Colorado wraps up ‘transformational’ legislative session
5 min readThe Colorado Legislature ended its session last week after passing a fiscal 2025 budget, school funding changes, a property tax cut, and measures aimed at pushing multi-billion-dollar passenger rail projects and a bond-financed purchase of an historic hotel forward.
State officials celebrated a legislative session Senate President Steve Fenberg called “nothing short of transformational” at a Thursday press conference.
“This has been by magnitude of achievement in area after area the most significant by far,” Gov. Jared Polis told reporters, referring to legislative sessions since he took office in January 2019.
The Democratic governor, who already signed into law a $40.6 billion, all-funds budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, said public schools will get a funding boost.
“We’re fully funding our schools for the first time in 14 years,” he said. “That’s about $17,000 per classroom more in resources.”
Lawmakers eliminated a so-called budget stabilization factor that dates back to 2010, allowing the state to tap education funding to balance the state budget, according to the Colorado Education Association.
“Combined with state tax code constraints, per-pupil funding levels have failed to keep pace with national standards, consistently placing Colorado among the lowest-ranked states,” the teachers union said in a statement. “While buying down the (budget stabilization factor) is an important step to fully funding public education in Colorado, doing so will only return public education funding to 1989 levels.”
Polis said bipartisan support in the Democratic-controlled legislature produced a $1.3 billion
In an effort to rein in rising property values that have led to big jumps in tax bills, Senate Bill 233 curbs assessed valuation growth for residential and commercial property and creates a $10.3 million backfill fund for local governments and requires a $351.7 million state funding increase for school districts to make up for lost property tax revenue, according to
“Beginning with the 2025 property tax year, the bill limits property tax revenue growth for local governments, other than school districts, home-rule jurisdictions, and local governments where revenue is already limited by TABOR (Taxpayer Bill of Rights) or by the 5.5% revenue limit in current law,” the fiscal note said. “The limit is equal to the level of the local government’s 2023 property tax collections, plus any reimbursements received by the state for that year, grown annually by 5.5%.”
It added the bill would result in a slight increase in the state’s general fund statutory reserve, which under current law, must contain an amount equal to 15% of general fund appropriations.
In a March report, Moody’s Ratings said the stable outlook on Colorado’s Aa1 issuer rating “reflects the expectation that the state’s strong economic fundamentals and sound fiscal management will continue to support healthy financials, including maintaining general fund reserve at the current 15% statutory reserve level.”
A proposed constitutional amendment backed by a conservative think tank that seeks to limit property tax revenue growth will be on the Nov. 5
Bipartisan support also propelled
The measure “will create additional income tax reductions under the (TABOR), as well as add a sales and use tax cut to the current TABOR refund mechanisms,” according to a statement from Senate Republicans, which added that taxpayers will pay less in income and sales taxes in years when state revenue is projected to exceed the TABOR cap.
Long-sought passenger rail in Colorado got a boost from bills passed by the legislature.
Polis said the revenue will help in the pursuit of federal dollars from the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvement Program.
“Nearly all the federal grants around rail and transit require a state match and we simply didn’t have that,” he said. “We could have pulled down some money in some quarters but not enough to make passenger rail a reality.”
The bill also requires the Front Range Passenger Rail District to produce by March 1, 2025, a plan to begin rail service by Jan. 1, 2029.
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Another bill aims to
Legislation that would pave the way for the Colorado Educational and Cultural Facilities Authority to issue
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The plan emerged in March after an Arizona nonprofit pulled out of a deal to finance the property’s purchase and renovation with up to $475 million of cultural facilities revenue bonds issued through CECFA.
“The financing for the Stanley project continues to evolve,” CECFA Executive Director Mark Heller told The Bond Buyer, adding there was no timetable yet for bond issuance.
The amended bill added hotels, a film center, gift shops, and eating and drinking establishments to the definition of facilities. Grand Heritage Hotel Group’s plans for the hotel include the Stanley Film Center, which it says “will be the permanent
Denver Health, Colorado’s sole public safety net healthcare provider, which