Colorado legislature Tuesday updates on property taxes, guns, zoning

The Colorado House and Senate convened for the penultimate day of the 2024 session Tuesday as they rushed to wrap up legislation on property taxes, gun regulations, housing, land-use policy, transportation and other priorities. That includes a property tax relief bill that was unveiled Monday.

This story will be updated throughout the day.

Updated at 5:49 p.m.: Senate President Steve Fenberg, who’s finishing the better part of three sessions leading the chamber and is term-limited from running again this November, reflected on his eight years in the legislature during his last regular media availability Tuesday morning.

He’s one of three Democrats in the chamber who served while his party was in the minority, last in 2018. After this session, every Democrat in the legislature will have served only in the majority.

Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat, said his two years in the minority helped him appreciate what it can feel like having no voice for yourself or your constituents — and the need to protect the minority’s voice.

“I think I learned so much, and I’m so grateful that I was in the minority for two years,” Fenberg said. “At the time, I hated it. But looking back on it, it was incredibly helpful and it shaped who I am as a legislator because I knew what it was like to not have a voice. I knew what it was like to have to have relationships with the other side in order to get anything. It can be problematic to have an entire majority legislature that has never experienced that.”

He also cautioned against the parties becoming too insular — a trajectory he’s seen among both Republicans and Democrats.

“I think (the party is) become less traditionally liberal, meaning the party needs to be more accepting of being a big tent for true debate, rather than just sort of thinking as a group,” Fenberg said. “I think both sides are guilty of that. It’s not just the Democrats. One of the problems is it is almost not allowed to question a platform or a position within your own party, on both sides.”

He also reflected on his accomplishments in the chamber – not least of which was legislation this year to kickstart major funding for a Front Range passenger rail line.

“I could be using transit with my children 10 years from now and be able to tell them that the financing of that project started because of a bill I passed,” Fenberg said. “It’s cool just to watch something that you can pass, knowing it will take years to develop — but hopefully, one day, it will.”

Updated at 4:59 p.m.: After delays and calendar consternation, the Senate finally gave initial approval Tuesday afternoon to a bill that would allow local governments the first crack at buying subsidized housing properties before they’re snatched up by a private buyer.

House Bill 1175 is a scaled-back version of a measure that passed but was controversially vetoed by Gov. Jared Polis last June. This version would apply only to subsidized affordable housing properties, with various exemptions; last year’s bill would have given governments the ability to buy a wider range of market-rate buildings.

The measure now needs a final vote Wednesday in the Senate, before the legislature turns out the lights on this year’s session. The House likely will accept recent Senate changes, which include technical language requested by Polis’ office, and send it to the governor for his signature.

The Democratic sponsors, Reps. Andy Boesenecker and Emily Sirota and Sens. Faith Winter and Sonya Jaquez Lewis, said the bill would help preserve existing affordable housing. That’s particularly important, they said, as Polis prioritizes land-use reforms that will take years to bear fruit and which focus largely on bolstering supply.

“We cannot simply build our way out of this crisis,” said Kinsey Hasstedt, the director of state and local policy at Enterprise Community Partners, which is backing the bill. “If we do it without providing real affordability and mitigating displacement, we’re going to exacerbate really deeply entrenched housing inequities.”

In addition to offering a right of first refusal on subsidized housing, the measure would also give local governments a right of first offer on certain market-rate properties that are up for sale.

Updated at 12:30 p.m.: The House voted 43-19 to pass legislation streamlining the process for new immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Senate Bill 182 would reduce the wait time– currently a year or more — for immigrants without legal residency documents, including recent migrants, to get licenses.

Newcomers “need to drive to work or drive their kids to school,” said Rep. Tim Hernández, who co-sponsored the measure. Sen. Julie Gonzales, another sponsor, said she intends to concur with amendments made in the House, which will allow the measure to go to the governor for his signature. Both are Denver Democrats.

Tuesday’s approval clears the way for updating Colorado’s Road and Community Safety Act, which since 2013 has qualified all residents, regardless of their immigration status, for a driver’s license or other state ID. Farmers and other business owners backed the initial legislation to help employees get to work and operate machinery. Supporters also have cited the benefits of making sure drivers have insurance.

The Colorado State Patrol backed the streamlining bill this year to increase road safety and help troopers more easily identify drivers. The bill also is expected to help immigrants take advantage of employment opportunities.

