Courtesy photo
Republican state Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer recently announced she is seeking re-election in 2024.

By Will Cornelius
The Surveyor

Despite a significant Republican minority in the Colorado General Assembly, GOP state Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer believes her party can keep delivering for Coloradans. On July 12, she announced her campaign for re-election in Senate District 23, which includes Berthoud.

“I think politics and governing should really be about improving people’s lives and ensuring opportunities for everyone. And, quite frankly, I kind of love a good fight,” Kirkmeyer told the Surveyor about her motivation to run for re-election in the state Senate. Despite having 49 bills she sponsored become laws in the last legislative session, she said there is still more work to do.

Since 2022, Kirkmeyer has served on the Joint Budget Committee, which oversees state fiscal matters like crafting budgets and financial plans for the state. She is pleased with her work on the committee and believes she has been able to make a difference and work across the aisle with Democrats to find common ground.

But Kirkmeyer still sees plenty of room for improvement in the state’s finances. One of the most contentious issues that arose in the last session was what to do about the increase in residential property taxes many homeowners are experiencing this year. After voters repealed the Gallagher Amendment in 2020, residential property taxes became uncapped and will rise as home values increase.

Kirkmeyer said Gov. Jared Polis’s misguided appeal to voters to repeal Gallagher has landed them in this situation “and now your residential property taxes have gone through the roof.” To blunt the impact of a rise in property taxes Polis and Democrats in the general assembly have proposed using TABOR refunds to reduce property taxes for homeowners. This will ultimately be decided by voters this November in the form of Proposition HH.

A vocal opponent of Proposition HH, Kirkmeyer wants Coloradans to understand the state does not need their TABOR refund checks. “Just like a family has to sit around their table and prioritize where they spend their money and how they budget their money, the government should do this,” she stated.

Members of the Colorado GOP have been calling for Polis to reconvene the general assembly for a special session to address the rise in residential property taxes, but the governor appears unlikely to do this.
Property taxes are not the only area Kirkmeyer has been sparring with Polis and Democrats on either. This spring, Polis proposed a land-use reform bill that would remove local government municipalities’ ability to regulate housing. The bill aimed to address housing shortages in the state but was vehemently opposed by groups like the Colorado Municipal League, a group that lobbies for local government in the state capitol.

“Basically, what it boiled down to is the governor deciding and appointing a 13-member advisory bureaucratic board to decide what Colorado’s going to look like over the next 20 to 50 years. And I don’t think that’s right,” Kirkmeyer said summarizing her views on the proposed bill. Along with her colleague on the Joint Budget Committee, Democrat Rachel Zenzinger, Kirkmeyer opposed the land-use bill as introduced. In an Op-Ed for the Colorado Sun last April, the two wrote it would “greatly reduce local control” regarding housing and in some instances eliminate it.

In the end, the bill floundered in the legislature before finally dying in committee on the last day of the session. Democrats lacked broad support in their own caucus to advance the bill, despite repeated attempts to amend the bill to appease lawmakers.

One area that Kirkmeyer would like to see more attention drawn to is education funding. Approved by voters in 2000, Amendment 23 of the state constitution requires the state to fully fund K-12 public education. However, economic woes related to the Great Recession in 2008-09 forced the state to create the budget stabilization factor, which balanced the budget, but “on the backs of students and education,” Kirkmeyer argued.

Since then, critics have argued that the state has failed to honor the spirit of the amendment and that school districts are consistently underfunded. “From my perspective, we were shorting school districts $321 million,” Kirkmeyer said about last year’s budget for K-12 education.

That shortfall will be reduced to $141 million statewide for the upcoming year. According to the Colorado School Finance Project, Thompson School District will have a $2.3 million shortfall for the upcoming 2023-24 school year due to the budget stabilization factor.

Kirkmeyer also rejects the notion that voting no on Proposition HH will reduce school districts’ funding. “We don’t need people’s TABOR refund checks. Just don’t need it. No.”

In addition to increasing school funding this past session, Kirkmeyer cited two other successes she was most proud of. She was a prime sponsor for a bill that will create an Office of School Safety in the Department of Public Safety. The bill passed with bipartisan support and will allocate $26.1 million toward promoting safety in schools for kids and teachers.

Increasing Medicaid provider rates was another effort spearheaded by Kirkmeyer. Ensuring appropriate funding for these services is vital she said. With one out of four Coloradans on Medicaid, Kirkmeyer would like to see that number go down, but “until that time, we need to make sure that the resources are there to provide the services to Coloradans. I mean, these are working families,” she explained.

Looking to the future and her re-election campaign Kirkmeyer said she plans to focus on education, public safety, empowering local communities and “getting a property tax reduction from what you paid last year without having to give up your paper refund check. I’m going to be fighting hard for Coloradans on that issue.”

Kirkmeyer said she looks forward to continuing to work in the Senate for good policies and good governance and improving people’s lives and opportunities. “I can work with people on the other side aisle, we don’t agree on everything, but we agree on a lot of things,” she stated.