05-14-24 Interview - Kristi Burton Brown on if there will be a ballot initiative with real property tax reform on the ballot

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Joining me now from Advance Colorado ChristyBurton Brown, who many of you know
from her former work as Colorado Chairof the GOP. Christy is now with
Advanced Colorado, an organization that isworking to do just that, and that
is Advanced Colorado. Christy. Welcomeback to the show. Thanks so much,
Mandy, glad to be here.I want to start out with something

(00:22):
totally unrelated with what we're going totalk about, but I would be remiss
if I did not at least askthis question. During a certain interview with
certain people who have named themselves thearbiters of all that's good and holy in
the Republican Party, there was someaspersions cast in your direction about the way
you left the party when you leftas the chairman turned it over to now

(00:44):
chairman David Williams, and they're allegingfinancial impropriety, and I just want to
ask you to address those accusations aboutfinancial impropriety and where the process is,
as far as you know, infollowing up on any of those accusations.
Sure, that's a great question,Mandy. They've thrown around those accusations ever

(01:06):
since Stave Williams got elected. Iactually recently put a whole thread on Twitter
that anyone can go look at.It gives a bunch of evidence for what
I'm about to say. But DaveWilliams's own treasurer filed to report with a
federal Election Commission showing that I leftthem with over one hundred thousand in the
bank when I left. They evenedited that report about three months later to

(01:26):
make a couple adjustments and did notchange that part at all. So according
to their own treasurer and their ownreports to the Federal Election Commission, I
did leave them with money in thebank. I think they also like to
claim I took a bonus of absolutefaults. I was actually offered it twice
and declined it because I thank youdo your job as the chairman, and
you don't. I didn't want totake a bonus. I don't know what

(01:49):
all else they like to claim,but I could just say that whole thread
on Twitter actually details with evidence howtheir claims against me are actually false.
Okay, leave that because I assumethey were idiocy, because it's only idiocy
that comes out of that operation.Moving on Advance Colorado, What do you
guys do in an advanced Colorado?We were doing a whole lot this year.

(02:13):
We actually have five measures hopefully goingon the ballot in November. One
is already approved. We collected signaturesand a record amount of time for a
cap on property taxes. The otherfour measures we are collecting signatures for right
now. In addition to all aboutmeasure work, we also do a lot
of research policy work reports basically findingways to improve Colorado or average people who

(02:35):
live in communities all across the state. What would you say the political bent
is of advanced Colorado? I alreadyknow that if I look at my text
line right now, it's going tobe on there. Like, how would
you if you do claim any sortof political bent, what would that be?
Sure? I mean we're conservative,we make maybe we don't hide that
at all. We are a conservativeorganization. The issues we focus on chiefly

(02:55):
are public safety. We're running twocrime related ballot measures, one for truth
and sentencing, keeping violent offenders injail for eighty five percent of the desime
that their sentence gives them instead ofan average of forty three percent, which
is what they serve right now.With Jared Bols's Parole Board, We're doing
another measure to support law enforcement fundingfor more recruitment and training of officers,

(03:16):
as well as death benefits. Andby the way, that doesn't raise taxes
on people. It forces the legislatureto spend money that's already in the general
funds to do this. We alsofocus on education, school choice, that's
another ballot measure. We have theright to school choice in the state constitution.
And we focus a lot on tabor, protecting tabor, and then cutting
taxes, which is what we're doingwith property taxes this year. So let's

(03:37):
talk about the first measure that isalready on the ballot. This is Initiative
number fifty, and this says thisconstitutional measures already approved for the twenty twenty
four ballot. It will permanently capincreases in statewide property tax at four percent
annually unless voters allow the government tokeep more. It's basically tabor for property

(03:57):
taxes. That seems pretty straightforward.It really is. And when we pull
this idea among voters of all politicalstrikes, they all love this idea,
or I shouldn't say all, younever get all people, but a huge
majority love this idea. Something simpleto solve the crisis of property taxes in
our state. So permanent cap goesin the state constitution four percent increase a

(04:20):
year, So that's eight percent overan assessment cycle. And you know how
popular a tabor is. Many voterslove it. We love to have the
choice to give a government more moneyor not in Colorado. But we need
to apply that idea, that Taborprinciple to property taxes. That's what this
initiati would do. And in fact, it actually set a record collecting signatures
the fastest in the state of Coloradothat a constitutional amendment has ever done.

