Here comes Colorado’s latest tax revolt. It comes from Gov. Bill Ritter through state Sen. Sue Windels. It comes with $65 million in new revenue to shore up the state education fund. It comes gilded with platitudes about cutting dropout rates, providing preschool for at-risk kids and all-day kindergarten.
Most of all, it comes with an explanation guaranteed to confuse the people who are expected to pay.
At a news conference to announce his so-called Colorado Children’s Amendment, Ritter admitted that the concept would require “a nuanced discussion.”
What it doesn’t require, according to the governor, is a vote of the people.
They already voted, the governor claims. That happened over the years as voters in 174 of 178 Colorado school districts elected to suspend tax revenue collection limits required by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR.
Stick with me. This gets complicated.
Though virtually all of the state’s school districts had permission to collect residential property taxes above TABOR limits, Ritter said the Colorado School Finance Act doesn’t let them. Instead, the governor told students at North Mor Elementary in Northglenn, the school finance law forced school districts to reduce their tax rates.
Though Ritter didn’t get into details, this involves something called mill levy rates. Mill levy rates determine the taxes folks pay on the assessed value of their property. For example, a 50 mill rate comes to $50 of taxes for each thousand dollars of assessed value. Higher mill rates mean more money comes in. Lower mill rates mean less revenue. TABOR limits the money that can be taken in. So mill levies have to be lowered once communities reach the TABOR limit.
The governor didn’t bother to say anything about mill levies at his news conference. He just pointed to a chart that showed the state education fund diving to insolvency on a red line marked “Current Path,” but magically continuing on a slightly rising green line called “Governor Plan.”
That was his single prop.
“We’ve done a good job of crafting something parents and constituents will support,” chimed in Windels, who introduced the bill to fix the school finance act.
Freezing school-district mill levies “is not a tax increase,” the governor assured reporters, school officials and parents only slightly less confounded than the children at the miniature library tables in front of him. It is merely the correction of a “technical flaw.”
Besides, the governor assured, people want more preschools and all-day kindergarten.
It’s hard for people to know what they want if they don’t understand how they’re paying for it. The governor offered no discussion of why a putative “technical flaw” has never been fixed in the 13 years since the school finance act’s passage.
Ritter failed to mention that if he has his way, school property tax mill levies will be frozen and will never go any lower for millions of Coloradans.
Ritter did say that his plan is not something he has “to take to the people.”
After Referendum C, I’m not sure he could, especially if it’s something so arcane that Ritter’s own budget director, Todd Saliman, could offer no simple explanation.
The only thing Adams 12 School Board member Fred Schaefer needed to know is that he would get more money for preschool and all-day kindergarten. At the same time, Schaefer, an attorney, admitted that was pretty much all he understood of the governor’s presentation Tuesday.
“It takes rocket science to educate a kid these days,” Schaefer said.
After the governor spoke, his spokesman Evan Dreyer said that the cost in additional property taxes for those whose mill rates are frozen would average less than $16 a year on a $250,000 home.
Coloradans might be willing to pay 16 extra bucks a year for an $65 million revenue boost. But they’re going to be leery as long as they need a calculator and an MBA to figure out why.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 303-954-1771, jspencer@denverpost.com or blogs.denverpost.com/spencer.
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, Jim Spencer’s column on Wednesday incorrectly stated that Gov. Bill Ritter’s plan to freeze property-tax rates would produce $80 million in new revenue for local school districts. It would produce about $65 million in new revenue for all-day kindergarten and distribute another $12.6 million from the State Education Fund for preschool, along with $6.4 million from that fund to help 11 selected school districts.
