The Unaffiliated | The State Education Fund is flush with cash. What the members of Colorado’s property tax task force want.

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Students in Centennial School District R-1 participate in group discussions and read on their own in the school library during class Nov. 7 in San Luis. (Ryan Scavo, Special to The Colorado Sun)

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In the 2010s, lawmakers spent every dollar the State Education Fund brought in and then some. But even that wasn’t enough to fully fund K-12 education in Colorado.

Today, Colorado budget writers face a situation unheard of since voters created the fund in 2000. The Joint Budget Committee’s dilemma is no longer how to scrape together money to keep the education fund solvent, but how much money they should spend out of its growing pot.

The account, funded by a 0.33% state income tax, is expected to end this budget year with $1.6 billion in the bank, even after sending $870 million to school districts. That would already be the largest State Education Fund balance in Colorado’s history, and it’s only expected to grow from there.

State lawmakers could eliminate the school funding shortfall next year as planned, and the education fund would still balloon to $3 billion by 2028, Joint Budget Committee staff analysts told lawmakers this week.

“Those (numbers) are unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said Craig Harper, the JBC’s staff director.

The State Education Fund was created through Amendment 23 of the state constitution. By diverting income tax dollars the state was already collecting to the fund, it put constitutional assurances in place that the legislature would have money to spend on schools, regardless of the pressure on the broader state budget in a given year.

While the fund can be spent on an array of K-12 expenses, lawmakers have mostly used it to try to keep up with their constitutional requirements to fund the School Finance Act. In some years, they relied more on the General Fund; in others, they depleted the State Education Fund to as low as $100 million, and still short-changed school districts by as much as $1 billion some years through the budget stabilization factor.

Now, for the first time, lawmakers have the money to do more than simply play catch-up. In part, that’s because local property tax dollars have grown so fast that the state doesn’t owe as large a share of K-12 funding as it used to.

Lawmakers could increase spending on the school finance formula itself. Or they could add money to what are known as categorical programs, like special education and transportation. But budget writers have long been cautious about doing so. More funding for school operations today can mean increasing the state’s school finance obligations in the future, when the state may not be able to afford it as easily.

Budget writers could also use the money to help schools in other ways, like increasing funding for school construction through the Building Excellent Schools Today grant program. Marijuana taxes, which fund the grant program today, have fallen precipitously.

  MORE:   The JBC vice chair, Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada, says lawmakers should view the State Education Fund to some extent as a savings account: one-time money that can be dipped into when dire needs arise.

“It would have been very easy to pay off the entire budget stabilization factor last year using that State Ed Fund,” Zenzinger told The Colorado Sun in an interview. But, she said, “you don’t pay your bills out of your savings account.”

Look no further than the Great Recession — and a decade of chasing the budget stabilization factor afterward — for what happens when the state is forced to do so.

Unlike the state General Fund, there’s no set target for how much the state should set aside for a rainy day.

If there was? The State Education Fund already has more saved up than the 15% reserve lawmakers require for the general fund. How much more depends on the math you use.

If you compare it with the $9.1 billion in total school funding, the state would have 17% stashed away this budget year. But the $1.6 billion fund is enough to cover 32% of the state’s $5 billion contribution to schools.

Gessler was fielding a question about the legal definition of “insurrection” in a case that will decide whether Trump can appear on Colorado’s Republican presidential primary ballot this year.

A Denver District Court judge ruled that Trump engaged in an insurrection Jan. 6, 2021, but he can still appear on the ballot because Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — the U.S. Constitution’s so-called insurrection clause — doesn’t apply to presidents.

​​Justice William Hood said Jan. 6 seemed to be the “poster child” for insurrection.

Gessler replied: “What you’re sort of saying is the famous quote: ‘I don’t know the definition of it, but I know it when I see it.’”

Gessler argued that to qualify as an insurrection, the Jan. 6 riot had to last longer than three hours, have a larger geographical scope than one building and be intended to nullify government authority and set up an alternative government.

To that last condition, Justice Melissa Hart made a loud “hmmm” noise.

“I understand it’s violent — and I understand it’s bad — but we, as lawyers in this process, need to distinguish those gradations, because they have meaning,” Gessler said.

