A conservative group on Wednesday launched a new effort to cap property tax increases to no more than 4% statewide – unless voters decide to specifically allow the hike.   

The group needs a little more than 124,000 signatures to get the measure on the 2024 ballot, and faces less than six months to do so. If the measure gets on the ballot and voters approve it, it won’t affect the soaring property tax increases already scheduled for next year.  

“Coloradans are facing a property tax crisis,” Michael Fields, Advance Colorado Action’s senior advisor, said in a statement. “Since the legislature has failed to act, citizens are moving this measure forward to allow the voters to decide if they want to cap property tax increases. While this measure won’t impact the spike in property taxes next year, it will have a significant impact in future years.” 

Fields said the proposal – Initiative 50 – offers state and local governments flexibility, but also “protects Colorado families that are worried about the next 30% or 40% increase to their property taxes.”

Because it’s a proposed amendment to the state constitution, the measure would need 55% of the vote to pass. Its sponsors also must gather a certain number of signatures from every state Senate district in order to make the ballot – potentially an expensive hurdle.

The soaring property valuations were long expected, following the red-hot market of 2021 and early 2022. Consequently, valuation for a median residential house rose by 33% in the City and County of Denver, 42% in Arapahoe County and 47% in Douglas County. Indeed, all nine metro area counties showed double-digit increases hovering near the 40% mark. 

Denver and Boulder showed the sharpest rise in valuations for apartments at 45% and 44%, respectively.  

Reappraisal of property values occur every two years, and next year’s property tax liability reflects the appreciation through the market’s peak in spring 2022 but little or none of any drop-off in values as the market cooled later in the year.

Scott Wasserman, president of the progressive Bell Policy Center, told Colorado Politics the proposed constitutional amendment is the wrong solution to a problem the state needs to tackle.”

“This is exactly the kind of a train wreck our state is trying to avoid, where there is a hard cap for the entire state’s property tax revenue,” Wasserman said.

“One of the biggest lessons we learned from the Gallagher Amendment was to not use total statewide property tax values as a measure,” he added, referring to a longstanding state constitutional provision that restricted property taxes but was repealed by Colorado voters in 2020.

“It creates a decision where someone from Lamar is making a decision for someone in Glenwood Springs. It’s an example of what happens if we don’t enact balanced property tax reform.”

In a statement, Fields reiterated calls for Gov. Jared Polis to convene a special session to “actually address the property tax crisis for this upcoming year,” saying the legislature’s proposal to curb the tax hikes “doesn’t do it.”

Fields and several other groups oppose Democrats’ proposal to offer tax relief by taking a portion of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights surplus, which pays for TABOR refunds, and divert it for at least 10 years to homeowners and commercial property. Voters will have the opportunity to reject or approve this proposal in November. 

Democrats also equalized TABOR refunds at $661 per person or $1,322 for joint filers, a one-time change from the current system that bases the TABOR refund, in part, on income levels.

Here’s the language of Initiative 50:  

“Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution concerning mandatory statewide voter approval to allow local governments to retain property tax revenue that exceeds 4% growth from the total statewide property tax revenue collected in the preceding year, and, in connection therewith, requiring any referred measure for such approval to be a stand-alone subject with specified language?”