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PAGE 6 | THE VILLAGER • June 18, 2020
Voters to decide if Gallagher Amendment should be repealed been most financially detrimental to rural cities and counties in our state. On a vote of 27-7 in the senate, including yeses from eight out of 15 Republican senators voting, along with all the Democrats, and 47-18 in the house, including six out of 24 Republicans and all the Democrats, the legislature declared its agreement that the time has come to let the voters of Colorado decide if the method for splitting the property tax burden devised 38 years ago is still right for Colorado. Notably, five out of six members of the elite Joint Budget Commission (JBC) of the legislature voted in favor of the Resolution. The JBC is the
BY FREDA MIKLIN GOVERNMENTAL REPORTER
After years of talking about it, on June 12 the Colorado general assembly took action that could lead to the repeal of the Gallagher Amendment to the state constitution. Senate Concurrent Resolution 20-001, if adopted by the voters in November, would end the requirement that an arbitrary formula from 1982 continue to be used to divide the total annual property tax burden between residential and business property in a manner that has long been viewed as resulting in unfair and unintended consequences that have
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on business property and 7.15 percent on residential property will remain unchanged. Total taxes paid on residential real estate will not increase unless voters choose to increase their taxes or a home’s value goes up. If a home’s value declines, its taxes will go down. The Resolution, sponsored by a Democrat and a Republican from both the senate and the house, does not require the governor’s signature to be placed on the November ballot. According to a statement made on the floor of the senate by one of the bill’s prime spon-
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general assembly’s permanent fiscal and budget review agency that prepares the statewide annual budget each year after hearing from every department of state government and analyzing the management, operations, programs, and fiscal needs of all of them. Even though one of the purposes of this effort is to address the unfair tax burden on business property, repealing the Gallagher Amendment will not cause an increase in taxes paid on residential real estate. If the measure is approved, the current tax rates of 29 per cent
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to America’s college campuses. Without them, some large state schools have quietly lowered academic standards, presenting a new level of uncertainty about academic success. While “college is still the golden ticket to a solid ecoE
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sors, Democratic Sen. Chris Hansen, “Without a change to Gallagher, the 2020-2021 budget is going to cost K-12 education $500 million. City, county, and local services are also going to get similarly impacted.” Republican prime sponsor Sen. Jack Tate, who has made the effort to solve this problem a key priority of his time in the senate, said Gallagher’s “original purpose was to make sure that business property taxpayers paid their fair share of taxes at a time (the 1980’s) when inflation and interest rates were high. Over 40 years, the property tax has shifted to business owners such that now the owner of business property pays more than four times the amount of taxes for the same amount of property, while artificially keeping residential rates unrealistically low. It is inherently unfair to local communities in Colorado, hurting the poorest communities worst.” Fmiklin.villager@gmail.com
Ecosystem of American colleges and universities future,” Wittgrove told Continued from Page 3 Wittgrove told nomic us, the current climate has put month. They will process the us that about the cost of attending many tests in their own on-campus colleges and universities under two-thirds of laboratories. a microscope. He believes that On a more global scale, U.S. colleges is a good thing and may cause Wittgrove expects that the panschools’ tuition to be and universities some demic will result in a contracreduced to something closer to tion in the number of small priare planning their actual fair market value. vate colleges, some of which years ago, colleges didn’t to hold at least “Ten opened around 2005 without a compete for students. It’s diftrue community need or a solid some classes ferent now,” he observed. financial platform when the Realizing students’ and on campus in families’ popular belief was that every focus on maximizhigh school graduate must atsome format in ing value, Wittgrove believes tend a four-year college. Other some four-year higher educathe fall. larger colleges and universities tion institutions will begin to
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Even though one of the purposes of this effort is to address the unfair tax burden on business property, repealing the Gallagher Amendment will not cause an increase in taxes paid on residential real estate.
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work in concert with two-year community colleges. He told us that that conversation has already begun with the Colorado School of Mines. At the same time, he thinks it is likely that after long being suspected of being culturally biased, the SAT and ACT will disappear and be replaced with something new that is demonstrably not biased. Of the approximately 900 students who graduated from CCHS in May, 92 percent are headed to college, including 9 percent who will attend twoyear programs. Wittgrove received his undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri. After teaching ninth grade science for four years in Kansas City, he got a master’s degree from the University of San Diego and became a high school counselor. Wittgrove came to Colorado because he liked its culture, weather, and tax structure. He began his tenure at CCHS in 2007 and took over the post-graduate program in 2010. He loves what he does because it allows him to help students with both the academic and personal-social aspects of their development. Fmiklin.villager@gmail. com
