If taxes are indeed a necessary evil, the much-loathed property tax has to be Exhibit A. It helps fund some of the most vital public services that are closest to the people – from public safety to public schools – yet it also can be the most infuriating for the average homeowner.

Especially in Colorado’s superheated real estate market, in which housing prices seem to surge unabated and housing affordability continues to ebb, property tax bills are soaring along with most property’s assessed value. Homeowners must watch helplessly as they are forced to fork over more and more to their local governments despite having done nothing to incur the added cost – other than simply owning their homes. That’s so even if a community’s property tax rate – something voters can control – hasn’t gone up. It’s simply because property is worth more.

Resentment typically peaks around the time property values are reassessed every two years by law – but a study released just the other day by the influential business coalition Colorado Concern put the state’s spiraling property taxes back on the public’s radar in a big way.

As reported by our news affiliate Colorado Politics, Coloradans are facing massive property tax increases in the coming years. Property owners in Colorado will get hit with 20% property tax increases on average over the next four years if the state doesn’t come up with a solution, the study found. A number of factors, most notably exploding real estate values, are to blame.

“You look at these numbers, and you see that we are in the process of pricing ourselves out of our own state,” said Mike Kopp, Colorado Concern’s president and CEO. “And that has implications for families, for younger workers, for seniors on fixed income, people in gentrifying neighborhoods. And it has implications for small businesses across the board.”

What’s even more maddening is what happened last year when some fed-up Colorado taxpayers demanded relief. They petitioned a property tax cut onto last fall’s statewide ballot – only to watch it be sabotaged by the legislature.

The proposal would have cut assessment rates for single-family homes and other kinds of real property by an estimated $1 billion-plus a year. But such tax relief didn’t sit well with the very lawmakers who are supposed to be representing the interests of the taxpaying public.

Last June, when the 2021 legislature was winding down, lawmakers played an unprecedented, dirty trick on the public. Having gotten wind of the tax cut while its supporters still were gathering signatures to qualify the proposal for the ballot, lawmakers rewrote the state’s property tax code so the ballot proposal wouldn’t apply to most real property.

In other words, politicians gutted the proposal before voters had a chance to have their say. All that remained in the proposal that made it onto the ballot as last November’s Proposition 120 was a temporary, slight reduction in property taxes for a few types of property, like apartments and hotels. Perhaps disillusioned, voters ended up saying “no.”

Now, Kopp says another ballot measure might be necessary to help curb climbing property taxes. What it will propose remains to be seem. This time, the least lawmakers can do to help is simply keep their hands off.

Denver Gazette editorial board