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Let the home stretch begin!
A day after two House committees rejected every property tax bill brought forward by progressive Democrats, Rep. Steven Woodrow of Denver said the exercise made him think of a famous line from Garth Algar, the blond-haired co-star of “Wayne’s World.”
“We fear change,” Garth says anxiously, when a TV executive suggests changes to their eponymous rock music show.
Cast in the role of Garth — in Woodrow’s analogy — are Colorado’s property tax assessors, who have been a persistent thorn in the side of Democrats seeking to make Colorado’s property tax code more progressive over the past nine months.
Dating back to December, when Colorado’s bipartisan Property Tax Commission met for the first time, Democrats have put forward a number of ideas for how to design a tax cut that distributes more relief to low-income and middle-class homeowners, rather than higher earners who own more expensive homes.
The ideas include:
But these ideas either haven’t made it out of committee, or even off the drawing board and into a bill draft, in the case of the circuit breaker. In part, that’s been because of pushback from local officials who say that implementing complicated tax code overhauls will be difficult for counties to do without state assistance — especially rural ones with small staffs and limited technological capabilities.
“I could do the math on one property on a whiteboard, easy,” Keith Erffmeyer, the Denver County assessor told the House Finance Committee last week. “I need to push a button and do it for 180,000 properties in about two hours. And that’s where the programming comes in. The software is immensely more complicated than anybody can imagine.”
Already, he says, county assessor’s offices are struggling to implement tax code changes the legislature passed in Senate Bill 233. The most complicated of these, according to Erffmeyer: splitting the residential assessment rate in order to tax homes at a higher level for school districts than for local governments.
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OTHER STATES HAVE FIGURED IT OUT
Proponents, like Woodrow of Denver, point out that many of these ideas have been implemented in other states.
Thirty-three states have some sort of homestead exemption, according to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, although some of them — like Colorado’s — are only available to seniors. Garcia’s proposal was modeled after a policy in Minnesota. Another 16 states have some sort of circuit-breaker program that targets lower-income households, according to the Lincoln Institute.
To Woodrow, “it’s too complicated” isn’t a good enough reason to shelve every idea to make the tax code more progressive.
“It’s turned into a refrain — any time we propose something,” Woodrow complained in an interview. “If we listened to them every time we’d still be doing things on pen and paper.”
Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, a Lakewood Democrat who served on the tax commission, was an early proponent of a circuit breaker, but set the idea aside last legislative session. The challenge: the Department of Revenue would need to work with county assessor’s offices across the state who don’t have access to income tax filings in order to determine a property owner’s household income.
“They are legitimate concerns,” Kennedy said of the assessors’ complaints. “But these (ideas) are not impossible. It’s just that things take time and they take resources.”
Eventually, he said, the state could revisit these ideas if there’s room in the budget to add staff to help implement them. Just don’t expect anyone to be too eager to re-litigate the property tax fights of the last few years. Instead, he bets Democrats will focus on things like income taxes and credits for future tax reform proposals.
“I do think for most people, they’re kind of ready to move on (from property taxes),” said Kennedy, who now leads The Bell Policy Center, a progressive nonprofit. “I don’t think we’re going to be continuing to revisit this stuff.”
WHERE IS POLIS ON PROGRESSIVE PROPERTY TAX CHANGES?
In an interview in his office as the session was ending, Gov. Jared Polis was noncommittal in his support of future progressive changes to Colorado’s property tax code.
“I think the big dollar things are done,” he said. “We have the stability we need for hopefully more than six years. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be optimized in revenue neutral ways or de minimis ways that everybody can agree make it better.”
He reiterated: “The big parts are done. The relief is provided. The cap’s in place.”
When we asked the governor about his overall takeaway from the session, he said “it just shows that strong majorities of Republicans and Democrats are pragmatic and common sense.”
WHO GETS TAX CUTS
Nearly 71% of Coloradans will benefit from the property tax cuts passed during the special session and in the regular session before that, according to a demographic note released by Colorado Legislative Council staff last week. But the benefits aren’t distributed equally, as liberal groups like the Colorado Fiscal Institute and Bell Policy Center pointed out in their criticisms of the tax cuts.
More than 82% of those who make above the median income own a home, while just 55% of those below the median income do, according to the legislative analysis.
Only 47% of Black households are homeowners; 74% of white Coloradans are.
WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEK
THE BIG STORY
A new federal PAC is spending to help Yadira Caraveo
A mysterious new federal super PAC, the Mainstream Colorado Fund, formed last week and hit the ground running with spending benefitting U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, D-Thornton, in the highly competitive 8th Congressional District.
The group reported spending $200,000 on digital and social media ads helping Caraveo —some of which attack her Republican opponent, state Rep. Gabe Evans — as well as $30,000 on canvassing.
The PAC’s registered agent is Tracie Moore, a Democratic campaign consultant who has worked with Gov. Jared Polis in the past. The group, which is registered to a UPS Store in Denver, didn’t list a purpose in its Federal Election Commission filing.
The PAC’s bare-bones website says: “Mainstream Colorado Fund is dedicated to electing leaders with a steadfast focus on Colorado’s future by defending our state’s quality of life against an extreme agenda that threatens to restrict our freedoms and increase our costs. We take decisive action to protect what makes Colorado special and keep our state moving forward.”
The committee won’t have to report its donors to the Federal Election Commission for several weeks, but it’s possible that its money is coming from a nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors.
Why it matters: We’re expecting to see a lot of spending in the 8th District as Democrats and Republicans duke it out there as part of their struggle for control of Congress. Many national organizations have already reserved TV ad time. It’s possible, however, that a single PAC comes in and eclipses all of the other spending.
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THE POLITICAL TICKER
CAN’T KEEP THE SUN OUT (COMPLETELY)
The Colorado Sun and other media outlets were barred from Saturday’s disputed state Colorado GOP meeting, where supporters of party Chairman Dave Williams gathered to rally around the embattled chairman. But The Sun wasn’t completely absent from the proceedings. Though she didn’t name-drop us, state Rep. Stephanie Luck of Penrose at one point referenced The Sun’s reporting, touting the fact that she voted “no” more than any other Republican in each of the last two legislative sessions.
ANTI-PRIDE
While swing-district Republicans try to distance themselves from the state party’s anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, a number of those at Saturday’s meeting doubled down, defending Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams for the “God hates Pride” email he sent out in June. “God does hate pride. Being proud of anything is one of the seven deadly sins, but to be proud about your homosexuality? Even worse,” Calvin Downs, a member of the Douglas County Republican central committee, said to loud cheers from the audience.
READ MORE
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DO THE MATH
1,187
The number of fiscal notes completed during the 2024 fiscal year, a record.
Colorado Legislative Council staff crunched the math on 1,187 bill versions in the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the agency’s newsletter. That includes the 2024 regular session and the 2023 special session on property taxes — on top of a handful of interim committee bill drafts.
Legislative analysts also completed 204 fiscal summaries of ballot measures.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
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