The Denver Post's convenient omission on RTD tax

Here we go again: The steady drumbeat you hear emanates from the band marching between RTD headquarters and Denver city hall. Baton-twirling to lead the pack is newly-inaugurated mayor Michael Hancock, who is quoted in today's Post supportive of a 2012 transit tax hike.

That's not much of a surprise - Hancock is a loyal liberal - but the newspaper's coverage is disappointing. Any discussion of revenue for FasTracks is incomplete without examining RTD's total tax burden. Reporter Jeffrey Leib only mentions a campaign to "double the existing 0.4 percent FasTracks sales tax."

Readers could be forgiven for thinking RTD's tax stands at just 0.4 percent, but that stands on top of the district's pre-existing 0.6 percent rate, for a total sales tax of one penny on every dollar. Doubling the FasTracks component would not only mean FasTracks demands the lion's share of RTD's taxing authority, but that the total sales tax would rise to 1.4 percent. Saying so would make the story much clearer and call into question RTD's overall fiscal position.

What's worse, there's no mention of a January report from RTD's own staff claiming FasTracks would "need" a 0.2 percent sales tax boost to be complete by 2027. That's a far cry from the 12-year timeline originally sold to voters, but the fact remains Hancock is publicly backing a plan that is itself double what RTD's own staff thought could be sold to the public.

Here's the bottom line: There are myriad ways to make a tax-related news report fair, and not all of them involve quoting an anti-tax activist. However, omitting key context really undercuts a story's balance.