By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice
The signed law says the enterprise will collect less than $100 million in five years. The Legislature's fiscal note puts the figure at $99.6 million.
New Colorado enterprises that want to collect more than $100 million in their first five fiscal years have to ask voters first. That’s what voters approved in 2020 with Proposition 117.
One created this year is projected to collect $99.6 million.
The fee that funds it gets cut by more than half after the first year. Premiums grow every year in the state’s own projection. The rate drops anyway.
Gov. Jared Polis signed SB26-155 into law on June 4. The measure creates the Strengthen Colorado Homes Enterprise within the Division of Insurance and takes effect Aug. 12. Sens. Kyle Mullica and Janice Marchman sponsored the bill along with Speaker Julie McCluskie and Rep. Kyle Brown, all Democrats.
The enterprise charges insurers who sell multiperil homeowner’s policies in Colorado and spends the money on grants to put hail-resistant roofs on Colorado homes.
The fee falls on insurance companies, and the law bars them from adding it to policyholders’ bills as a surcharge.
Hail is the cost the program is built to address. At least 85 percent of fee revenue has to fund hail and windstorm retrofits.
The Division of Insurance collected data from 20 carriers representing 80 percent of the total market premium and found hail accounts for 26 to 54 percent of a homeowner’s premium depending on the county. Wildfire runs 0.9 to 24.6 percent. In Denver, hail accounts for $1,547 of a $3,040 average premium. Across the 11 counties studied, it found fortified roofs could save homeowners between $82 and $387 a year.
The fiscal note
The final fiscal note published on July 21 projects $30.2 million in collections during fiscal 2026-27. The next year’s projection drops to $15.6 million before climbing to $16.7 million, $17.9 million and $19.2 million.
Over the enterprise’s first five fiscal years, Legislative Council Staff estimates total collections of $99.6 million.
Legislative Council Staff fiscal analyst Brendan Fung explained the drop in one sentence.
“To remain under the $100 million statutory cap over the first five years, the fiscal note assumes the enterprise will apply the 0.5 percent effective fee rate in FY 2026-27 and then reduce it to 0.24 percent beginning in FY 2027-28,” the note says.
The law gives him reason to assume it. Section 10-4-2003(4)(d) of the act says the enterprise may lower the fee or cease collecting the fee in any calendar year to ensure that total fee revenue does not exceed one hundred million dollars over the first five fiscal years of the enterprise’s existence.
Lawmakers wrote their own Proposition 117 finding into the statute as well. The legislative declaration says the enterprise will generate revenue from fees and surcharges of less than one hundred million dollars total in its first five fiscal years, then concludes: “Accordingly, the creation of the enterprise does not require voter approval pursuant to section 24-77-108.”
None of this breaks Proposition 117. A Colorado Court of Appeals panel upheld a comparable structure last year in Americans for Prosperity v. State of Colorado, ruling that enterprises created under SB21-260 needed no vote because they served different purposes and no single one was projected to cross $100 million.
House members were asked twice to put an end date on the program. Two floor amendments on May 11 would have repealed the enterprise outright, one effective July 1, 2028 and one effective July 1, 2031. Neither is in the law as signed. The act sets no end date for the enterprise and repeals the wildfire study section, on July 1, 2031.
After five fiscal years
Proposition 117’s limit covers an enterprise’s first five fiscal years. Fung’s table stops at fiscal 2030-31.
Table 2 from the Legislature’s final fiscal note shows the revenue projections Legislative Council Staff used for the Strengthen Colorado Homes Enterprise through FY 2030-31. Source: Legislative Council Staff Final Fiscal Note for SB26-155 (July 21, 2026).
The fee written into the statute is half a percent of premiums, the rate applied to the first year, when he projected $30.2 million.
Who sets the rate later is already in the law, and it is not the legislature.
“These proposed fees are estimates only; actual fees will be determined administratively by the enterprise based on total premiums written, cumulative revenue collected, and other relevant factors,” the note says.
The board includes Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway, or his designee, and six governor-appointed members confirmed by the Senate. The law requires the initial appointments by Jan. 1, 2027.
The Common Sense Institute counted ten enterprises created since Proposition 117 took effect, none of them referred to voters, collecting $98 million among them since their creation.
Colorado’s fee enterprises collected $28.2 billion in fiscal 2025, more than half the state budget, and $4,692 for every resident.
Enterprise fee revenue per Coloradan has grown faster than General Fund appropriations since 2000. Fees rose from $225 to $4,692 while General Fund appropriations went from $1,209 to $2,360. Source: Common Sense Institute.
The institute’s July report described the Strengthen Colorado Homes Enterprise as set to collect the maximum allowable revenue under the measure.
The fiscal note projects $99.6 million for this one over five years.
The law explains how the enterprise stays under the ceiling voters approved. It does not say whether the fee will stay at 0.24 percent once that ceiling stops applying in 2031.
RMV asked Mullica, Marchman, McCluskie and Brown on Friday why the enterprise was structured below the Proposition 117 threshold rather than referred to voters, and whether they anticipate the fee returning to 0.5 percent afterward. This story will be updated with their responses.