A judge on Friday began deliberating a lawsuit filed by an Adams County group that claims a local stormwater fee is actually a tax and asks the court to strike it down.
The in August 2013 by the Stop Stormwater Utility Association seeks to halt collection of a stormwater fee on property owners in unincorporated Adams County.
The group of local residents and business owners claims the fee violates the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights in the Colorado Constitution because the collection was not approved by voters.
In November 2012, the Adams County commissioners passed a resolution creating the Adams County Stormwater and Surface Water Management Utility, which paved the way for the .
“The county asserts that its stormwater fee is a legally implemented fee and is not a tax subject to Colorado’s TABOR laws,” said Jim Siedlecki, a county spokesman.
The suit is before District Court Judge Mark Douglas Warner, who will rule based on arguments presented by both sides.
“I’m very confident — we’ve put a great case together,” said Gary Mikes, a local businessman, resident and plaintiff. “The county is not doing its due diligence in running this stormwater utility.”
After collecting $4 million in stormwater fees over the past two years, only about $700,000 has been spent by the utility.
Instead, the county spends “millions of dollars of general fund and other governmental monies on stormwater-specific tasks that the utility was established to perform,” plaintiffs argued in a motion for summary judgment.
“What the county has done is nothing short of levying a new tax to offset a portion of a larger amount coming out of the general fund,” the suit argues. “The utility is not an ‘enterprise,’ and the ‘fee’ is really an illegal tax.”
In the county’s motion for summary judgment, it argues that stormwater fees collected but not yet spent remain in an account dedicated “solely for the utility. The fact that the utility was not able in its first two years of existence to support as many functions as intended does not mean that the fee revenue is altered,” making it a tax, the county countered.
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822, knicholson@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kierannicholson