  STORY:   Colorado Supreme Court struggles with whether the U.S. Constitution’s “insurrection clause” applies to Donald Trump

A closer look at who is on the property tax task force —and what they may want

A committee room at the Colorado Capitol on Nov. 30, 2020. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)

The 19 members have been appointed to the property tax task force charged with coming up with a long-term solution to Coloradans’ rising property tax bills following the failure of Proposition HH in the November election.

How they will operate and what they will offer up is anyone’s guess.

The Sun pored over the list of appointees and researched what they said about Proposition HH and the property tax positions they’ve taken in the past. Here’s what we found:

State Sen. Chris Hansen, D-Denver, was a prime sponsor of the bill that put Proposition HH on the November 2023 ballot. He was also one of the architects of the property tax relief bill (which affects rates for the 2023 tax year only) passed during the special legislative session that wrapped up just before Thanksgiving. Hansen has pushed for homes offered as short-term rentals under sites like Airbnb and Vrbo to be taxed at the much higher commercial property tax rate. State Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, D-Lakewood, was another prime sponsor of the Proposition HH bill and the special session property tax measure. He’s advocated for a more progressive property tax code. “I, frankly, would have liked to have given a bigger reduction to lower-income people and smaller reductions to giant corporations,” he said of Proposition HH. Rep. Lisa Frizell, a Castle Rock Republican and former Douglas County assessor, ran a bill during the regular 2023 legislative session that would have frozen property valuations at their 2021 and 2022 tax year levels until the 2025 tax year. That would have prevented the big increase in Coloradans’ property taxes owed for this tax year and next. The measure, which only had Republican support, was rejected by the Democratic majority in a House committee during its first hearing. Frizell was highly critical of Proposition HH and she authored and signed a letter sent to Colorado voters by a conservative political group encouraging a “no” vote on the initiative. Summit County Commissioner Tamara Pogue, a Democratic ally of Gov. Jared Polis. She testified during the property tax special session that the bill offered by the legislature’s Democratic majority didn’t do enough to blunt the effect of property tax reductions on local governments. She asked lawmakers to reconsider. “Summit County doesn’t qualify for any kind of backfill in the bill as it has been presented today,” she said, according to the Summit Daily. Jefferson County Commissioner Andy Kerr, a Democrat and a former state senator. He endorsed Proposition HH and fiercely opposes the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Ann Terry, executive director of the Special District Association of Colorado, who opposed Proposition HH. “This feels like it was done in a vacuum and that vacuum left us out,” she told KKTV when asked about how Proposition HH was drafted. Weld County Assessor Brenda Dones, who is president of the Colorado Assessors’ Association. She complained when Proposition HH was first rolled out that the different tax rates it created for primary and second homes would pose a major challenge for assessors. “The assessors have no way of knowing if a home is a primary residence or owned as a rental (short or long term),” she said. Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis, who argued that Proposition HH violated the single-subject rule in the Colorado Constitution, which restricts ballot measures to dealing with a single policy change. “Proposition HH combines multiple subjects into a single measure, including TABOR refunds, property tax relief, funding for renters and long-term changes to the TABOR formula,” he said in a written statement this year. “These multiple issues need to be tackled one at a time in a thoughtful process and include public input.” Loren Furman, president and CEO of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce. In a written statement, she said: “From the employer perspective, nonresidential rate increases only add to the state’s growing cost of doing business, while residential property tax hikes will continue to drive up the cost of housing for workers statewide. In order to stay economically competitive with neighboring states, a long-term solution to our property tax structure is critical.” Sean Dougherty, a Republican former Larimer County commissioner and realtor. He is an active member of the Colorado Association of Realtors, which opposed HH. “This measure forces homeowners and seniors to jump through more hoops to access Proposition HH tax benefits and creates confusion with new classes of residential property,” Tyrone Adams, CEO of the Colorado Association of Realtors, said in a written statement before the November election.

The members were selected by Gov. Jared Polis; Senate President Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder; House Speaker Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon; House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, R-Wellington; and Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen, R-Monument. Some were specifically assigned to the task force by the bill creating the panel that passed during the special legislative session.

The measure only had Democratic support, despite the majority’s efforts to win over GOP support.

Keep in mind: No one who is working on a 2024 property tax ballot measure was allowed to serve on the task force, which begins meeting as soon as possible and owes a report to the governor and legislature in March.

