After the failure of Proposition HH in 2023, the State Legislature convened a “special session” to devise temporary tax relief measures. That session also created a Property Tax Commission composed of legislators, county commissioners, advocates, assessors, and school representatives to work on longer term solutions. NDC’s Executive Director, Jonathan Cappelli, was appointed to the Commission by House Speaker McCluskie to represent the interests of senior and low-income renters and homeowners.
The commission voted on a slate of 11 recommendations, found in their Preliminary Report on Property Tax Relief.
A portion of those recommendations were pulled together into the bill SB24-233 Property Tax. However, that bill notwithstanding, Initiatives 108 and 150 on the November Ballot would have resulted in a $2.4B cut to Colorado’s budget and resulted in cripplying blows to school funding, human services, and other key state programs. Thus, the Governor called a Special Legislative Session to create a new proposal that would encourage the proponents of those two initiatives to withdraw them.
Multiple bills were introduced over the special session, including 2 bills that NDC worked extensively on to balance homestead exemptions in a manner that favored low-moderate cost homes more than extremely expensive homes. However, all proposals but one failed.
The final special session bill that ultimately did result in Initiatives 50 and 108 being removed from the ballot was HB24B-1001. This bill does the following:
- Property Tax Assessment Rates
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- Residential
- Sets school district residential assessment rates at 7.05%
- Sets local government residential assessment rates at 6.4%
- Business
- Sets commercial & agriculture assessment rates at 25%
- Sets industrial and “other” assessment rates at 26% (25% in 2027)
- Residential
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- Property Tax Caps
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- Local Gov: 10.5% over 2y
- Schools: 12% over 2y
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- Property Tax Cuts
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- Schools: $263M
- Local Gov.: $506M
- Total: $769M
Altogether, this bill is $1.6B cheaper than Initiatives 50/108, but $255M more expensive than SB 233.
The name of the game for the Special Session was “pragmatism”. While the extremely harmful ballot initiatives 50 and 108 were successfully warded off, the impacts of assessment rate reductions, and school and local tax caps will continue to be felt in multiple issue-areas from housing to education to human services for years to come.