From The Denver Post (Alexander Burness) via The Loveland Reporter-Herald:
The effort to ask Colorado voters to repeal the Gallagher Amendment — a huge potential fiscal reform for a state in budgetary free-fall — took a key step forward Tuesday, receiving the necessary two-thirds vote in the state Senate.
Now it needs two-thirds support in the House, and Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, a sponsor, says he is confident he has secured the needed margin. That vote is expected later this week.
Gallagher, named for a former state senator, was initially approved by voters in 1982. It was designed to limit residential property taxation and ensure that business property owners paid a fair share. The calculation built into it is such that the financial impact of the coronavirus will result in substantial property tax cuts if Gallagher remains untouched. Legislative analysts predict K-12 education will lose roughly half a billion dollars, in addition to hundreds of millions of additional losses for local government spending.
Lawmakers want to avert that situation by repealing Gallagher, which many of them view as outdated and inflexible…
One of the main criticisms of Gallagher is that it’s one-size-fits-all, meaning that a recalculation triggered by rising property values in Denver affects rural communities just the same, even when property values there don’t change.