This past weekend was a perfect microcosm into the Democratic politics these days here in Colorado.
Long story short as to how we got where we were last week:
For a long time, the Colorado constitution had "the Gallagher amendment," which, among other things, limited the mill levy rate that counties/municipalities could apply to residential property. Since Democrats have taken over the legislature here, they really didn't like the amendment. So, a few years ago, they slickly-worded a ballot measure and were able to successfully get it repealed a few years ago.
So, the chickens are coming home to roost on that, and homeowners in Colorado have been made aware that we're all looking at a sudden, ~40% increase in our property taxes due this April.
Colorado politicians, including our POS governor, recognize the heat, and so they put another slickly worded measure on the ballot this year to address the huge impending tax increase ("proposition HH"). HH though was simply going to temporarily reduce our property tax rate, but then just take our anticipated tax refunds (referred to as TABOR refunds here in Colorado) to pay the "lost" revenue from the property tax rate cut. So, it was just going to take our money from a different pocket. The local news station figured that out, got the word out, and the measure failed.
That's how we got to last week.
So, our slime-ball governor called a "special session" to address/fix this impending property tax crisis. Democrats have large majorities throughout our state legislature.
It started Friday afternoon and went through Monday.
They passed:
- Rental assistance.
- Changed to the Earned Income Tax Credit.
- They "flattened" the TABOR tax refunds so that rather than it being proportional to how much taxpayers contributed, the "poor" would get more.
And this was the "property tax relief" (the whole point of the "special session") that they passed:
And now they're doing victory laps about how they saved us all from the big property tax increase with which we're about to get hit. They have literally no shame.
Long story short as to how we got where we were last week:
For a long time, the Colorado constitution had "the Gallagher amendment," which, among other things, limited the mill levy rate that counties/municipalities could apply to residential property. Since Democrats have taken over the legislature here, they really didn't like the amendment. So, a few years ago, they slickly-worded a ballot measure and were able to successfully get it repealed a few years ago.
So, the chickens are coming home to roost on that, and homeowners in Colorado have been made aware that we're all looking at a sudden, ~40% increase in our property taxes due this April.
Colorado politicians, including our POS governor, recognize the heat, and so they put another slickly worded measure on the ballot this year to address the huge impending tax increase ("proposition HH"). HH though was simply going to temporarily reduce our property tax rate, but then just take our anticipated tax refunds (referred to as TABOR refunds here in Colorado) to pay the "lost" revenue from the property tax rate cut. So, it was just going to take our money from a different pocket. The local news station figured that out, got the word out, and the measure failed.
That's how we got to last week.
So, our slime-ball governor called a "special session" to address/fix this impending property tax crisis. Democrats have large majorities throughout our state legislature.
It started Friday afternoon and went through Monday.
They passed:
- Rental assistance.
- Changed to the Earned Income Tax Credit.
- They "flattened" the TABOR tax refunds so that rather than it being proportional to how much taxpayers contributed, the "poor" would get more.
And this was the "property tax relief" (the whole point of the "special session") that they passed:
And now they're doing victory laps about how they saved us all from the big property tax increase with which we're about to get hit. They have literally no shame.
