Just in case it isn’t clear: A “no” vote on Propositions LL & MM on this fall’s statewide ballot means all Colorado schoolchildren from needy families still will get free school meals. 

That’s right; voting “no” on LL & MM won’t let any poor kids go hungry.

If, on the other hand, you vote in favor of LL & MM — a money grab placed on the ballot by Colorado’s legislature — you are voting to fund free meals for the children of everyone else. Meaning, kids from households that can afford to feed them and always used to do so.

The tandem tax hikes are in fact a bailout for the state’s absurd and fiscally foundering “Health School Meals for All” program, created only a few years ago by the legislature. 

Lawmakers at the time asked voters on the fall 2022 ballot to ding the state’s upper-income households with an income-tax hike to pay for free school meals for all kids — regardless of household income.

The program’s only discernible objective seems to have been to ensure all of the nearly 900,000 students enrolled in Colorado public schools never had to eat a home-cooked meal again. At least, not for breakfast or lunch. Paradoxically, the dubious effort aims to feed even those children from the same upper-income families that are footing the bill.

Now — in a development that will shock absolutely no one except, perhaps, the starry-eyed lawmakers who dreamed up the program — it has run out of money. The program took in more than $100 million last year by slashing tax deductions for higher-income earners — yet ran a $56 million deficit, anyway. Who knew playing camp cook for the whole state could run up such a tab! But, hey, there’s no time for arithmetic when you are feeding “hungry kids.”

But instead of giving up on the program and admitting it made no sense to start with — maybe even returning to the more modest, yet essential effort of feeding only lower-income kids — the legislature has doubled down. 

LL and MM ask voters to tax upper-income households even more. If MM passes, those making at least $300,000 will give up more of their tax deductions, with resulting tax hikes amounting to $377 for single filers and $560 for those filing jointly. MM will rake in another $95 million a year in total for the program. LL, meanwhile, will allow the program to withhold from taxpayers and spend $12.4 million in refunds of surplus revenue that was collected above constitutional taxing-and-spending limits under the program’s original, 2022 levy.

Anyone who believes that will cover the tab once and for all, or even for very long, would do better to invest in Florida swamp land or the Brooklyn Bridge. 

Indeed, a recent report by Colorado’s Common Sense report suggests the program never will be solvent no matter how much money taxpayers pour into it: “Without consideration of the costs of the program and the possibility of revenue shortfalls, the program could easily run into more budget deficits requiring the state to ask for more money from taxpayers in the future.”

We’ll say it again: “Healthy School Meals For All” doesn’t feed “hungry children”; they already were taken care of. The program is just a bottomless money pit. Trying to fill it is a fool’s errand. 

Vote NO on LL & MM.