Colorado Senate approves property tax deal that Gov. Polis calls better than “risky and divisive ballot initiatives”

The Colorado Senate gaveled in Thursday morning and quickly gave final approval to a much-heralded property tax deal, ending a special session aimed at stopping a pair of ballot initiatives that would enact deeper cuts.

The legislation now goes to Gov. Jared Polis for his signature — and is expected to prompt the conservative and business backers of the ballot measures to withdraw them.

The Senate approved the compromise bill, House Bill 1001, handily on a 30-4 vote on the special session’s fourth day. Polis celebrated the bill’s passage late Thursday morning, saying it would provide predictability, stability and relief to property owners — without the risks posed by the ballot measures.

“Fundamentally, the people of Colorado have had their concerns addressed: Long-term relief, a reasonable cap (on tax growth), and over 4,000 entities funded by property taxes, including every school district, (will) have the stability that they need to plan and budget,” Polis told The Denver Post in an interview. “ … With all the sort of chaos of the last few years, it’s been very hard on our fire districts, schools, library districts. I think we will all benefit from the stability.”

He expects to hold a signing ceremony next week, once some necessary legislative steps happen — and the ballot initiatives at the center of the fight, initiatives 50 and 108, are officially pulled from the ballot by Advance Colorado and Colorado Concern.

That has been a minor controversy, with Michael Fields, the chief proponent of the ballot measures, saying he would pull the initiatives once the bill was signed. Fields said Thursday he was working on the scheduling with the governor’s office.

“Today’s vote marks a huge win for Colorado taxpayers, who have been hit with 30 percent average property tax increases,” said Fields, the president of the Advance Colorado Institute, in a statement. “For two years, we have said the solution taxpayers need is to cut taxes significantly and then put a cap in place so Colorado can avoid this crisis in the future. This bill gets that job done.”

The bill will cut property taxes by about $254 million statewide and builds off an earlier $1.3 billion cut signed into law in May. One analysis, by the Colorado Fiscal Institute, a progressive think tank, estimates the average homeowner will see a modest additional property tax decrease of $62 in the next tax year, and about $179 in the 2026 tax year. That analysis also estimates that 62% of the relief in the bill will go to nonresidential property.

The earlier relief bill in the spring had significantly more impact. But the special session measure offered the ballot measure proponents an additional victory in exchange for their agreement to back off their initiatives — which, by CFI’s projections, eventually would have saved the average homeowner more than $500 a year, while taking a financial toll on state and local government budgets.

In the Senate’s Thursday vote, Sens. Mark Baisley, a Woodland Park Republican, and Democratic Sens. Nick Hinrichsen, Sonya Jaquez Lewis and Lisa Cutter opposed the legislation.

On Wednesday evening, before the Senate took an initial voice vote on the bill, Hinrichsen, from Pueblo, said “working class Coloradans have been a pawn of this process,” echoing concerns voiced by other Democrats in recent days about state officials’ negotiations with the initiatives’ supporters.

The ballot measure drove the special session. Legislative leaders, Fields and the governor’s office crafted the deal over the summer before unveiling it to the state’s property tax commission earlier this month. House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat, affirmed earlier this week that the proposal was “to play defense” against the measures.

It nonetheless led to ample criticism from Democrats who felt they were being called into a special session at the behest of special interests that were threatening to gut state and local budgets if the legislature didn’t pass laws to their liking.

At a pre-session caucus meeting open to the public, Rep. Steven Woodrow, a Denver Democrat, referred to the deal as being driven by “Gov. Fields and Mr. Polis.”

Asked about the criticism Thursday, Polis pointed to the nearly 200,000 signatures Fields had to gather to put the measures on the ballot to begin with. He praised the bipartisan work to give Coloradans additional relief.

“Hundreds of thousands of Coloradans put their name on petitions for property tax relief,” Polis said. “I think the legislature found a better way to address that than risky and divisive ballot initiatives.”

Ahead of the final vote, Sen. Chris Hansen, a Denver Democrat and architect of this bill and several other property tax measures in recent years, said the deal had been the culmination of nearly a decade of work to change the state’s property tax code. He repeated his objection to charges the special session was driven by a backroom deal.

Hansen also argued that passing the bill would end the yearslong standoff over property tax policy.

“We have ended a cycle of destructive ballot initiatives,” Hansen said.

In a statement, Dave Davia, the CEO of Colorado Concern, a business-oriented advocacy group, said: “This bill is critical relief for struggling homeowners and small businesses caught in a cost-of-living crisis in Colorado. It shows the state can responsibly cut property taxes and cap future tax increases while protecting the local services communities rely on.”

Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.