(04:42):
That that's how much people just lovethis idea. It's so much more proactive.
It's a solution Unlike with the legislaturepassed at the end of the session,
which doesn't actually help average home owners, this would and so that's one
reason it's so popular. So letme just be clear. Does this cover
every the organization, every home rulecity, every school board? Does it

(05:04):
cover everybody who dips their toe intothe property tax revenue stream? It covers
all of them, it does.It's this property taxes across the state cannot
rise by more than four percent peryear eight percent of an assessment cycle.
And so yes, that would includeevery district that taxes you and there's a
whole lot of them across the stateof Colorado. We don't think different districts

(05:27):
should get special treatment. I willsay in our other measure, Prop one
O eight, we do specifically protecteducation, but this cap applies to all
districts. So is Prop one oheight is that the property tax rollback measure?
Yeah? So the rollback is thecombination of both. And we're actually
calling it the citizens tax cut.That's what this is is citizens getting behind

(05:50):
an idea that would actually solve thecrisis. Because we saw the legislature they
failed to do that. They didn'tgive a tax cut to average homeowners across
the state. And so citizens aregoing to step in or we're going to
get it done. And it isa package deal together, because not only
do you need to cap, butin fifty offers, you need an actual
cut. Like maybe I can't tellyou how many people have talked to us

(06:11):
and said, Okay, that's great, you're going to cap it for the
future so that we don't have aproperty tax spike. Again, well,
what about what just happened to ourproperty taxes? Are you going to cut
that? Are you going to takeany of that back from the government.
So that is what prop want towait will do is give people that cut
that they want in their taxes rightnow there is That is my biggest frustration.
And Republicans that I respect a greatdeal around here talking about how this

(06:34):
legislation is a property tax cut,when in reality, it's just a cut
in the future increases. There's norelief for the forty percent increase that we
saw in this last reassessment period.And I see stuff on my next door.
You know, next door is wherepeople go to vent their spleen where
you know, I live in aneighborhood that's kind of has a lot of

(06:55):
older residents, and there are olderresidents saying my monthly mortgage payment just went
up five hundred dollars a month,and that is a huge sum of money
between property taxes and insurance. Andthey need relief now. They don't need
a relief from future increases because they'regetting crushed. Now. Now let me
ask you this question, Kelly,because this is how it's going to be

(07:15):
demagogued against. Is this going togut the Colorado State budget? What happens
if this passes to the budget thatwas just passed by the legislature. So
what it does is it does requirethe state legislature to take three billion dollars
from their budget and give it tolocal governments, because basically the state government

(07:38):
is the one that really created thisproperty tax crisis. When the Gallagher Amendment
was repealed, the legislature made thepromise like, oh, we're going to
solve this, We're going to fixit. We're going to do a new
formula that'll actually make propery taxes reasonablein Colorado. They didn't do it.
If for legislative sessions to fix it, they failed to. They didn't temporary
relief, let's study it. Theydidn't do any actual permanent fixes, and

(08:00):
so they created this monster that's affectingeveryone's life. And so what our cut
would do is give people the breakin property taxes. Right now, you
pay an effective rate of six pointthree percent in property taxes. One and
weight would take it down to fivepoint seven percent. That's a real cut.
What the legislature did is take youfrom six point three all the way

(08:20):
up to six point eight. Theywould have gone to seven point one without
it. So yes, absolutely adecrease in the increase that conservatives did push
for the legislature, but that's nota property tax cut. So what this
would do is say you're going tocut the property tax rate down to five
point seven percent, but then requirethe state to backfill local governments so that
your fire department, your local police, your teachers don't take a cut from

(08:41):
that. The state government has grownexponentially over the last six years. They
can afford three billion dollars for localservices. Well, what's interesting about this,
Christy, is that there for thelongest time, I was like,
why doesn't the legislature want to fixthis property tax situation because they don't directly
benefit from our property taxes. Andthen I realized now that that local governments

