A collection of Colorado conservation groups wants voters to approve a measure to de-Bruce sales tax revenue collected on outdoor sports equipment across the state and direct the money – an estimated $130 million annually, which otherwise would be refunded to taxpayers – toward open-space protection and wildfire mitigation.
The proposal by Conservation Colorado, The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land and Western Resource Advocates was submitted to the Colorado Legislative Council on Dec. 23. The proposal must be reviewed by Legislative Council Staff and the Colorado Title Board before advocates can begin collecting signatures from Colorado voters.
They need more than 124,000 signatures before the measure can reach the November 2026 ballot.
Backers say exempting taxes collected on sporting goods sales from the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights would protect watersheds, conserve landscapes, open recreational access and reduce wildfire threats as federal funding ebbs.
“While the state has done a lot … to invest in the outdoors, we’re just recognizing the mounting risks and headwinds facing us,” said Tarn Udall, a senior attorney with Western Resource Advocates. “We need to act now and do more to protect our communities and continue to preserve the things we all love about living in this state.”
So-called de-Brucing proposals – named for Douglas Bruce, author of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), approved by voters in 1992 – allow governments to keep and spend tax revenue that typically would be refunded under the measure. But the conservation proposal is more complicated than most. The state doesn’t track how much sales tax is collected on specific goods, so legislative staff would have to estimate it each year.
The proposal would not affect the state budget and would not increase or create new taxes, advocates said. It would not raise the cost of making or selling hunting, fishing, camping, golfing, cycling, boating, snowmobiling or other outdoor sports equipment.
The measure would funnel the expected $130 million a year into existing grant and partnership programs run by Great Outdoors Colorado, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the Colorado State Forest Service. It would direct 47.5% to a fund protecting communities and water sources from wildfire and another 47.5% to GOCO land and water conservation.
CPW’s Outdoor Equity Grant Program would get 2.5% of the retained sales tax. The Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office would also receive 2.5%, or about $3.25 million annually – a significant increase for both programs.
The money would support regional partnerships under the Colorado Outdoors Strategy, which unifies statewide efforts with goals of climate-resilient conservation, sustainable outdoor recreation and coordinated planning and funding.
“Colorado has always been a leader. We created GOCO in 1992 and we have incentives and funding programs that are the envy of many other states,” said Aaron Citron, head of Colorado policy for The Nature Conservancy. “We were able to be successful because we’ve leveraged a lot of federal money and that, as we all know, is being called into question. So Colorado wants to continue to be able to take this on and lead as a state where this is such a high priority.”
The funding would exponentially increase support for forest health and wildfire mitigation as federal dollars ebb. The scale of that problem, particularly for Front Range homes near forests withering in an increasingly dry climate, “is so massive and we are only scratching the surface” with existing state wildfire mitigation funding, said Jim Petterson, Colorado and Southwest region director for the Trust for Public Land.
“Now we have pine beetles getting into ponderosa systems right on the edge of the Front Range and that’s only going to grow exponentially in the next ‘X’ number of years,” Petterson said. “If we don’t have a response to that, the Marshall fire is going to look like a small problem.”
The Trust for Public Land has momentum on conservation ballot measures. The group has worked on 67 successful Colorado ballot questions that increased land-protection funding. Nationally, it has supported 650 successful measures delivering $112 billion for conservation over 25 years. More than 85% of the measures backed by the Trust for Public Land win voter approval.
A primary motive for the ballot measure is protecting watersheds from wildfire, which can clog complex collection systems.
“These forested watersheds are the source of drinking water for everyone in the state,” Petterson said. “Whether that’s Coal Creek for Crested Butte or the South Platte for Denver or Fountain Creek for Colorado Springs. If we are not figuring this out, we are going to have a catastrophic failure of our water systems.”
