May 15, 2007 06:23 PM UTC

Al White: Republicans are Wrong on Property Tax Freeze

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• by: Colorado Pols

As The Craig Daily Press reports:

Al White supports a new tax law that will boost local funding for school districts across Colorado even though that position places him at odds with many in his Republican Party.

“Most of my party is not on the Joint Budget Committee,” White said Saturday in Steamboat Springs.

White is a Winter Park resident who has represented Northwest Colorado at the Capitol for seven years. He recently ended his first year as one of two Republicans on the state’s powerful, six-member Joint Budget Committee, which oversees Colorado’s finances. White said serving on the committee gave him a firsthand look at a dire financial forecast for K-12 education in Colorado. As a result, White disagrees with state Republican leadership about one of the hottest topics to come out of the 2007 legislative session — the School Finance Act recently signed into law by Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat…

… “We’ve got to do something,” White said about K-12 funding in Colorado. “I don’t know what other solution is out there. This is a solution that will slow the shift to state funding for local school districts.”…

… White said Republican opposition to the act did not sway his votes.

“This is not about partisanship, this is about the issue,” he said.

Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams has said repeatedly that he wants to make the property tax freeze an election issue in 2008, but it’s getting harder and harder to use it as an attack when Republicans proposed the same plan two years ago and a Republican on the JBC is in favor of this year’s version.