DENVER (KDVR) — Property taxes have been a hot topic these last days of the legislative session.
A proposal rolled out on Monday is on the calendar for debate in the Senate Wednesday night.
While the governor and lawmakers are highlighting the reductions that could come from the new property tax proposal, others are advising on how the measure could impact money elsewhere.
FOX31 political analyst Michael Fields is the president of the conservative think tank Advance Colorado. He is working on an initiative to get a property tax measure on the ballot this year or next year.
“Basically, this would not be billions of dollars like the governor’s plan would be to take TABOR refunds from people. This is really what’s going on with his property tax relief. It’s saying ‘we’re going to take a large portion of your TABOR refunds that would be coming back to you anyway, we’re going to put it into property tax relief, and act like this is some kind of property tax cut for you,'” Fields said.
“There’s a ballot initiative that we have gotten through the title board that would basically put a 3% annual cap on how much property taxes can go up. So people got their assessments in the mail and it has 40, 50, 60% increases. What we would do is say every year you can have a 3% increase, so a two-year cycle would be 6% that your property taxes could go up,” Fields explained.
State senators will be going over the governor’s plan to reduce some of that sticker shock homeowners got recently with their assessment rates.
The plan the governor wants state lawmakers to approve this week would put a question on the ballot asking voters if the state should reduce the assessment rate from 7.15% down to 6.7% over the next two years.
It would also reduce the taxable value of homes by $40,000 but the proposal wants to use a portion of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) surplus dollars to backfill money for school districts, hospitals and fire services. That has been a point of contention for Republicans and opponents.
Fields said the measure Advance Colorado is working on would use some TABOR money too, just not as much.
“TABOR refunds next year are projected to be $2.7 billion. Ours is $100 million that would go back to fire departments but it’s a flat amount that would not continue to go up. Where the governor’s plan has $167 million, then $350 million, then $570 million. So you add it all up and basically, you are going to get to the point where basically, TABOR refunds are almost completely gone over this 10-year period,” Fields said.
“We would rather do a cap with no TABOR question at all but you can’t get it on the ballot without having some kind of TABOR hook on it on an odd-year. So you know this is a little bit of a TABOR issue with a lot of property tax relief where the governor’s is a lot of a TABOR issue with a little property tax relief.”
Advance Colorado is going through the process of getting on the ballot and determining if they want to move forward with the measure this year or next.
The proposal backed by the governor just needs to clear both chambers to get on this year’s ballot.