Coloradans are reeling from skyrocketing property taxes as never before. Homeowners, among others, were stunned by property-tax bills that leaped 25% or more this past spring.
Our Legislature has the power to rein in the property-tax spiral. But it doesn’t have the backbone. Ruling Democrats jealously guard the government programs they have grown, and the lawmakers resist any tax relief that might threaten their handiwork. Yet, they know the taxpaying public is at the boiling point.
So, they have tried to appease angry taxpayers over the past couple of years with, at best, token relief. The latest version was fast-tracked through the Legislature earlier this month, in the closing days of this year’s session.
The more you examine that weak-kneed attempt at property tax relief — signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis — the clearer it becomes how little relief it really offers. It does nothing to roll back the surges in property-tax bills that have stunned Colorado homeowners. Its 5.5% cap on annual increases in property tax bills is too timid to help much, and it’s rendered nearly meaningless by loopholes. Its shortcomings are, in fact, numerous.
But even some of the sweeteners thrown into the measure in an attempt to curry favor with key stakeholders — notably, the business community — turn out to be illusory under closer scrutiny. To woo business, Legislative leaders and the governor have touted a modest reduction in the assessment rate for commercial property — from the current 27.9% to 27% next year, 26% in 2026 and 25% in 2027. On its face, a good thing.
But read the fine print. Under Colorado’s complex classification of real property, only certain kinds of commercial property qualify. A vast range of non-residential property does not — and instead will see its assessment rate rise to 29% next year.
Various types of commercial property — involving assorted industrial uses and natural-resources extraction — along with undeveloped, non-residential vacant land will get no relief. The same goes for a category known under tax laws as “state assessed” property, and it includes some of the state’s largest enterprises that play a big role in Colorado’s economy.
State-assessed properties whose taxes actually will rise include airlines; power utilities; mobile phone companies; non-renewable energy companies as well as renewable energy operations; oil and gas pipelines; railroads; rural electric co-ops; phone companies — the list goes on.
Obviously, that’s a whole lot of property that won’t get any relief. Will those companies — think, Xcel Energy or United Airlines — pass their mushrooming property bills on to the many, many Colorado consumers they serve? You can count on it.
Advocacy group Advance Colorado’s President Michael Fields — a dogged critic of the Legislature’s faux tax relief — put it like this to The Gazette’s editorial board: “…(The new law’s) commercial relief is sorely lacking. Legislators purposefully left out important sectors of Colorado’s economy, including industrial, natural resources, utilities, and transportation. The cost of living in Colorado is already high, and the decision to leave these sectors out will make it even higher.”
Because the Legislature shirked its duty to enact real tax relief, Advance Colorado is proposing some of its own. It is advocating two proposals for the fall ballot that, combined, would cut property taxes effectively to 2022 levels; limit annual increases in property tax bills to 4%, and lower residential and commercial assessment rates that are used to help calculate tax bills.
That’s more like it.
Coloradans deserve real property-tax relief. It’ll now be up to them to enact through the ballot box what the Legislature failed to deliver.
The gazette editorial board
