A loosely connected group of Colorado residents, organized by a conservative activist, filed suit today over the state’s property-tax rate freeze, claiming it violates the state’s constitution.
Independence Institute President Jon Caldara, who helped put together the lawsuit, said the rate freeze amounts to a tax increase because it will require many homeowners to pay more in property-tax than they would have under the old rules. Colorado’s constitution requires voter approval of tax increases.
“It has to do with respecting the taxpayers of Colorado and asking them first,” Caldara said.
But state officials who backed the freeze — which Gov. Bill Ritter has said will raise money for education — said the plan is not a tax increase because it does not raise tax rates, but rather holds them where they are. The freeze will generate more than $114 million extra in property taxes according to latest estimates, but some school districts will see lower tax rates.
“We don’t need to waste more taxpayer dollars on lawyers,” Sen. Sue Windels, an Arvada Democrat who sponsored the rate freeze proposal in this year’s legislative session. “We need to spend it on our kids.”
Caldara is not listed as a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Instead, the suit is formally brought by the Mesa County Board of County Commissioners, as well as five Colorado residents scattered across the state. Evan Gluckman, who owns the Main Street Cafe in Grand Junction, said he decided to join the suit after hearing that the taxes on his business could jump by about $1,500 — from around $5,000 to around $6,500 — as a result of the freeze.
The state now pays for about 64 percent of school funding, as opposed to about 54 percent a little more than a decade ago, according to a Department of Education budget briefing presented last week.
The rate freeze means mill levies will be higher than they would have been in 106 districts, lower than they would have been in 34 districts and unchanged in 38 districts, according to last week’s briefing. The freeze applies only to districts where voters have decided to shed certain Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, rules, and it also sets a mill levy cap.
Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said the freeze did not need to go to an election because voters in the districts where it applies have already decided to break free of TABOR.
“The question had already been asked and answered in 98 percent of the state — 175 of 178 school districts,” Dreyer said.
The property-tax rate freeze has drawn controversy since Ritter introduced it earlier this year as a way to raise money for public schools. Ritter announced last week that the money would be used to fund preschool and full-day kindergarten programs, as well as to hire dozens more guidance counselors to keep high schoolers from dropping out.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com.