The legislation would remove requirements that applicants have filed a Colorado resident income tax return for the prior year, demonstrate they’ve been living in the state for the two preceding years, and provide a documented social security or taxpayer identification number. It also would expand the list of identification documents an immigrant applicant could present at DMV offices to include a voter identification card with a photograph or a driver’s license, an instruction permit, or an ID card from their country of origin.

Updated at 11:04 a.m.: The Senate has now passed two significant land-use reform bills, nearly completing Gov. Jared Polis’ priority housing package almost exactly a year after the first legislative attempt collapsed.

On Tuesday morning, the chamber gave final approval to House Bill 1313, which seeks to boost denser development near transit-rich areas in Front Range cities. The vote, 19-15, came roughly 12 hours after the chamber fully passed House Bill 1152, which will allow for accessory-dwelling units to be built across the Front Range. (The vote breakdown changed slightly after the Senate fixed a technical error in the original vote.)

The two bills, which were both weakened to varying degrees in the Senate, will head to Polis once their House sponsors sign off on the changes, as they are expected to do. Two other bills from the land-use package — a bill to ban non-safety-related occupancy limits and a bill to limit parking minimums near transit in urban areas — have either been signed into law or are on a path to Polis’ desk.

The path to passage wasn’t easy. The density bill was amended repeatedly and lost its sharpest teeth — the threat of withholding tax money from local governments who resisted the policy — to ensure passage in the Senate. Republicans broadly opposed the package, as did some moderate Democrats and one progressive, Sen. Julie Gonzales.

Still, the bills provide a significant policy win for Polis, the Democratic lawmakers backing the measures and the coalition of housing and environmental groups propelling the policies forward inside and outside the Capitol. That loose group picked up the pieces after their first attempt — a massive bill that contained meatier versions of the policies passed this year — imploded on the last day of last year’s legislative session.

The governor has eschewed more immediate interventions, like rent stabilization, in favor of a supply-driven approach that seeks to solve the state’s housing crisis by incentivizing development and building a bridge over entrenched local support of single-family zoning.

Affordable housing groups, like the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and Enterprise Community Partners, have supported parts of the package in exchange for provisions ensuring current residents aren’t displaced from urban areas that will likely now become more lucrative for development. Environmental groups have jumped on, viewing greater density and eased local zoning rules as a boost to public transit and smarter infrastructure use.

Updated at 10:40 a.m.: The bill to reform state property tax policy for the long term cleared the Senate on a 33-2 vote Tuesday morning, hitting a key milestone on its way to passage.

The proposal, Senate Bill 233, was introduced on the last possible day a bill can be introduced and still become law, meaning any snag would effectively kill it. It now needs to go through a committee vote and informal voice vote in the House today so it can be cleared for formal passage on Wednesday.

The proposal would exempt the first 10% of a residential property’s value, up to $70,000, from tax calculations and also lower the percent of that value used to calculate the money owed to local governments. According to the governor’s office, homeowners in property valued at $700,000 would owe about $300 to $400 less in property taxes under this proposal compared to current law.

It would additionally cap property tax revenue growth, though local districts can ask voters to lift that cap, and cut the assessment rate for most commercial properties.

Sen. Chris Hansen, a Denver Democrat and sponsor of the bill, called it a “critical bill for Colorado” and one that emphasized the commitment to keep education funded at the level required by the state constitution. He has been a key negotiator on property tax policy for years, including chairing the committee that examined long-term reforms.

Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican and fellow sponsor, noted that without this bill, property taxes will increase. The temporary measures used to soften the sharpest increases are set to expire at the end of this tax year. And, she added, it means the state will have no answer to a pair of ballot initiatives that would institute a hard cap on property tax increases and significantly lower the assessment rate — and blow a hole in the state budget.

Those initiatives, 50 and 108, would cost an estimated $3 billion in the first year that would need to come out of the state’s $16 billion general fund budget, she said.

“Even if we cut those (most state) departments by half, we need to figure out where another $2 billion comes from,” Kirkmeyer said. “And that’s education and higher education. Two billion dollars in the first year cripples the state budget.”

Updated at 10:22 a.m.: Lawmakers on Monday evening finalized a bill that would backfill protections of wetlands that were erased by a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year.

The Senate approved House Bill 1379 earlier in the day and, after the House concurred with Senate amendments in the early evening, it was ready to be sent to the governor’s desk. The bill, once signed, would create a program in the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to regulate how and when wetlands and seasonal streams can be disrupted by construction activity.