon, failed to note the think tank's “long record of bringing legal actions or running issue campaigns at the ballot box,” as the Rocky Mountain News reported on May 9. Colorado Media Matters has identified examples of the Independence Institute's political advocacy, including:

• As the May 9 News article noted, the institute filed a lawsuit against the 1996 ballot proposal Amendment 15 in order to “to halt campaign finance limits proposed by Colorado Common Cause.” On August 10, 1999, responding to the institute's lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Sparr ruled portions of the campaign finance reform ballot measure to be unconstitutional.
• The institute also filed a legal challenge to the 2001 Colorado ballot item Amendment 26, a proposal to build a monorail along the I-70 corridor from Denver International Airport to mountain ski resorts. According to a November 6, 2001, News article (accessed through the Nexis database), a Denver district judge ruled that supporters of the proposed measure had enough valid petition signatures to get the issue on the ballot. The Independence Institute had sued to block the petition, saying the inclusion of thousands of disputed signatures was illegal. The think tank also led the electoral opposition to that measure, which voters rejected.
• The think tank unsuccessfully opposed the FasTracks public transportation referendum that Denver metro-area voters approved in 2004.
• In 2005 the Independence Institute opposed the successful Colorado ballot issue Referendum C, which 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.
• The think tank also filed a lawsuit on October 11, 2005, against Amendment 27, which capped campaign contributions and set campaign spending limits. Critics of the amendment, which voters passed in that year's election, claimed that it mainly benefited Democrats.
• In 2006, Independence Institute president Jon Caldara conducted a petition drive for Initiative 88, a proposed ballot measure that would cap Referendum C revenues at $3.7 billion. The measure would have returned any revenues above $3.7 billion to taxpayers “in order to offset home energy costs.” The proposal failed to get on the 2006 Colorado ballot because, according Caldara, the ballot's backers did not have sufficient funds to promote the initiative successfully.
• Most recently, the Independence Institute sponsored the "Ask First" campaign, which attempted to block payroll deductions of union dues at the city and county level. Ask First helped promote measures on the November 6 ballot in Greeley and Englewood, where voters defeated them, and in Centennial, where it passed.