Update: HB 25-1219 passed the Senate on a 31-4 vote on Thursday, Apr. 17.
By Jeffrey A. Roberts
CFOIC Executive Director
A bill close to passage in the Colorado legislature requires most metropolitan districts to post online “in plain, nontechnical language” information about their debt, mill levies and how residents can serve on their boards.
The Senate gave preliminary approval to House Bill 25-1219 on Wednesday.
“This bill is about transparency when it comes to our metro districts, making sure that information is readily posted on their websites, available to residents, and making sure we make it easier and more available for folks to run for a metro district board,” said Sen. Kyle Mullica, D-Thornton.
The bill also ensures that “when somebody goes to buy a house in a metro district, there is transparency with those potential residents to make sure they know all the fees that could be associated with it or debt that’s associated with it,” he added.
State law already requires most metro districts to have websites listing certain information such as board members, their current fiscal year budgets and the prior year’s audited financial statements.
Under HB 25-1219, a metro district also must provide “a general explanation, in plain, nontechnical language” of: 1) what a metropolitan district is; 2) the public improvements and services it provides; 3) the amount of debt it can incur to provide and repay its debt; 4) the maximum mill levy it may assess to repay its debt; and 5) how a resident can serve on the board.
Additionally, it must list which government entities overlap the district’s boundaries and a way to contact someone associated with the district during and after business hours.
Sen. Lisa Frizell, R-Castle Rock, expressed support for the bill during second reading, noting that she lives in the “now-infamous Meadows Metropolitan District … where our citizens are literally having to fight with the developers to win seats on the board of directors. We have years and years of lack of transparency as far as debt service goes and how that debt service was being applied.”
Transparency, she said, “is critical for the trust that we need to garner as government entities.”
A 2019 Denver Post investigation found that residents of Meadows Metropolitan District No. 1 were “drowning in development debt.” Although homeowners have been paying about a third of their property taxes to the Meadows metro districts for decades, “the districts’ financial statements show the bond debt is approaching half a billion dollars today,” CBS News Colorado reported in February.
HB 25-1219 passed the House last month on a 53-11 vote.
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