The Senate's Republican leader helped kick off the 2008 session Wednesday by urging fellow lawmakers to embrace a GOP plan of action on issues like health care and education--and by calling on the governor to sign two Republican bills he has said he supported.

In remarks made on opening day of the 2008 legislative session, Republican Senate leader Andy McElhany of Colorado Springs stressed the need for "practical solutions to our most pressing problems," but without burdening taxpayers or relying on the government as a cure-all. 

A hotly debated, statewide property-tax hike that Gov. Bill Ritter pushed through the legislature last year is now projected to take $3.8 billion from home- and business owners over the next 10 years. That is more than double the $1.7 billion in revenue that was estimated when legislative Democrats approved the measure at the Ritter administration's behest in the 2007 session.

The change reflects an updated economic forecast by the nonpartisan state Legislative Council, as reported in a front-page story in today's Denver Post. 

Republican Senate and House members, who almost unanimously had opposed the tax hike from the outset, issued a told-ya-so to the administration. 

"It's modern-day bank robbery," Rep. Cory Gardner, a Yuma Republican who requested the new estimate, told the Post. "The fraudulent part of this is it's done without a vote of the people."

Added Republican Sen. Mike Kopp, "We believe it was a reckless overreach last year, and the new numbers bear that out more than ever." Kopp, of Littleton, is carrying a measure with Gardner to let voters reconsider the Ritter tax hike.