  COLORADO NEWSLINE:   Colorado leaders appoint members to commission that could alter long-term property tax policy

Nonpartisan legislative staff had lots of questions about Kent Thiry’s proposed election system overhaul

Voters cast their ballots at Augustana Lutheran Church on Nov. 8 in Denver. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

Nonpartisan legislative staff and lawyers Tuesday lobbed some 40 questions at attorneys representing the proponents of a set of three 2024 ballot measures that would overhaul Colorado’s election system, including by adopting an “open” primary system and ranked-choice voting.

The questions focused on whether the proposals would violate the single-subject rule in the state constitution, which requires that laws and ballot measures only tackle one subject at a time. A statute or constitutional amendment couldn’t, for instance, both lower property taxes and protect abortion access.

“The single subject of the proposed initiative is a voting system to expand voter choice and to elect officials by majority support,” said David Meschke, an attorney with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which is representing former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry and others behind the ballot measures.

The hearing before Legislative Council Staff and the Office of Legislative Legal Services is the first step toward getting one of the measures —they are all slightly different variations of each other —on the November 2024 ballot. Proponents can then decide whether to submit the measures to the state’s Title Board, housed in the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office, for further review.

If the Title Board approves the measures, which would amend the state constitution, for petition circulation, supporters would have to collect about 125,000 voter signatures, including from at least 2% of voters in each of Colorado’s 35 state Senate districts, to make the ballot. To pass, the measure would then have to be approved by 55% of the electorate.

Meschke responded to many of the questions from legislative staff with some variation of: “Thank you for the question, we’ll take it under advisement.”

It’s unclear whether the proponents will revise the current proposals or submit new versions.

“We are still discussing a plan,” Meschke told The Sun after the hearing. “All the options are on the table at this point.”

For background: In addition to adopting open primaries and ranked-choice voting for general elections, one of the three measures would also eliminate Colorado’s caucus and assembly process and stop vacancy committees from filling legislative openings. All of the proposed changes would take effect in 2026. Read more here.

Other questions asked by legislative staffers included how disabled candidates would be expected to gather signatures to make the ballot if the caucus and assembly process is eliminated, how write-in candidates would work, and how a provision in all three measures requiring counties to tabulate ballots as soon as possible would affect Colorado’s ballot cure process.

  MORE:   Two county clerks who attended the hearing, during which public comment wasn’t allowed, expressed their concerns about the proposals to The Sun.

“It’s very interesting to hear people who have no election experience, no boots on the ground experience of actually implementing elections, talking about changing so dramatically how we actually operate and perform elections here in Colorado,” said Weld County Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes, a Republican.

Democratic Chaffee County Clerk Lori Mitchell added: “This would just throw a grenade right into the middle of our voting model. These are really dramatic constitutional changes. I just don’t think it’s appropriate.”

  9NEWS:   3 citizen-led ballot proposals to change state elections have first hearing

Then-state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, steers his 1980 Cessna Skylane during a 132-mile flight March 16, 2022, in Sterling. Sonnenberg is a hobbyist pilot and has owned the Skylane for 10 years. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

>>   ELECTION 2024:   Two more candidates this week jumped into the Republican primary in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District in the race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Windsor. Former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, a Sterling rancher who now serves as a Logan County commissioner, launched his campaign Thursday morning. Former state Sen. Ted Harvey of Douglas County announced his candidacy Wednesday evening, though as of Friday morning he had yet to file with the Federal Election Commission. Sonnenberg and Harvey join a growing Republican primary field that already includes state Rep. Richard Holtorf and conservative talk radio host Deb Flora. The 4th District, which spans across the Eastern Plains and includes most of Douglas County, is reliably Republican.

  COLORADO LEGISLATURE:   Denver attorney Sean Camacho, a Democrat, on Wednesday launched a primary bid to unseat state Rep. Elisabeth Epps in House District 6. Camacho ran to represent the district in both 2020 and 2022 but dropped out of the race before the primary in those years. He has the backing of some prominent statehouse Democrats, including Senate President Steve Fenberg and members of the House Democratic caucus.

