The Rocky Mountain News [October 4, 2003, "Amendment 32 deserves defeat"] is urging voters to reject Amendment 32. From the editorial, "Amendment 32 is a well-meaning attempt to address these problems by wholesale revision of the 1982 Gallagher Amendment. Unfortunately, it would create other problems at least as grave as the ones it would eliminate. The actual provisions of Amendment 32 are fairly simple: It would fix the taxable portion of residential property at 8 percent (just above the present 7.96 percent) and freeze it there, and then get rid of a constitutional requirement that residential property always pay roughly 45 percent of the tax. As a result, residential property taxes will be freer to rise, and rise they surely will. Amendment 32 will sock homeowners over time with a significant and growing tax hike - or at least those whose property values rise at a healthy clip. If the past two decades are any guide, of course, that includes most of us, including the vast majority of metro Denver homeowners. It won't matter whether your income goes up or down, whether you're retired or at the peak of earnings: You could pay substantially more for the privilege of living in the same home and enjoying, in most cases, the same amenities. That, we're convinced, is unfair."
8:00:53 AM