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“In my opinion, and I’ve been watching this from the outside for the last number of years, when the good voters of the state of Colorado decided to repeal the Gallagher Amendment there were a couple of things they didn’t realize,” said incoming state Rep. Lisa Frizell, a Castle Rock Republican and a former Douglas County assessor. “One was that they laid the establishment of assessment rates solely (at the feet of) the legislature, which was a bit concerning.”

Frizell said the legislature keeps kicking the property tax problem down the road, but she admits it’s di cult to come up with a permanent x.

“I don’t have a slam-dunk solution,” she said, adding that she expects home values to increase at a much larger clip than the 26.5% rate cited by Polis.

Polis agrees that a long-term replacement to Gallagher is needed. But neither he nor Democrats in the legislature have publicly o ered any concrete solutions, and both chafed last year at ideas o ered by conservatives, including permanent rate reductions and caps on property tax increases.

“We need some mechanism to prevent runaway property tax rates and also to address some of the injustices that Gallagher created, namely a commercial property rate that is several times higher than many other states,” Polis said. “What are we looking for? Some reductions in commercial property taxes — bene ting our small businesses, making our state more competitive, creating jobs — and then a mechanism to protect homeowners from being priced out of their homes.” e legislature can — and may — punt on a long-term replacement for Gallagher until the 2024 lawmaking term since the relief it has passed lasts through next year.

Last year’s property tax ght was feisty and it ended with something akin to a hostage exchange in the basement of the Colorado Capitol as interest groups backed o their plans to ask voters to make broad changes to the property tax system. ere was also a property tax debate at the Capitol in 2021.

Michael Fields, a conservative scal activist with the political nonpro t Advance Colorado Action, has been a key player in state property tax discussions. He said he’s waiting to see what the legislature comes up with this year before deciding whether to try to shape policy through a ballot measure. (A 2021 property tax ballot measure led by Fields that would have cut assessment rates for some types of property failed.)

Scott Wasserman, who leads the Bell Policy Center, a liberal scal policy nonpro t, is another key player in the property tax policy debate. He said he is working on proposals. “ is is just not a sustainable way to solve the problem,” he said of the year-after-year relief measures debated in the legislature. “It’s $200 million this year. How much is it go- ing to be next year?”

Frizell is planning to introduce a bill this year that would prevent home values from being changed by county assessors in 2023, as planned, to prevent a big jump in Coloradans’ property tax bills. Instead, she proposes the state legislature increase home values last determined in 2021 by 5%, giving lawmakers time to come up with a long-term property tax solution before 2025, when home values are set to be evaluated by assessors once again.

“I don’t think throwing money at it is always the solution,” Frizell said. Additionally, Republicans plan to ask the legislature this year to approve the creation of a property tax task force to come up with a longterm x.

Here’s what the legislature did in 2022 through the passage of Senate Bill 238 to reduce Coloradans’ rising property tax tab: e residential assessment rate used to calculate how much a residential homeowner owes in property taxes in 2023 is reduced to 6.765% from 7.15%. Additionally, the rst $15,000 in actual value of a residential property is waived as long as doing so doesn’t cause the assessed property value to fall below $1,000.

For commercial properties, the assessment rate in 2023 is reduced to 27.9% from 29%. Additionally, the rst $30,000 in actual value of a commercial property is waived as long as doing so doesn’t cause the assessed property value to fall below $1,000.

Assessment rates are important because they are used to calculate how much someone owes in taxes. e rate is multiplied by a home’s market value, which is determined by a county assessor. What a property owner pays is then determined by the mill levy rate. A mill is a $1 payment on every $1,000 of assessed value. e 2023 reduction will mean that a residential property owner who owns a home worth $300,000 with a mill levy of 100 will pay about $1,900 versus $2,145. ( e state has a good explainer on this here.) e 2024 rates match a reduction approved for the 2021 and 2022 tax years under a measure passed by the legislature in 2021. is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun.com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.

In 2024, the rates will go up slightly. For single-family residential property owners, the assessment rate will be approximately 6.95%, down from 7.15%. For multifamily residential property, the rate will be 6.8%.

(Why approximately, you ask? e single-family residential property assessment rate will be set in 2024 at a level to be determined by the state property tax administrator to ensure that the state hits its $700 million property tax relief target for the 2023 and 2024 property tax years.)

For those who own commercial property used for agriculture and/ or to produce renewable energy, the 2024 assessment rate will be 26.4%, down from 29%.

Finally, the legislature extended a change allowing senior citizens to defer all of the increases in their property taxes until they sell their homes while allowing everyone else to defer any increases over 4%.

It’s likely that if more property tax relief is approved by the legislature in 2023, as Polis hopes, it will simply be made by expanding the breaks o ered by Senate Bill 238.