Colorado Democrats want same property tax rate cut in special session that was in
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Colorado Democratic lawmakers plan to run a property tax relief package similar to the one offered in the defeated Proposition HH, which voters rejected by nearly 20 points earlier this month, during a special legislative session that convenes Friday.
The primary property tax bill would reduce the state’s residential assessment rate for the 2023 tax year to 6.7% from 6.765%. It would also exempt the first $50,000 of a home’s value. Those are the same numbers from the first year covered by Proposition HH, which Democrats posed to voters as a way to lessen the impact of rising property taxes hike due to rising home values in the state.
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Lawmakers will now use a special session to address the problem’s immediate effects on next year’s taxes. While the failed proposition spanned a decade, lawmakers can only consider the current tax year during the special session and will need to leave long-term and more complex efforts on tax policy for the regular session that starts in January.
“At the end of the day, (Proposition HH) was about a long-term, comprehensive approach to this moment that we’re living in. The voters had their say, but that doesn’t mean the problem went away. It just means that we now need to set our sights, for the time being, on a short-term solution to the short-term problem at hand,” Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat, told reporters Thursday.
Democratic Gov. Jared Polis called a special session following the failure of Proposition HH, which Democratic lawmakers placed on the ballot during this year’s regular session and campaigned for. The session will last until at least Sunday.
The Democrats’ plan would use $200 million from the general fund, which was already set aside for property tax relief, to partially repay school districts, fire districts and local governments the money they wouldn’t collect because of lower property tax rates. That backfill mechanism would not cut into surplus money over a cap set by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
School and fire districts would be first in line for repayment under the bill, followed by hospital and EMS districts and local governments. Any backfill to those local governments would be narrowed, however, to areas with growth rates that are less than 13.5%.
We have gone to great lengths to get local government associations and other stakeholders involved in the process while remaining focused on delivering real property tax relief.
– House Minority Leader Rep. Mike Lynch
Democrats say they are trying to provide as much relief as possible given the constraint on how much money there is for backfill.
“This is what we thought was reasonable to separate out the districts and the counties that would be negatively harmed if we didn’t do backfill,…
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