School tax plan raises GOP ire

April 22, 2007

By Joe Hanel | Herald Denver Bureau

DENVER - Lawmakers are headed for a showdown Monday over Gov. Bill Ritter's idea to collect more property taxes for schools.

Republicans have dug in their heels, with all but one of the 41 GOP lawmakers opposing Ritter's plan.

But the sponsor, Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, said the Legislature has to act to prevent a looming crisis.

"This is not raising money for public schools. This is preventing a loss," Pommer said.

Ritter floated the idea a month ago, calling it a "stabilization" of local school district mill levies. A 1993 law forces down the tax rate on homeowners when the value of their homes increase.

Yes, the governor is supporting this fix to the School Finance Act, but newspaper articles consistently portray it has his idea. It's not. Republican Sen. Norma Anderson first proposed it in 2004. Current Republican Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhaney made the motion and voted to move it out of the Senate Education Committee and the Republican-dominated state senate approved it with just 6 "no" votes -- four of them Democrats. In the legislature we've been working on this ever since 2004.

County assessors release new property values every other year. Most homeowners can expect their property values to rise this year, meaning they would pay more in taxes under the Ritter proposal. Ritter expects the change to raise $53 million this year.

Just to be clear, if the value of your home is going up, you'll pay higher property taxes whether we repeal the obsolete 1993 law or not. If we repeal the law, they might go up a bit more.

The problem was created by the state's complicated - and sometimes conflicting - budget laws. The state has had to pick up more and more of the local districts' share because the 1993 law forces down mill levies.

In 2000, voters protected education funding in the state Constitution. So if no other way is found to pay for schools by 2011, experts predict education will start to eat the rest of the budget. Colleges would be first in line for cuts.

Fort Lewis College trustees voted Thursday to support Ritter's plan, and several other colleges have signed on as well.

Colleges get it. During the last budget crisis, they got hit hard. They took the brunt of the budget cuts and most of them still haven't recovered. With this leak in the state budget, they foresee the next crisis coming and, like us, want to prevent it.

The fix has turned into a partisan fight, as Republicans say the proposal is a tax increase, which Ritter denies.

"The money doesn't come from the tooth fairy. Somebody's paying that money. It's a tax increase," said House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker.

The crisis doesn't hit for a few years, so there's no urgency to find a fix before May 9, when the Legislature goes home for the year, he said.

"We have a little time to resolve this problem," May said.

That's exactly the thinking that pushed the state to the brink of bankruptcy two years ago.& The Republicans couldn't help but see that the crisis was coming. Even if they couldn't figure it out on their own, they had to hear the warnings -- from businesses, economists, colleges and everyone else who can add and subtract.  Their solution? "Why worry now, there's always tomorrow?" They kept spending more money than they had coming in and didn't stop until Democrats took over the legislature and worked with Republican Governor Bill Owens to pass Referendum C, balance the budget and avert the crisis.

But one of his former colleagues wants action now.

"You know what my daddy used to tell me? 'Wait' broke the wagon. You don't wait to fix something," said former Sen. Norma Anderson, a Lakewood Republican.

Anderson called the 1993 law "stupid," noting that she wrote it herself. Legislators at the time passed it without understanding the future effects, she said.

Anderson herself tried to repeal the law in 2004. She won in the Senate, with GOP support, but House Republicans blocked the plan. Her fear is that legislators will soon take away local control from schools, because the state is picking up most of the cost.

Whenever the partisan bickering starts I think of the great legislators of the past who cared so much about this state that they did the right thing regardless of party, politics or ideology. I'm glad I had the opportunity to serve four years while Sen. Anderson was still in the legislature.

Republicans say Ritter should look for ways to pay for schools that don't involve taxes. They have suggested selling off the state lottery or managing state lands to get a better cash flow for schools.

Democrats say they already have considered and rejected those ideas as unworkable.

A little clarification here: We've been working on the state lands issue for a few years now. By "we," I mean Republicans and Democrats, including former Gov. Owens. We've made some significant progress and we're going to make more every year. Unfortunately for the Republicans who have suddenly discovered the issue, we've headed down a different path: reinvesting in state lands and the fund they pay into so that the trust gets big enough to eventually make a big contribution to school funding. That "save now for benefits in the future concept" is the kind of deferred gratification they loathe.

"I've looked at every possible option we could think of for public schools," Pommer said.

With Republicans almost uniformly opposed, the governor and his allies are trying to shore up Democratic support, especially in the Senate.

The plan is scheduled to get its first public hearing Monday afternoon in the House Education Committee. Pommer will offer it as part of the School Finance Act, Senate Bill 199.