  MORE COLORADO LEGISLATURE:   Chad Clifford, treasurer for the Arapahoe County Democrats, filed this week to run in House District 37, which is being vacated by state Rep. Ruby Dickson, D-Greenwood Village. Christina Mascarenas, a Pueblo Republican, filed to run against first-term state Rep. Tisha Mauro, D-Pueblo. And Andrew Barton, a former legislative aide, has dropped his Democratic primary challenge to state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, D-Longmont. Check out a full list of legislative candidates here.

>>   GUNS:   Rocky Mountain Gun Owners has appealed a federal judge’s decision not to block enforcement of a new Colorado law imposing a three-day waiting period on all gun purchases to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Senior U.S. District Court Judge John Kane last month denied the hard-line gun rights group’s request for a preliminary injunction against the law, which was passed by Democrats in the legislature this year and signed by Gov. Jared Polis.

>>   COVID:   Secretary of State Jena Griswold appeared virtually Tuesday at a Joint Budget Committee hearing on her office’s budget because she has COVID. She noted that several people in her office, including Deputy Secretary Chris Beall, have had the virus recently. Beall has recovered and appeared at the hearing in person.

>>   PUC:   Gov. Jared Polis reappointed Megan Gilman, a Democrat from Eagle County, to the Public Utilities Commission for a term that ends Jan. 8, 2028. Gilman was first appointed to the commission March 6, 2020.

>>   CORY GARDNER:   HealthBook+, an artificial intelligence-powered health care platform, has recruited former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, as one of its initial strategic advisers.

  STORY:   24 ideas floated for saving water and protecting Colorado River from drought, climate change

  STORY:   Colorado regulators consider trimming Xcel Energy plan to build new solar, wind generation

  STORY:   Xcel Energy pitches new clean energy plan for Colorado that is nearly twice as costly as one it offered in 2021

  SUMMIT DAILY:   Summit County commissioner announces resignation

  THE DENVER POST:   Front Range Passenger Rail receives starter money from feds — with the promise of much more

  KFF HEALTH NEWS:   Colorado blames Biden team and drugmakers for delaying Canadian imports

  COLORADO PUBLIC RADIO:   Former federal judge: Court challenge to keep Trump off GOP Presidential Primary in Colorado is not about politics

Jared Polis unveils housing vision* for 2026 (*details to come)

Gov. Jared Polis waits in his office in the Colorado Capitol in April to sign three bills. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday laid out what he calls his “Roadmap to 2026” — a 34-page housing policy outline that calls for a mix of local land use reforms, transit-oriented development and funding for affordable housing projects.

The overarching goal: To boost housing supply and affordability without clogging the roads with more gas-burning vehicles stuck in traffic.

“It’s about the future of Colorado,” he said. “All roads go through housing in many ways.”

It should all sound familiar to close followers of state politics. They’re the same things his administration has been talking about all year, starting with his State of the State address in January.

But as road maps go, it was lacking in at least one thing: a clear destination.

The housing road map doesn’t lay out any metrics to track what success looks like. That’s in contrast with the climate road map Polis unveiled during his first term, which provided specific targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The housing document also doesn’t offer specific legislative proposals. So while Polis next year is widely expected to revive elements of Senate Bill 213, his failed land use overhaul from last legislative session, it’s not clear what will be different this time around to secure its passage.

The governor himself acknowledged the document’s limitations on both fronts.

“We have a lot more say about putting meat on these bones in the coming weeks and months,” he said, holding the document in the air for emphasis at a Thursday afternoon news conference.

Similarly, when asked by The Sun how his administration would measure success, he said his staff will develop those metrics later. First, he said, “I want to make sure we can gel around the vision.”

In an interview prior to the road map’s release, The Sun asked the governor if he learned any lessons from last year’s legislative failures or had any new strategies to overcome resistance from local governments and homeowners associations.

He did not provide a direct answer.

“If there weren’t barriers, we’d have plenty of $200,000 and $300,000 homes,” Polis said. “The problem does not solve itself. We look forward to partnering with the legislature, with local governments and with the federal government.”

>> California scales back electric car rebates to focus on lower-income car buyers (CalMatters)

>> Some states’ economies cool even as the nation’s sizzles (Stateline)

>> Biden has a new war room to tackle gun violence. Can it stop the bloodshed? (Politico)

>> Kevin McCarthy’s exit may create even more headaches for the tiny GOP majority (The New York Times)

>> New Mexico lawmakers discuss liquor excise tax hike again (The New Mexican)