What is the “mill stabilization plan” that Governor Ritter proposed and the legislature passed last year?
The short answer: SB07-199, proposed by the Governor and passed by the Legislature fixed a 1994 state school finance law that had the effect of automatically cutting local school property taxes (“mill levies”), even though local communities in most school districts had rejected such mill levy reductions by voting to allow the district to retain all revenues above the TABOR limit collected by those districts. The plan stopped the decade-long erosion of local financial support for public schools, and freed up state funds for education and other priorities. The longer answer: Last year, the legislature enacted a plan (S.B. 199) proposed by Governor Ritter to correct a flaw in the 1994 School Finance Act that has had the effect of slashing local support for public schools for well over a decade—despite votes in 175 out of 178 school districts to prevent exactly those cuts. The story starts with TABOR, which places strict limits on the amount of revenue a school district can keep. If a scho
