Colorado recognizes sacrifices of our totally disabled veterans, awarding a partial property tax exemption to 100 percent totally and permanently disabled veterans. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has two types of 100% disabled veterans – (1) vets with a 100% disability (2) vets with a total disability rated “Total Disability for Individual Unemployability” (TDIU.) VA benefits for the two types are identical, but Colorado’s TDIU veterans are unfairly denied the exemption
Here's a PowerPoint briefing on Colorado's Gold Star Spouses and our effort to qualify them for the state Disabled Veterans Survivor Property Tax Exemption. During the last session of the legislature, the House unanimously approved this but it died in the State Affairs Committee immediately on reaching the Senate.
This is an excellent blog on various benefits veterans might consider applying for even after earning a VA 100% service connected rating. Look it over!
Here's a PowerPoint briefing on Colorado's TDIU veterans ("total disability for individual unemployability.") Our effort is to qualify these 4800 totally disabled veterans for the same disabled veteran property tax exemption offered other Colorado veterans with a VA 100% rating.
TDIU and 100% are the only two ways VA categorizes a vet as totally and permanently disabled, but Colorado does not permit TDIU vets the small property tax exemption.
Colorado's Total Disability for Individual Unemployability (TDIU) veterans' property tax exemption was selected as the coalition's Number Two goal going into the next legislative season!
Both objectives deal with Colorado's Constitution, Article X Section 3.5 and the small partial property tax exemption presently offered seniors, totally and permanently disabled veterans, and their survivors.
The Colorado Bar Association had already indicated its support for both objectives.
Co-chairs Shelly Shelly Kalkowski and Robbie Robinson presented their state legislative committee 2022 general goals and specific objectives, finalized just prior to this morning's executive committee gathering.
Thank you, UVC!
In 2014 the Colorado legislature passed HB14-1373 to include survivors of totally disabled veterans with the veterans and seniors over age 65 for the small, partial disabled veteran property tax exemption. This was a blatant modification of the state constitution without first bothering the voters for our okay.
Please understand: We voters first created our state constitution and then authorized constitutional amendments. Years later the legislature took it on themselves (yes, for good reasons, of course) to make changes they felt useful by passing HB14-1373. Regardless of intent or outcome, this was a no-no and an unconstitutional action by the legislature: the legislature has no power to modify or change the constitution. The estimated cost was around $100,000.
They simply did it. Folks involved at the time today agree it "abused" the constitution but hey – they did it anyway.
Regardless of procedure, that was a good thing with a very small footprint, not likely to invite any challenge: Indeed, there has been none. I can't find any notice ever made about this "extra-constitutional" legislative action that added a few hundred widow(ers) to a program already attracting attention for its cost. I make mention of it only because it was done and it should be done again!
You see, the legislature passed SCR06-001 in 2006, then presented it to Colorado voters as Referendum E. We approved it overwhelmingly, extending the senior property tax exemption to a few thousand totally and permanently disabled veterans. The original version of that tax exemption covered only seniors and its genesis was HB00-1002. The legislature passed that in 2000 for presentation to the voters as Referendum A. It passed, with an estimated cost of just over a million dollars.
Those two referenda – A in 2000 and then E in 2006, made totally and permanently disabled veterans and seniors as the two categories of homeowners qualified for the property tax exemption. Then HB14-1373 added the veterans' survivors.
Let's review:
1. 2000, Referendum A + HB00-1002 = the senior exemption, apparently also including survivors
2. 2006, Referendum E + SCR06-001 + HB07-1251 = the disabled veteran exemption
3. 2014, HB14-1373 = the disabled veteran's survivor exemption
4. 2016, HB16-1444 = aligned the statute with the constitution, adding disabled military retirees' exemption
HB21-1002: We must note the dastardly action by the senate in June 2021 rejecting the unanimous house bill for a referendum adding Gold Star Spouses to the disabled veteran property tax exemption.
Survivors of military personnel lost in the line of duty are presently denied the exemption by a stupid and illogical technicality: The exemption recognizes only survivors of veterans who die while in receipt of the exemption. Dying in combat very obviously prevents a veteran from returning to Colorado to qualify for the exemption, so we deny it to the widow. Dumb in the extreme.
The senate's unpatriotic rejection dishonored Colorado but "saved" the state about $95,000.
Colorado voters approved Referendum E in 2006, not knowing that the legislature had already defined "qualified veteran" so as to exclude vets with the VA "total disability for individual unemployability," (TDIU.)
