Tax revenues may double after levy freeze
Source: The Pueblo Chieftain, by Charles Ashby
September 15, 2007
DENVER - The additional property taxes expected to be generated next year for schools as a result of a new freeze on mill levies is more than double initial estimates.
But that's only because property tax assessments have been so much higher than expected, government officials said.
Regardless, a handful of Republican lawmakers questioned why they and the rest of the Colorado Legislature were told Gov. Bill Ritter's plan to freeze property tax rates as a way of shoring up the state's troubled State Education Fund would only be $49 million statewide instead of the $114.1 million now being estimated.
"Why were the numbers so far off?" asked Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Yuma. "Somebody in the governor's office should have been aware of what was going on because the people are now saddled with $114 million in increased taxes. Did the governor's office direct these numbers to be low-balled?"
Republicans have long touted the freeze as an underhanded way of raising taxes without going to the voters, as required under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.
Democrats, however, said not only is the freeze not a change in tax policy, and therefore does not require it to be placed before voters, but that 175 of the state's 178 school districts had in effect already done so when they voted to exempt themselves from TABOR's revenue limits.
Though the freeze doesn't increase any money for schools, it does free up the Legislature from having to back-fill state taxes because of those limits. As a result, some of the money is to be used to shore up the education fund, and to help fund pre-school programs.
"The State Education Fund was on life support," said House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver. "Now it can be taken off the ventilator, but it's still in critical condition."
Romanoff and Ritter's press secretary, Evan Dreyer, said the freeze was needed to correct inequities in wildly different mill levies that are being assessed around the state, and to put the state's School Finance Act in line with those TABOR exemption votes.
It included lowering levies in school districts that have the highest rates, including Pueblo city and rural schools.
The freeze has a provision that calls for lowering property tax rates for 34 school districts that have a mill levy greater than 27, a dozen of which are in Southern Colorado.
Under the freeze, taxpayers in those districts would pay $27 for every $1,000 of assessed value, meaning that for a home assessed at $120,000, annual property taxes would be $3,240. Pueblo rural and city schools currently are at 29 mills, so under the freeze, property owners will pay $240 less.
"The thing that we should remember is that property values and property assessments are strong right now in Colorado and that's a sign of good times," Dreyer said. "The whole point behind (the freeze) was to provide local revenue to local school districts for local kids. It was intended to correct imbalances between state share and local share, and it was intended to correct the inequities that existed from district to district."
For the 99 school districts in Southern Colorado, the new tax estimates actually come as good news for half of them, which will see less of an impact than previously estimated. Some of those that will see lower mill levies, however, won't be as low as previously thought.
The other half, such as Centennial in Costilla County and Westcliffe in Custer County, will see huge increases in property tax revenues. Under the freeze, those schools that will see a decrease in mills, such Pueblo city and rural schools, will continue to see the difference back-filled by the state.
Still, in a letter to Ritter this week, Gardner, Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, and three other Republicans said the 10-year impact of the freeze could reach as high as $3 billion, and called on him to mitigate the problem. Republicans are still threatening to file a lawsuit over the freeze.
"There's a real question of why these numbers were not revealed earlier," Gardner said. "With Coloradans facing increasing foreclosures and mortgage payments increasing as a result of increasing property taxes, Governor Ritter without a vote of the people is now kicking the taxpayers while they're down.
"This is a runaway tax hike and the governor needs to explain what we can expect over the next 10 years," Gardner said. "It was $1.7 billion in April. What is it now? And we need to know exactly what the governor is going to do with that money."
It isn't up to the governor, but the Legislature, to decide that, Romanoff said, adding that there's no way anyone could have predicted how much higher property tax assessments were going to rise this year.
He said the non-partisan Legislative Council, which came up with the April estimates as well as the current ones, built in an average 9 percent increase, but assessments instead ended up coming in 14.5 percent higher.
"The economists who work for us who have produced these estimates are beyond reproach, they don't have a political axe to grind," Romanoff said. "It's disappointing that (Gardner) would try to politicize a process that has been above politics for so long. I don't think there's any way for any economist no matter how good to predict in the spring exactly what every assessor in the state is going to say in the fall."
PROPERTY TAXES
Here's a breakdown of the amount of additional property taxes that may be collected before the freeze was approved and after:
School district April est. Sept. est. Difference
Alamosa County
Alamosa $254,911 $169,792 -$85,119
Sangre de Cristo 18,506 -71,668 -90,174
Baca County
Walsh 63,386 46,909 -16,477
Pritchett 6,527 7,976 1,450
Springfield -77,532 -48,890 28,642
Vilas -54,495 -49,428 5,067
Campo 8,024 1,883 -6,141
Bent County
Las Animas 9,272 15,212 5,940
McClave 429 0 -429
Chaffee County
Buena Vista 110,148 147,182 37,034
Salida 115,916 201,947 86,031
Conejos County
North Conejos 0 7,133 7,133
Sanford -22,809 -16,943 5,866
South Conejos 17,664 23,451 5,787
Costilla County
Centennial 59,203 551,501 492,298
Sierra Grande -216,368 -69,118 147,250
Crowley County
Crowley 62,710 39,417 -23,293
Custer County
Westcliffe 58,609 358,796 300,188
Fremont County
Canon City 139,601 604,058 464,457
Florence 101,511 275,710 174,199
Cotopaxi 116,504 227,828 111,324
Huerfano County
Huerfano 125,717 198,262 72,546
La Veta 13,698 226,079 212,381
Kiowa County
Eads 8,118 0 -8,118
Plainview 5,431 0 -5,431
Las Animas County
Trinidad 6,246 0 -6,246
Primero 0 0 0
Hoehne 16,743 292,802 276,059
Aguilar 27,458 28,284 826
Branson 12,035 12,569 534
Kim 0 10,823 10,823
Mineral County
Creede 27,035 120,446 93,411
Otero County
East Otero 58,613 40,981 -17,632
Rocky Ford 0 10,039 10,039
Manzanola 5,198 5,596 398
Fowler -22,583 -14,488 8,095
Cheraw -2,284 -2,707 -423
Swink 5,401 8,136 2,734
Prowers County
Granada -32,286 -32,435 -149
Lamar 3,259 3,984 726
Holly 665 0 -665
Wiley 15,187 0 -15,187
Pueblo County
Pueblo City -2,046,797 -1,563,234 483,563
District 70 -1,161,011 -528,897 632,115
Rio Grande County
Del Norte 128,696 418,104 289,408
Monte Vista 38,131 79,792 41,661
Sargent -99,425 -139,843 -40,419
Saguache County
Mountain Valley 19,845 33,110 13,265
Moffat -97,653 22,100 119,753
Center -114,131 -118,214 -4,082
Source: Colorado Legislative Council
click here for more information
|
