Lower-income Coloradans will see a boost to their tax rebates next year under a new bill aimed at smoothing the passage of a property tax relief proposal that had drawn criticism for not benefiting the state’s renters.

The plan to flatten rebates under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, introduced Saturday, would hinge on voters passing a proposal in November aimed at blunting spiking property taxes. It would be a similar policy to the one that led to most taxpayers receiving $750 checks, or $1,500 if they filed jointly, at the end of last summer. If this proposal fails, TABOR rebates likely would return to the six-tier mechanism that returns more money to higher-income Coloradans.

Under the proposal, Coloradans earning up to $50,000 a year would earn about $200 more on their rebates, said Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, the Lakewood Democrat sponsoring the bill. Earners making $50,000 to $100,000 would make about $50 more, he said. Those figures double for couples, he said.

Under current policy, lower-income Coloradans would be refunded an estimated $480, while those between $50,000 and $100,000 would receive about $640. The nonpartisan fiscal analysis of the new proposal wasn’t immediately available Saturday afternoon.

The property tax proposal, SB23-303, has been under a microscope in the final days of the legislative session. Proponents of the measure, including Gov. Jared Polis, argue it’s necessary for longer-term stability for property taxpayers without cutting local services.

Critics, however, point to the proposal’s lack of focus on renters and that it taps into surpluses otherwise due to Coloradans under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to shore up local services.

DeGruy Kennedy said he wasn’t surprised by the criticism about a lack of rental aid and that flattening the rebates was one way to provide relief to lower-income earners unaffected by — but still helping to fund — the property tax relief.

He said the property tax bill also will be amended to include up to $20 million to support rental aid, which has dwindled as federal pandemic-era protections wind down. Other legislators had considered amending the measure to make rent payments a tax-deductible expense, as Minnesota and Massachusetts do.

“The property tax bill as introduced was totally a giveaway from renters to homeowners because it’s paid for out of the TABOR surplus, which is owed to all taxpayers,” said Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat. “But if you’re a renter, which 40% of the state is, you’re not going to get anything from the property tax bill.”

What’s more, Mabrey said, the property tax bill was set to benefit wealthier homeowners the most.

DeGruy Kennedy said he had planned to introduce a bill this year that would flatten the TABOR rebates permanently. He said the temporary flattening was a compromise with Polis.

Legislative leaders said rising property values — and corresponding increases to property taxes — would be a top priority before the legislative session. At the end of April, with less than two weeks left in the session, several assessors warned of valuations spiking as much as 60% in some pockets of the Front Range.

With just a week left in the session, lawmakers unveiled the property tax proposal that they argue will blunt the sharpest bite of the increases. In short, if passed, it’ll put a ballot measure to voters that will allow property owners to knock $40,000 off the assessed value, drop the percent.

The state Senate passed the property tax bill on a near party-line vote Thursday, with two Democrats joining the united Republican opposition.

After the new proposal was introduced Saturday afternoon, House Republicans said it was the first they had heard of the proposal. They called the new bill, HB23-1311, an attack on the “fundamental mechanisms of TABOR.”

The closer vote came the night before, when Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican, ran an amendment to set aside some of the money explicitly for rental assistance. It fell on a split vote during a recorded vote — 17 to 17, with Democrats across the party’s ideological spectrum joining Republicans.

State Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat and among the most progressive members in the chamber, called it a “weird moment” that unified her with conservative Republicans and moderate Democrats. Before casting her formal vote for the bill, without Kirkmeyer’s amendment, Gonzales noted the counter-argument that an earmark for renters would cut into a surplus that otherwise would go to education.

“As if schools are not also made up of students and teachers and workers who also rent,” Gonzales continued. She encouraged the House of Representatives to find relief for tenants.

Kirkmeyer had been lambasting the bill as an education funding bill in disguise. She had put Democrats on the spot last year with an amendment to fully eliminate the so-called budget stabilization factor and return school funding to constitutionally mandated amounts.

But in this case, she argued the proposal as a whole is an attempt to hoodwink voters: that a promise of property taxes is just blunting an increase, that predictions of trickle-down savings from landlords to renters are a pipe dream that will cost the latter TABOR refunds, and that it’s about education without explicitly saying so.

“This is actually an education funding mechanism,” Kirkmeyer said ahead of her no vote. “Which is it? Are we telling Coloradans we’re going to give them meaningful tax relief, or are we going to fund education?”

The debate, as often happens in the Capitol, put education and educators at the center. The head of the Colorado Education Association, the union for educators, has general support for the proposal, although the organization hasn’t registered an official position. Educators who own homes would benefit from the blunting of the tax increases, and the backfill keeps local districts whole. For Amie Baca-Oehlert, the union president, the surplus going to education would be a cherry on top.

But the proposal isn’t a long-term fix to education funding, nor does it seem to do much for the educators who can’t afford to buy a home, she said. The union wasn’t involved in the bill’s drafting, Baca-Oehlert said.

“For our educators who are able to be homeowners — one of the things we find is that many of our members are not able to even afford their own homes — those that can and do are impacted by property tax relief,” Baca-Oehlert said.

It’s a similar message from Carmen Medrano, executive director of United For A New Economy, a racial and economic justice organization. She likes the emphasis on lower-income homeowners, where the $40,000 cut to the appraised value will be felt as a greater percentage than for people with multimillion-dollar homes. But the lack of a renter focus stings.

She’s pessimistic that landlords would pass their savings to renters, given how quickly rents have risen across the state, and is hopeful something like Kirkmeyer’s amendment would end up in the final version. Just like people with rising property taxes, renters have to struggle with their housing costs and paying for needs such as groceries and medical expenses, she said.

“Unless there are direct measures in the bill to help renters, we don’t believe this trickles down,” Medrano said.