Colorado's legislators and government officials chose to interpret the requirement for the "VA 100% rating" so as to exclude totally and permanently disabled veterans who are compensated at the 100% level...because they are in fact totally and permanently disabled. The only difference being,
TDIU veterans have a totally disabling injury, worse than standard VA tables are meant to recognize, that is in fact totally and permanently disabling. These are the same totally and permanently disabled veterans – one honored by Colorado with a small property tax exemption and the other totally ignored. Are they less somehow than worthy in the eyes of our mostly non-veteran legislators?
That's the extent of their efforts. Less than zero, because it was years of "absolutely not" instead of "let's find a way." That has meant years of being denied the specific constitutional benefit voters were told we approved as Article X Section 3.5 for all of Colorado's veterans with honorable service who became permanently and totally disabled in the line of duty.
Have we abandoned thousands of Colorado's TDIU veterans?
Outside of those two worthy organizations who "really get it"...zero interest among Colorado's citizens for the needs of the state's totally and permanently disabled veterans of honorable service who are rated "TDIU."
Not your problem, right? You're probably not a vet although perhaps the child or grandchild of one. You're probably not the father of a young man or woman in service. So...simply not your problem.
TDIU veterans make up about 30-40% of Colorado's totally disabled veterans. VA has two categories: 100% rated, for vets whose injuries are typical for the type injury suffered, and TDIU, for vets whose injuries are worse than typical for the type injury suffered.
Colorado permits the 100% rated vets our too-small partial property tax exemption, and specifically refuses it to TDIU veterans.
Are these veterans any different than each other? Yes, because the TDIU vet is specifically evaluated as having a worse-case type injury rather than "typical," and is thereby totally and permanently disabled and never able to work again.
Why do we treat them differently? Ask your legislator if they can explain...I can't. I care, but only a rare handful in the legislature seem to care.
Not their problem. They really don't care.
This issue reached the voters as Referendum E in 2006 and was then overwhelmingly approved. Colorado voters believe in protecting our disabled veterans with such important benefits!
The legislature then created "enabling legislation" in the form of HB07-1251 to set into our statutes the provisions of the newly-approved Referendum E.
That sums up the trouble we now have in our state's small disabled veteran property tax exemption.
You see, we were asked to vote on a straightforward text the legislature gave us in the Blue Book:
"AN AMENDMENT TO SECTION 3.5 OF ARTICLE X OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF COLORADO, CONCERNING THE EXTENSION OF THE EXISTING PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTION FOR QUALIFYING SENIORS TO ANY UNITED STATES MILITARY VETERAN WHO IS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PERMANENTLY DISABLED DUE TO A SERVICE-CONNECTED DISABILITY."
We didn't see the cards the legislature hid behind up their sleeves (or is it behind their backs?) They didn't show us anywhere in the Blue Book that SCR06-001 also had a description of the qualified disabled veteran that, in effect, eliminated almost half of Colorado's veterans who'd been totally and permanently disabled in the line of duty. They didn't tell us anything about their description in what we approved, but they certainly put their hidden cards into Article X Section 3.5 and the enabling statute HB07-1251:
(1.5) For purposes of this section, "disabled veteran" means an individual who has served on active duty in the United States armed forces, including a member of the Colorado national guard who has been ordered into the active military service of the United States, has been separated therefrom under honorable conditions, and has established a service-connected disability that has been rated by the federal department of veterans affairs as one hundred percent permanent disability through disability retirement benefits or a pension pursuant to a law or regulation administered by the department, the department of homeland security, or the department of the army, navy, or air force
The words in highlighted yellow cut thousands of Colorado's totally and permanently disabled veterans, injured in the line of duty and with honorable service, from the property tax exemption we thought we approved for them. We never saw and we never approved those words or anything like them!
The VA has two types of disability ratings for veterans who are totally and permanently disabled in the line of duty. One is called "100% rated" and the other is "Total Disability for Individual Unemployability," or TDIU.
Both ratings are based on the fundamental concept in the VA for compensation based the degree of an injury's impact on the veteran's ability to earn a wage after service:
• The "100% rated" is based on standard tables for the average earning loss caused by the average injury.
• "TDIU" is based on the actual earning loss caused by a worse-than average injury. A TDIU veteran has been individually assessed by VA as having an especially worse-than-average injury rendering him/her actually unable to ever work again.
Colorado's voters thought we were voting for, as the Blue Book put it for us to better understand:
"Veterans are rated 100-percent permanently disabled when a mental or physical injury makes it impossible for the average person to hold a job and the disability is lifelong"
Colorado's legislators and administrators would have us accept that 100% is not the same as total. That the amendment and the statute exclude TDIU veterans with total and permanent disabilities but accept 100% veterans with total and permanent disabilities.
Folks, the legislature simply hid their cards....or did they have them up their sleeves?
We didn't get what we voted for. We didn't protect all the veterans we thought we were protecting with Referendum E!
