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Jan. 8, 2001 By Janelle Holden It may be impossible to exempt agricultural businesses from paying possessory-interest taxes, though area legislators would like to, they said Thursday.
State Sen. Jim Isgar (D-Hesperus) and Rep. Mark Larson (R-Cortez) said that if it’s constitutional, they would introduce a bill exempting ranchers from paying taxes on the value of their federal grazing leases. "It doesn’t appear as though, at least right now, we’re going to be able to do anything," said Isgar. "What we have found out is that you can’t exempt one entity out of that classification. You can’t take the ski areas out, or the farmland out, or any one party out of that." Because of a Colorado Supreme Court ruling last February, counties now have the right to assess the "possessory interests" of commercial enterprises on public property. Possessory interests describes the semi-proprietary interest a business may have in a piece of public land that it occupies and earns money from but can never own outright. The ruling affects ski areas, concessionaires at national parks, franchises in public airports, and also ranchers who lease public land for livestock-grazing. The first taxes will be assessed this spring for 2001. "We talked about reducing the rate to make it so that it’s not significant, but because of Gallagher the rates are prescribed," said Isgar. Gallagher is a state amendment that requires that businesses pay the majority of the state’s property taxes. Isgar said the only way agricultural businesses might be exempted is if federal legislation were passed that would let them deduct the tax from the cost of the grazing lease. Another problem state legislators would like to fix but probably can’t is lowering the cost of health-care coverage. Larson, Isgar, and state Rep. Kay Alexander (R-Montrose) all agreed that the high cost of health care needs to be addressed. "The state doesn’t have the money to fix the problem," explained Isgar. "It’s a national crisis that’s going to have to be fixed nationally, and we’re going to keep putting new paint and tires on the old car, but it’s not going to run a whole lot better." Alexander said it’s alarming that an increasing number of employers and individuals are choosing not to have insurance because it is too expensive, and she said it’s a personal priority to study the problem during the legislative session. "I think we’ll continue to Band-Aid, but we need to take the time to seriously look at how to do this," said Alexander. Isgar is planning to sponsor one of the 10 bills to come out of the Rural Health Care Task Force meetings. His bill would force health-insurance companies to pay claims in a timely fashion, and accept electronically filed claims. "It makes a hardship some times for hospitals, clinics, and doctors because they get dragged out a long time on collecting the claims and just end up billing and rebilling," said Isgar. The bill would also set up a penalty schedule if the insurance companies don’t comply.
Larson is focusing on what he sees as a major gap in health-care coverage — children with hearing losses. He plans to introduce a bill that requires insurance companies to pay for hearing aids for insured children diagnosed as hearing-impaired. Larson also said he is also planning to pursue his battle with Gov. Bill Owens over state funding that was yanked from Planned Parenthood clinics last month. The clinics provide cancer screening and family planning to low-income women. The state health department canceled $382,000 in funding because of an audit this fall that found that the organization was subsidizing abortion services by providing below-market rent to its branches that provide abortions. The state constitution forbids using state money for abortions, although Planned Parenthood contends that no government funding is being used directly or indirectly by Planned Parenthood to pay for abortions. "This is not a dead issue," said Larson. "If it was a constitutional issue then so be it, but you don’t arbitrarily pull the funds without having some sort of replacement delivery system in place." Isgar agreed. He said it’s ironic that during the special session legislators were arguing about how to fund low-income women who had been diagnosed with cervical or breast cancer but couldn’t afford the treatment. "So, we came up with the money to treat them, and now they’re not being diagnosed. It seemed like somebody’s determined that these women are either going to die from a lack of treatment or going to die because they’re not being diagnosed," said Isgar.
Alexander said that if Planned Parenthood goes away she’ll try to find another resource to provide those services. Alexander’s personal legislative agenda includes: • Asking the state not to pursue adult children of welfare recipients who fraudulently received money and are expected to pay it back. She said the federal government is using state and county databases to track the children down and ask them for the money their parents owe. • Finding $100,000 of state money to help the American Legion buy the 3.5-acre park it leases from the Division of Wildlife north of Dolores. • Raising money for a national program called Court Appointed Special Advocate through an income-tax checkoff, where taxpayers could voluntarily donate $1 or $2 to the program. The program trains volunteers to be advocates for children in dependency-related cases. Alexander said the money would help start a training program in Montezuma County. Isgar said he is focusing on the following measures: • Allowing counties, by a vote of the people, to levy sales taxes of 2 percent, rather than the 1 percent now allowed by law, over the existing cap of 7 percent on total sales taxes. • Allowing the liquor industry to provide financial assistance to state universities. "Right now they can’t if their brand is sold there," said Isgar. • Giving persons injured in auto accidents the ability to use the $50,000 set aside in state auto-insurance policies for both retraining and living expenses during the retraining. Larson is revamping some measures he tried to pass in the past. His priorities include: • Requiring a surface-use agreement to be in place before a developer can receive a state permit to drill. • Passing a concurrent resolution that will allow state voters to consider, in the November election, whether an agricultural producer could kill a predatory animal year-round under the auspices of the Division of Wildlife. If passed, the amendment would reverse Amendment 14’s one month provision on taking damaging animals. "I don’t want to ‘whack ‘em and stack ‘em," explained Larson. "I just want my ag producers to be able to defend themselves and their property." • Allowing judges to sentence perpetrators of bias-motivated crimes to go through restorative justice training.
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Copyright © 2001 the Cortez
Journal. All rights reserved. |
