John Kefalas

John Michael Kefalas (born December 26, 1954 ) is a politician in the U.S. state of Colorado.

Born in Piraeus, Greece, Kefalas earned a bachelor's degree in botany from Colorado State University in 1978 and then joined the Peace Corps in 1979, serving as an agricultural extension worker in El Salvador.

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.

After returning to the United States, he earned a master's degree in teaching, with a secondary science specialization from Fairleigh Dickinson University in 1982 and taught in the Poudre School District.

He has also worked as an employment counselor for Larimer County, Colorado, and as a health outreach worker.

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 garnished.

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.

From 1997 to 2004, Kefalas worked as a public policy advocate and community development coordinator for Catholic Charities until his departure amidst a controversy regarding his public support for Roe v. Wade and abortion rights during his 2004 legislative campaign.

Before entering the legislature, he directed the Colorado Progressive Coalition's Tax Fairness Project.

He has served as a member of the Fort Collins Housing Authority and the Colorado Social Legislation Committee, and, in 2001, won the City of Fort Collins Human Relations Award.

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.

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.

Kefalas first ran for the state legislature in 2004, winning the Democratic Party primary by only seven votes over Fort Collins councilman Bill Bertschy after a recount process that lasted for several weeks.

Kefalas lost the general election by fewer than 500 votes to incumbent Republican Bob McCluskey in a race that also included Libertarian Party candidate Jassen Bowman.

Kefalas ran unchallenged for the Democratic nomination in 2006, and narrowly prevailed over McCluskey in the general election.

In the 2007-2008 session of the Colorado General Assembly, Kefalas sat on the House Finance Committee and the House Health and Human Services Committee.

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 voting systems, 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.

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.

In the 2008 session of the Colorado General Assembly, Kefalas sat on the House Finance Committee and the House Health and Human Services Committee.

Representative Kefalas was joined by chief of staff Anne Bellows, a legal and civil rights expert.

For the 2008 legislative session, Kefalas worked with other Fort Collins legislators, particularly Rep. Randy Fischer, on bills to increase scrutiny of proposed uranium mining operations.

While one bill, which would require that groundwater quality be restored following mining operations, passed the state legislature and was signed into law, another measure, which would have created stronger public disclosure requirements for mining operations, was killed in committee, but later revived in the state senate.

With Sen. Ron Tupa, Kefalas was the house sponsor of legislation designed to reduce the cost of college textbooks by requiring textbook publishers to disclose costs and offer textbooks unbundled 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.

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.

Holding office in a closely contested district, Kefalas was expected to be targeted by Colorado Republicans during his 2008 re-election bid, which he formally announced in January 2008.

Kefalas won election to the State 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.