The state Senate gave final approval Tuesday to a bill that would effectively limit state funding to school districts that vote to readopt Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights revenue restraints.
The party-line approval of Senate Bill 291 on third reading came just hours after a senator staged a three-hour, one-man — but ultimately unsuccessful — filibuster late Monday. So when state Sen. Shawn Mitchell — a Broomfield Republican who read state Supreme Court opinions, quoted Colorado statutes and otherwise ad-libbed himself hoarse Monday — stepped to the microphone Tuesday, fellow senators let out an audible groan.
“I’d like to thank the ER docs who administered cortisone injections to my vocal cords this morning,” Mitchell joked.
The bill follows on the heels of the state Supreme Court’s decision that Gov. Bill Ritter’s mill-levy freeze — which holds the rates at which property tax is charged steady when they would otherwise fall — is legal. Ritter and fellow Democrats argue that the falling mill levies — the result of a complicated interaction between two state constitutional provisions — push more and more of the responsibility for funding schools onto the state budget and away from local property-tax money.
By freezing mill levies, property- tax revenue increases when property values do, meaning the state doesn’t have to give as much money to school districts to hit their annual per-pupil allotment. State Sen. Bob Bacon, a Fort Collins Democrat sponsoring the bill, said the mill-levy freeze saved the state about $130 million this fiscal year.
The freeze is only in place in the large majority of Colorado school districts that have voted to shed certain Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, restrictions. But in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, several school districts have considered readopting those restrictions, arguing that voters didn’t intend for their property-tax amounts to increase when they voted to shed the restraints. Readopting TABOR provisions would cause mill levies in those districts to start falling again.
SB 291 would require the state to ignore any district’s vote to reinstitute TABOR limits and calculate the amount of money the state gives to that district as if the district were still operating without the limits. Districts that readopt limits, then, would be looking at an overall revenue cut because state funding would not increase to make up for money lost from falling mill levies.
Mitchell called the bill “vindictive” on Tuesday.
“It aims to punish school districts who vote to renew the policies in TABOR,” Mitchell said. “This measure is treacherous because it aims that punishment at children.”
But, Bacon said, without the bill, districts that readopt limits would be cutting their own property taxes at the expense of the overall state budget.
“If we do not do this,” Bacon said, “more comes out of the general fund and other programs suffer.”
The bill moves to the House.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
