05-14-24 Interview - CSI Executive Director Kelly Caufield on Their New Report Out About a New Tax Bill

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Joining me now is Kelly Cawfield.She's the executive director at the Common Sense
Institute, to talk about the allegedproperty tax relief that was passed by the
legislature last week. I didn't thinkit did what they said it did,
and after reading the Common Sense Institutereport, I am certain that it did
not do what it's being sold as. Kelly, Welcome to the show.

(00:24):
Thanks so much. Nice to behere. So why don't you give my
listeners who have not had a chanceto read the report though it is linked
on today's blog at mandy'sblog dot com. What did you guys find when you
started doing an analysis of this allegedproperty tax relief? Thanks so much.
You know, this is a hugelycomplex issue rushed through in the last few

(00:46):
hours of the legislative session, andI heard what you heard. I heard
that we were going to get significantrelief from the legislation. But the bottom
line is you and me, we'regoing to see an increase in property tax
is from what's being paid today,and this is coming at a time when
our taver refunds will be decreasing.Happy to talk about that more, and

(01:08):
we can't forget inflation Coloradin's are spendingtwelve hundred dollars more per month compared to
twenty twenty, so this just comesat a tough time. It's a huge
burden for Coloraden. So it isbeing sold. And I had representative Lisa
Frizelle on the show, and Ireally like Lisa. I think she's,
you know, a great conservative.Barbara Kirkmeyer has been out talking about this

(01:30):
as well, and I think she'sa very strong conservative. They've worked on
this property tax reform and they wereboth trying to sell it as a property
tax cut. And when I askedLisa directly if this actually was a cut
or simply a reduction in future increases, she admitted that the latter was true.
That is just a reduction in futureincreases. Is that what you guys

(01:53):
found as well? That's right becauseI think when you know your average person
is trying to you understand even asimple policy, nevertheless a more complex policy,
you want to look at what amI paying today and how is that
going to look in the future,so that we use that as our baseline,

(02:15):
Mandy, we wanted to analyze atBill twenty four to two thirty three
based on how will this compare fromwhat my property tax bill is today versus
what it will be in the future. And as your viewers can see in
common sent institutes full report on yourwebsite, thinks for linking to it,
you know, we show it all. We show what would be the increase

(02:37):
or decrease under the current rates thatwe all currently have for our you know,
assessed rate assessment rates and our propertytax rates, and then we also
show would it have been under currentlaw. And that's really just if the
special session relief would have sun setted, which it would have ended at the
end you know of this year.So we thought the baseline for really looking

(03:00):
at whether or not this is acut or not to come from our current
rates that we all experience, andit is an increase from our current property
tax rate. There's really no otherway to say it. This is incredibly
disappointing because when people were being toldwe're working on property tax relief, I
think everybody assumed that they would beworking on rolling back either the forty percent

(03:25):
increases that most of us have seenor lowering the overall property tax rate to
mitigate the damage that we are allexperiencing this year. But they didn't do
anything to fix this year, didthey good? You're right, we are
locked in to these hugely aestivating rates. And you're right. You know,

(03:46):
we saw those property assessment value spikesomewhere between thirty and forty percent, depending
on where you're living in the state. And under this legislation, which I
don't know if it's been signed intolaw yet, but we'll be soon here
if it hasn't already, you're lockedin whatever you are currently paying here in
the year twenty twenty four for yourproperty taxes. In twenty twenty three,

(04:10):
you're locked in to that extremely highrate that is truly cutting into the Colorado
household budget for next year there isnot release. And then in twenty twenty
five, when we go through ournext reassessment period, property tax rates increase,
so we are setting Colorado's up foranother increase and their property tax bills.

