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John Michael Kefalas (born December 26, 1954) is a politician in the U.S. state of Colorado. An educator and lobbyist before first running for the legislature in 2004, Kefalas defeated a Republican incumbent to win election to the Colorado House of Representatives as a Democrat in 2006. Kefalas won election to the Colorado Senate in 2012 and represented Senate District 14 until early 2019. In 2018, Kefalas ran for and won a seat on the Larimer County Board of County Commissioners. He resigned his Senate seat, and a vacancy committee nominated Joann Ginal to replace him.
From 1980 to 1994, Kefalas redirected a portion of his federal income taxes to charitable organizations as a protest against United States military actions in Central America. He has paid his income taxes in full since 1994, but continued to boycott the federal telephone excise tax as recently as 2004. As a result, Kefalas has had a lien filed him and has had wages garnishment. Kefalas has paid his back taxes and considers his actions to be a conscientious protest. He has also written about his experience of "war tax resistance" for the newsletter of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. In both his 2004 and 2006 legislative campaigns, Kefalas was accused of avoiding his federal tax obligation, both by his Republican opponent and by independent political committees. Kefalas has also been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq War, and has engaged in non-violent civil disobedience in protest of the war.
Kefalas is married; he and his wife Beth have two sons — Harlan, an active-duty U.S. Army soldier who has served in Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, and Timothy, the coach of the Colorado State University ultimate frisbee team.
While in the legislature, he sponsored successful bills to encourage state purchasing of "environmentally preferable" products, to allow Colorado State University to require graduate student health insurance, and to create licensing standards for hemodialysis technicians.
Kefalas proposed a bill to explore alternative , which was defeated in committee, but which led to the creation of an 11-member multi-partisan task force to study related issues. Another of Kefalas' proposed bills, which would have required the Colorado Department of Revenue to regularly report on tax burdens across individual income groups, was also defeated in committee.
During his first year in the legislature, Kefalas also founded the bipartisan Common Good Caucus to address poverty issues, and was a member of the Hispanic Caucus and the Diabetes/Obesity Caucus.
With Sen. Ron Tupa, Kefalas was the house sponsor of legislation designed to reduce the cost of college by requiring textbook publishers to disclose costs and offer textbooks Product bundling from additional materials, and he sponsored legislation to allow outpatient surgery centers to establish peer review committees; both bills were signed into law by Gov. Ritter. For his support of ambulatory surgical centers, Kefalas was awarded the Legislator of the Year Award by the Colorado Ambulatory Surgery Center Association later that year.
Kefalas also sponsored a bill to authorize local pilot tests of ranked choice voting methods. Kefalas sponsored a bill to establish a Colorado Housing Investment Fund, but withdrew the bill when proponents moved forward with a similar ballot initiative. He later expressed frustration when plans for the ballot measure were withdrawn. Building on his 2007 bill to allow purchasing of "green" products, Kefalas also sponsored a measure to require Colorado governments to consider products' expected life and cost of ownership in making purchasing decisions, which was signed into law.
Among Kefalas' top priorities is restoring and expanding Colorado's earned income tax credit, a move which met with resistance from legislative leaders in 2007 due to budget constraints. Kefalas introduced a bill in the 2008 session to restore Colorado's EITC at ten percent of the federal credit, but the bill was defeated in a House committee.
Former Rep. Bob McCluskey announced his intention to run against Kefalas in February 2008, pitting the two against each other for the third time in as many election cycles and creating a competitive race in what was seen as one of Colorado's "swing" districts.
During the campaign, Kefalas held a fundraising advantage over McCluskey, with $60,000 cash on hand — three times as much as McCluskey — in mid-September. By late October, Kefalas had raised over $100,000, about $15,000 short of McCluskey's fundraising total; which included $65,000 that McCluskey donated to his own campaign.
McCluskey targeted Kefalas with a direct mail advertisement blaming Kefalas and the Democratic state legislature for high gasoline prices, a tactic Kefalas dismissed as "negative campaigning." Kefalas also condemned independent ads attacking McCluskey's legislative record as having "crossed the line of civility." The 527 group Accountability for Colorado also spent over $50,000 in support of Kefalas' re-election, including mailers attacking McCluskey's legislative record; Kefalas also expressed disapproval of these advertisements.
McCluskey's bid to unseat Kefalas was endorsed by the Denver Post, while Kefalas was endorsed by the Windsor Beacon and the Fort Collins Coloradoan. Kefalas ultimately won a second term with about 59 percent of the popular vote, becoming the first Democrat to win re-election in the east Fort Collins district since 1936.
Kefalas also sponsored the Colorado Innovation Investment Tax Credit, legislation to create $750,000 in tax credits for in startup companies, to increase support for job training programs, and to create a Colorado Railroad Authority to begin planning for statewide passenger rail service.
Kefalas also sponsored legislation to create an Economic Opportunity/Poverty Reduction Task Force, which he chaired following the regular session. The committee's objective is to develop plans to reduce Colorado's poverty rate by half in ten years, examining a broad range of issues from economic development to education to transportation to tax policy, and it considered potential legislation on topics ranging from the earned income tax credit to rent control.
Following the legislation session, Kefalas was the only male legislator honored with the Colorado Lawmakers Award by the Denver Women's Commission and the Colorado Women's Chamber of Commerce.
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