Colorado school tax campaign gets underway

A campaign to raise income taxes to pay for public school upgrades gets started in earnest Thursday.

Gov. John Hickenlooper is headed to a Jefferson County high school to help launch the public campaign for Initiative 22. The measure would ask voters to increase income taxes nearly $1 billion a year to pay for school improvements including statewide full-day kindergarten.

Supporters of the measure have already turned in signatures to petition the question onto ballots. They’re still awaiting a ruling from the secretary of state on whether they made ballots this November.

If voters approve the schools tax, they’ll also enact an education funding overhaul that includes new accountability tracking.

The schools measure would join a marijuana tax question about excise and sales taxes on the newly legal drug