One of the twin pil­lars of Col­orado tax law — a mea­sure that has with­stood pri­or attempts to dis­man­tle it — was repealed Tues­day with most of the vote counted.

Amend­ment B, which had almost 58% sup­port with 82% of the vote count­ed, pro­posed get­ting rid of the state’s 1982 Gal­lagher Amend­ment. Pro­po­nents called it a “huge win” for Col­oradans, busi­ness­es, schools and fire districts.

Even as vot­ers gave local gov­ern­ments more fis­cal breath­ing room with that mea­sure, though, they also appeared to be pass­ing a state income tax that will mean less rev­enue for the state.

Propo­si­tion 116, the income tax cut, also passed late Tues­day with near­ly 57% support.

Col­orado vot­ers, who seemed to be in a “yes” mood this year, were also sup­port­ing a third state fis­cal mea­sure, Propo­si­tion 117, with a nar­row­er 52% sup­port. If it pass­es, it will require vot­er approval before the state can cre­ate some new fees.

The Gal­lagher Amend­ment ties res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax rates to com­mer­cial prop­er­ty tax rates, requir­ing that home­own­ers pay no more than 45% of total prop­er­ty tax­es, while com­mer­cial prop­er­ty own­ers always pay 29% of their prop­er­ties’ val­ue. The res­i­den­tial tax rate fluc­tu­ates to main­tain the 45/55 split.

As home val­ues have gone up — par­tic­u­lar­ly on the Front Range — the res­i­den­tial rate has been cut to keep home­own­ers’ share of tax­es below the 45% thresh­old. Com­mer­cial prop­er­ties, mean­while, have picked up more of the tax burden.

A bipar­ti­san group of law­mak­ers referred the mea­sure to the bal­lot in the 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sion — the lat­est of sev­er­al attempts to get rid of Gallagher.

Pro­po­nents have said Gal­lagher harms busi­ness­es as res­i­den­tial rates con­tin­ue to go down as well as local gov­ern­ments and spe­cial dis­tricts that rely on prop­er­ty tax­es for the mon­ey to oper­ate. They can’t just raise tax­es to make up the rev­enue loss with­out vot­er approval because of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, and many rur­al areas don’t have the Front Range’s fast-ris­ing home val­ues or large com­mer­cial prop­er­ty bases to depend on.

Oppo­nents, how­ev­er, have argued that the repeal will hurt res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty own­ers, who have some of the low­est prop­er­ty rates in the nation.

Sen. Jack Tate, R‑Centennial, one of the back­ers of the mea­sure, acknowl­edged that it was com­pli­cat­ed, but said a broad coali­tion made sure to inform vot­ers about its effects.

“Peo­ple ral­lied around an idea of tax fair­ness and tax sta­bil­i­ty and not want­i­ng … to have tax bur­dens to shift to the small busi­ness­es while they’re strug­gling dur­ing this reces­sion caused by the pan­dem­ic,” he said.

Despite being a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment, the mea­sure repeal­ing Gal­lagher just needs a major­i­ty of the vote to pass because it doesn’t add any new lan­guage. Fig­ur­ing out changes to the for­mu­la will be the next step.

“I think our mes­sage got through and peo­ple saw the impor­tance of get­ting these out­dat­ed parts of our con­sti­tu­tion removed,” said Sen. Chris Hansen, D‑Denver.

Vot­ers also gave the OK for a statewide income tax cut, reduc­ing the rate from 4.63% to 4.55% in a win for con­ser­v­a­tives cham­pi­oning Propo­si­tion 116.

Pro­po­nents such as the Inde­pen­dence Insti­tute and Col­orado Ris­ing State Action have advo­cat­ed for the cut, say­ing it will help Col­oradans strug­gling dur­ing an eco­nom­ic reces­sion. But oppo­nents argue that reduc­tion will deliv­er less than $40 per year for the aver­age Col­oradan, pro­vid­ing a larg­er cut for the wealthy and reduc­ing fund­ing to pro­grams that Col­oradans depend on.

Propo­si­tion 117 also seemed to be head­ing toward approval. The mea­sure would require Col­oradans approve any new state enter­pris­es if the pro­ject­ed or actu­al rev­enue from fees and sur­charges is expect­ed to exceed $100 mil­lion with­in the first five years.

Pro­po­nents argued that if vot­ers have to approve all new tax­es or increas­es through the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, they should sim­i­lar­ly do so for fees. But oppo­nents of the mea­sure said requir­ing vot­er approval of fees would restrict fund­ing of need­ed pro­grams and oper­a­tions, includ­ing for school districts.

The votes are in line with how Col­oradans have pre­vi­ous­ly vot­ed on statewide tax mea­sures, not­ed Michael Fields, exec­u­tive direc­tor Col­orado Ris­ing State Action.

“As Democ­rats are doing bet­ter statewide for elect­ed office, we’re still a fis­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive state,” he said.