(04:31):
This, uh, this is soinfuriating, Kelly. And this all
goes back to the debrusing of theGallagher Amendment, you know, repealing the
Gallagher Amendment, when people were toldthat we had to do this or governments
were going to starve and properties,you know, businesses were going to leave,
and those of us who knew whatwas going to happen, said,
look, there may be issues withGallagher, but we need to tweak it,

(04:54):
not repeal it. And I thinknow everybody's like, how is this
happening? Well, we voted forit, and that's what's so frustrating.
But I know that there are twoballot initiatives. We're going to talk to
Christy Burton Round from Advanced Colorado aboutthem a little bit later. But I
mean, this is this is justthere's nothing the voters can do. It
sounds like you're right, Mandy,there are two measures that we know.

(05:17):
Fifty has already been certified for theballot and had at one O eight is
in the signature gathering process. Incommon sentence to two, we want to
did the same thing we did lastyear. We found prop age eh,
you doing complex as well, right, and that took all of our taper
refunds, and we thought it wasimportant for voters to understand how would they
be impacted by age eh. SoI think what's next for us is digging

(05:42):
into the details of one O eightand fifty and two thirty three and setting
up a calculator so that Colorados cango to it themselves and better put in
their address and better understand what isthe best deal for me and what would
be the impact. I think thatwill be hugely important. You know something
else, Mandy, I did justwant to mention, you know, our

(06:03):
report talked about, you know,is this really you know, a long
term fix, and what we heardwhen this legislation passed or you know,
yea passed and was voted on,they kept saying, hey, there's this
five point five percent cap, butwe think it's important to uh it a
true limitation. Wait stop, yousaid you said you started to say something

(06:26):
about the cap, then you cutoff, So repeat that. Sorry,
Mandy. Sure, the legislation hasa proposed five point five percentage cap,
and I just wanted to say thatwe think that has true limitations because it
seems like a lot of entities areexempt from this five point five percent cap.

(06:48):
I mean to be clear, schooldistricts, which represent over fifty percent
of the tax space would be excludedfrom this cap. Home rule government,
which there are many heard exemptive,and other revenue sources like oil and gas
operations and new construction. So we'llbe digging into that more. But whenever
I hear this has an actual PAPand some long term relief. I question

(07:12):
that because I think there's a tonof exemption to this cap. I don't
think it's real. I agree,And you know, I realized that property
tax is hard to understand and Ihave a real issue with that. I
think it is set up in away that makes it really difficult for people
to feel like they can make,you know, a cogent argument against the

(07:33):
property taxes because it's so complicated thatit is difficult for a lay person to
even figure out how who they're payingtaxes to, what their property, you
know, the rate is there,how much goes to that person. There's
got to be a way to streamlinethis to make it easier for taxpayers to
understand. And I think then itwould be a lot easier to defeat some

(07:53):
of this stuff at the ballot boxif people understood what the whole system was.
I think you're right, and theproperty tax challenges of Colorado it only
exascerbased our general housing affordability. Yeah, common sense had you know, a
variety of industries that we look atour competitiveness. That's important. How are
we comparing to other states? Amandy? I think you know this, but

(08:16):
we're fifteves first in home affordability inthe state of Colorado property taxes. It
only exacerbates this huge challenge for us. Well, Kelly Cawfield from the Common
Sense Institute, When you guys getthose those calculators up online, I would
be happy to amplify them for you, because we need voters to make educated

(08:37):
choices when it comes to these ballotinitiatives because they didn't get a chance to
make an educated vote or you know, the choice on this that what was
already shoved. But they can pushback on by voting for some of these
ballot initiatives, and I can onlyimagine what is going to be said against
them to get people to vote.Know, so we need to let people
know exactly what that looks like fortheir own personal economy. So when you

(09:00):
guys come up with these calculators,please let me know. And thank you
for doing this report. It isa hard report to read, going back
to how complicated property taxes are,but I think you did as good a
job as can be done in simplifyingthe overall pictures. So I really appreciate
that. Thank you, Mandy.You do your best when you have a
few hours to analyze legislation that impactsevery single person in the state. Yeah,

