When “Protecting Seniors” Meets Fiscal Reality: A Self-Inflicted Crisis

By Rep. Ken DeGraaf | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Any legislator who has opened their inbox lately has seen the urgent appeals: AARP warning that Colorado’s Senior Homestead Property Tax Exemption is under threat. The message is emotionally compelling—and fundamentally correct. Eliminating or weakening the exemption would amount to a tax increase on seniors, many of whom live on fixed incomes after decades of contributing to their communities.

But what those emails don’t say is just as important as what they do.

Because the current threat to the exemption did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the predictable result of a broader shift in Colorado’s fiscal philosophy—one that AARP itself has helped advance.

A Record of Priorities—And Who Gets Left Behind

If the current debate feels sudden, it is not. The warning signs have been there for years.

In 2025, I brought forward two targeted proposals to strengthen and modernize the Senior Homestead Property Tax Exemption:

• HB25-1111 — expanding the exemption by tying it to a share of the state’s median home value, ensuring it keeps pace with real-world housing costs.
• HCR25-1001 — establishing true portability, allowing seniors and surviving spouses to carry their exemption to a new primary residence without restarting the 10-year clock.

Both measures addressed well-known structural flaws. Both directly prioritized seniors and disabled veterans. And both were postponed indefinitely in committee as too expensive.

These were not isolated efforts. They reflected similar proposals in 2024 and special sessions, each advancing the same principle: if Colorado is serious about protecting seniors, the policy must evolve with economic reality.

Each time, the outcome was the same.

The priority was made clear—and seniors and disabled veterans were not it.

And notably, none of these efforts received support from AARP—despite directly advancing the organization’s stated priorities.

Instead, AARP chose to support a Democrat-backed statutory portability measure, one that makes portability a matter of statute rather than constitutional right—meaning it can be modified, limited, or repealed at any time through ordinary legislation.

That choice is more than procedural—it is structural.

From Constitutional Promise to Budget Line Item

The Senior Homestead Exemption exists because voters demanded it. It reflects a clear public judgment: seniors and disabled veterans deserve stability in housing costs, particularly as property values—and taxes—rise beyond their ability to keep up.

But while the right to the exemption is constitutionally grounded, its funding is not.

In strong revenue years, the state reimburses local governments using TABOR surplus funds—before refunds are returned to taxpayers. In lean years, however, the exemption must compete inside the General Fund alongside every other priority.

And today, with a projected budget shortfall approaching $1 billion to $1.5 billion, that competition has become fierce.

The result is as predictable as it is avoidable: the very program AARP calls a “top priority” is now one of the largest potential cuts under consideration.

Billions for Infrastructure, Cuts for Seniors

At the same time these senior-focused reforms were set aside, Colorado has accelerated one of the most aggressive energy infrastructure buildouts in the country.

Under the Governor’s policy direction and through Public Utilities Commission approvals, investor-owned (investor focused?) utilities—most notably Xcel Energy—have been authorized to deploy tens of billions of dollars in new capital investment tied to decarbonization goals.

These are not neutral expenditures.

They operate within a regulated monopoly framework where utilities earn a guaranteed rate of return—typically around 9–10%—on approved capital investments. The more infrastructure deployed, the larger the return to shareholders.

And those returns are paid by ratepayers.

For many Colorado households, this has meant electric bills rising by hundreds of dollars per year, driven in significant part by financing costs for:

• New transmission buildout
• Renewable integration
• Grid modernization
• Early retirement of dispatchable generation

And what has been the return on that investment?

A system that has delivered only a modest increase in total generation—on the order of roughly 2%—while reducing reliable, dispatchable capacity by nearly 40%.

That tradeoff is not academic. It has real economic consequences.

As dispatchable capacity declines, grid operators increasingly rely on Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) and other emergency measures. Each event ripples across the economy—idling businesses, disrupting supply chains, halting production, and draining millions in productivity and output.

Colorado law itself requires that these policies pursue climate goals in a “cost-effective” manner.

Yet even under consensus climate modeling, the maximum global temperature impact attributable to Colorado’s emissions reductions is effectively negligible—less than one-thousandth of a degree Celsius—despite billions in costs imposed on ratepayers.

When Costs Outpace Ownership

Whatever the stated intent of policymakers, the cumulative effect of these policies is harder to ignore.

As housing costs rise, property taxes remain volatile, and energy costs climb in tandem, the cost of simply remaining in one’s home is becoming increasingly unstable—especially for those on fixed incomes.

Over time, that pressure reshapes behavior.

Homeownership becomes less secure. Long-term residents are forced to reconsider whether they can afford to stay. And reliance shifts—away from individual ownership and toward a growing ecosystem of subsidies, programs, and intermediary organizations—“the abolition of private property.”

Increasingly, that ecosystem is a hybrid of government programs and affiliated nonprofit or quasi-private entities, operating in close alignment with public policy goals and funding streams—a collusion between government and industry.

At minimum, it raises a legitimate concern:

That a system originally built to support independent ownership risks evolving into one that conditions stability on continued participation in, and dependence on, government-directed frameworks—with private actors benefiting alongside public policy.

The TABOR Tradeoff No One Wants to Admit

AARP is right to sound the alarm. Seniors should not be blindsided by rising tax burdens.

But there is a deeper contradiction at play.

For years, AARP has supported policies that weaken TABOR’s refund structure in favor of retaining more revenue for targeted spending—most notably Proposition HH.

But flexibility cuts both ways.

Under TABOR’s original structure, surplus-driven funding provided insulation. The exemption was funded before political tradeoffs began. But as that structure is diluted, programs like the homestead exemption become just another line item in a competitive budget.

And in a deficit environment, every line item is negotiable.

This Is Not a Revenue Problem

Colorado is not a poor state.

This is a priorities problem.

We are choosing to:

• Guarantee returns to regulated monopolies through capital-heavy energy policy
• Accept declining reliability as a tradeoff
• Expand discretionary spending commitments
• Weaken structural taxpayer protections

And then, when revenues tighten, we are told that protecting seniors is suddenly unaffordable.

It isn’t.

The Path Forward

If we genuinely believe in protecting seniors—and we should—then the solution is not another round of emergency advocacy emails.

It is restoring durability to the policy itself.

Because without structural protection, even the most popular programs will always be vulnerable.

And without disciplined prioritization, these tradeoffs become unavoidable.

These are not new problems.

They are the predictable result of choices.

And now, those choices are coming due.

These are our chickens coming home to roost.

Rep. Ken DeGraaf represents House District 22 in northeast Colorado Springs and has served in the Colorado House since 2023. He’s a 27-year U.S. Air Force veteran and pilot, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and holds a master’s in structural dynamics from Columbia University.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.