Conservation easement fees eyed
By Jerd Smith, Rocky Mountain News
Published December 20, 2007 at 12:30 a.m.
Colorado would impose fees on conservation easements that qualify for state tax credits and would seek to license nonprofit land trusts that execute the deals, under a set of draft proposals headed to lawmakers next year.
The fees would help cover the cost of reviewing the transactions, paying for things such as screening of appraisals by the Division of Real Estate and accrediting land trusts.
The proposals are aimed at curbing abuses of an innovative Colorado law that grants generous tax credits to landowners who agree to forever protect their lands and shield them from development by placing conservation easements on them.
The idea is to scrutinize deals early, before the tax credits are claimed, and to weed out land trusts that aren't qualified to protect the land or that are being misused by unscrupulous business people.
Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, and Rep. Alice Madden, D-Boulder, are spearheading the planned legislative overhaul of the program next year.
Isgar said he favored as much screening of the deals as possible to ensure that the program can continue. More than 1 million acres have been protected, much of it as a result of the law.
But the state has handed out more than $274 million in tax credits since 2000. Now it is seeking at least $15 million in repayments on bad transactions that either used inflated appraisals, which increase the size of the tax credit, or protected land that has questionable conservation value.
"We have to demonstrate that we are reviewing these things, or we aren't going to have a program left," Isgar said Wednesday.
smithj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5474
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