(09:24):
we appreciate what you do, acommon sense Kelly. Thank you for
making time for me today. ThanksMandy, all right, thank you,
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(09:48):
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(14:52):
back, you guys. I justsaw something on Twitter and I have to
thank my friend Valdemar Archiletta. He'srunning in the first congressional district. Vote
for him, but he reposted somethingthat our governor posted, and I just
want to run this by you guysto see if you have the same reaction
that I had, which is confusion. There is a big this is the

(15:16):
governor's post. First of all,there's a big graphic, right. The
graphic says promises made results, delivereda stronger, safer, more affordable Colorado
Governor Jared Polis, And then headded a little bit at the top,
from fully funding education, cutting propertytaxes and saving Colorado's money to creating more

(15:37):
housing and making Colorado safer. We'vegot the pieces in place to ensure this
powerful vision for Colorado's future is becominga reality. So I just want to
ask you guys, and I'm tryingto think of the best way to ask
this question. I just want toask you, guys, how much less

(16:00):
you're paying now in Colorado than youwere when the governor took office? How
much has your cost of living gonedown? Now? We all know this
is a trick question because the Democrats, who have controlled Colorado completely since twenty
nineteen have done nothing except make everythingmore expensive. They have passed a series

(16:26):
of rules and regulations that make everythingfrom oil and gas to being a landlord
costs way more than it did before. And this is what kills me about
politics. And this isn't just aDemocratic thing. Republicans do this too,
where if you don't like their actualtrack record, let's just create a new
one and just pretend like what theydid didn't happen, and like you're the

(16:48):
crazy one for remembering that it didn'tused to cost a fortune to live here,
that you could actually buy a housethat was affordable, maybe, hey,
you know what, maybe even buya new built condo remember those days
those are long gone? Or maybeyou could live in a Colorado where you
didn't have to worry about your cargetting stolen. I mean the flip and

(17:12):
Mayor's car has been stolen twice.So go ahead and text me five sixty
six nine zero to the common spirithealth text line five sixty six nine zero,
text me if you are the personwho is paying less to live in
Colorado now than you did when thegovernor took office, everything they did in

(17:33):
this last legislative session is only goingto make things more expensive. The one
thing that they were working on thatcould have actually done something to address our
housing crisis, they didn't do becausethey couldn't get the construction defects, reform
reformed, good gravy. Somebody said, I think this ex post is the

(17:55):
definition of gas lighting, and that'sthat is what I thought. I thought.
Okay, am I lunatic? Here? Am I just not realizing all
of the wonderful things that have passed, have been done that are making Colorado
this utopian nirvana that the governor seemsto think we live it. Well,
of course, the governor thinks thathe lives in Boulder. He's completely surrounded

(18:15):
by bodyguards. He doesn't have toworry about that whacked out guy on drugs
crossing the street to try and harassyou when you're walking down it. He
doesn't have to worry about that.Ah Yah yay. This person said about
one thousand dollars less. Good foryou, Texter. Hold on, they
continue when June first shows up andwe all have California gas. Mandy,

(18:41):
zero zero zero zero lazy, stupidargument, Mandy, Global inflation is global.
But I'm not talking about inflation,am I. I'm talking about the
cost of energy. Because Colorado Democratspassed rules in the legislature, backed by
Excel that allows Excel to continue raisethe rates on rate payers to pay for

(19:02):
the green dreams of Democrats. That'snot inflation. That is the reality of
the legislation that was passed with thehelp of Excel, allowing them to continue
to raise rates. And in thislast legislative session, Democrats made it even
easier. Now Excel can raise therates without even asking the Public Utilities Commission
for permission. I'm talking about morerules and regulations on landlords that are inevitably

(19:26):
going to drive up the cost ofrenting. I'm talking about the inability of
the Democratic led legislature to pass constructiondefects reform that would actually allow low income
and moderate income housing and condominiums tobe built again. None of these have
to do with inflation.