(09:05):
have this influx of our money,they don't have to back fill any local
government roles, and that means theycould go on a spending spree this last
legislative session that they have and createall these new lanes of spending. So
of course it was about them nothaving to give money to local governments,
so then they have more of aslush fund to work from, well exactly,

(09:30):
and they're operating with a forty twobillion dollar budget that has grown by
billions over the last six years.Way higher than like our wages have increased.
And so that's one basic principle thatreally fits this citizen's tax cut is
that government's wages shouldn't grow faster thanours, and right now they are.
State government is growing so much fasterthan our wages are growing. So to

(09:52):
tell them, hey, you needto slow down and you need to actually,
instead of spending money on your ownpet projects, give this money to
services that are actually benefiting people,like my police officers actually help me in
my family. Our fire department answersthe calls, our teachers are actually educating
our children. What does the stategovernment do for out? I think a
lot of people have that question,and so that's where you have a lot

(10:13):
of people across the state say hey, yeah, we're happy to cut the
state budget and we get the propertytax and our local governments still are benefited
so that they can provide the serviceswe actually need. Christy Burton Brown from
Advanced Colorado is my guest. Christy, I just got this. My monthly
mortgage payment is going up eight hundreddollars a month in the next month.
So these are the people that needto sign Prop one zero eight. You're

(10:35):
gathering signatures. Now I assume sothat's what you said. Yes, we
are, and people like that shouldabsolutely call or email us. You can
go to Advanced Colorado dot org.We are collecting stories like that. There
are so many across the state ofColorado people who can't survive these property tax
hikes. And yes, one wayis outside of grocery stores, as well
as our other ballot measures. Sosign up, make sure it gets on

(10:56):
the ballot, and tell everyone youknow that this is the way that citizens
can solve the property tax crisis.I love the fact that you have already
taken the talking point out of we'regoing to have to let go of police
officers and firefighters and teachers, becausethat's always the first thing that government that
politicians talk about. It's never we'regoing to cut the fat in all of

(11:18):
our various agencies that have grown exponentiallyunder Jared Poulis's leadership. It's we're going
to have to cut the things thatmatter. So you guys have essentially neutered
that entire argument with the way thisis written. Well, absolutely we have,
because you do have to consider whichservices actually benefit people on a daily
basis, and those services do needmoney. To operate. But cutting the

(11:39):
state budget is something that so manyColoradoms are a big fan of. That's
one of the reasons we love taborbecause it keeps the state government in check.
So tabor for property taxes and holdingthe state government responsible for the mess
they created and basically sending them amessage and saying you've failed to solve this
for us. You put it onthe backs of the people. You told
the local governments they would just haveto deal with it. You told the

(12:01):
people, we just have to dealwith it. We're gonna put it back
in your corner and say, actually, we're taking a tax cut, We're
going to take care of our localgovernments, and you figure this out,
you cut your budget. Christy BurtonBrown from Advanced Colorado, I appreciate what
you guys are doing. I'm goingto vote for both measures. If I
see anybody with a clipboard, I'mgoing to walk up to them before they
can walk up to me outside thegrocery store and ask them if they're doing

(12:24):
Prop one O eight so I cansign it to get this on the ballot,
and I hope that all of mylisteners do the same. Again,
if you have a story like theone that we just shared where your mortgage
payment's going up eight hundred dollars amonth. Reach out to Advance Colorado because
all of these stories will be incrediblypowerful when they are working to convince voters
to pass this after it gets onthe ballot. So I put a link
on the blog today to Advance Colorado'swebsite and a direct link to the property

(12:50):
tax rollback measures so you can readabout it. And to Kelly, I'm
Christy. I don't know why Ikeep calling you Kelly because I used to
work with a woman named Kelly Burtonand it's just stuck an my head.
But you're KBB. You're Christy BurtonBrown, and I know that, so
please forgive me. I appreciate youmaking time for us today, and we'll
check in as we get closer toNovember to kind of remind people about what

(13:11):
you guys are doing. Excellent.Thank you so much. Made all right.
That is Christy Burton Brown, notKelly Burton Brown. And uh,
I hope you guys would would signthis. We have to get it on
the ballot.