Colorado ag land soon could be zoned out

Tuesday, March 16, 2010
http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/blog/capitol_business/2010/03/colorado_ag_land_soon_could_be_zoned_out.html

Developers, circle June 1 on your calendars. After then, you likely won’t be able to include agricultural land in urban renewal zones anymore.

The Colorado Senate has passed House Bill 1107, which bans farmland from becoming a part of urban-renewal redevelopment authorities and receiving the benefits of tax-increment financing, by a 31-2 margin. The only opposition to the bill, sponsored by Rep. Randy Fischer, D-Fort Collins, came from Democratic Sens. Joyce Foster of Denver and Mary Hodge of Brighton.

Before it did so, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to add an effective date of June 1, moving up enactment of the bill by 2-1/2 months if it signed into law by Gov. Bill Ritter. The idea was to prevent a last-minute run on urban-renewal-certified projects, said sponsoring Sen. Morgan Carroll.

Urban-renewal zones and the tax incentives that accompany them were created in the 1950s as a way to revitalize inner-city slums that otherwise would hold no interest to developers.

However, economic-development organizations in recent years had begun using the statutes to incentivize companies to build on farmland on the fringes of cities, and mall and residential-community developers had begun to take advantage of the law in this way as well.

Fischer and Carroll said the bill is aimed at curbing abuses of the law and saving the state money, as Colorado now backfills about $50 million in local property taxes that are not paid to counties and local districts because of the incentives each year.

The bill must go back now to the House, which passed it by a 59-5 margin in early February, to get concurrence on amendments that were tacked on in the Senate. If passed again there, the measure then will head to Ritter’s desk.

Printable Version of this Page