DENVER — Colorado legislators already have decided this year that they do not want to tax short-term rentals as commercial property rather than residential property — a decision made on a unanimous vote in a Senate committee last month.
This week, however, a separate committee in the upper chamber, the Senate Local Government Committee, will begin a more nuanced debate over whether the state needs to give more power to county governments to license and regulate these rentals like businesses. And if the debate follows the lines of discussion in the House last month, it will come down to a question of whether this is a government responsibility or government overreach.
In both chambers, House Bill 1093 has been sponsored from a bipartisan duo representing areas that bring in a lot of revenue from tourists. In the House it was Democratic Rep. Julie McCluskie of Summit County and Republican Rep. Jim Wilson of Salida, while the main proponents in the Senate are Democratic Sen. Kerry Donovan of Vail and Republican Sen. Bob Rankin of the Roaring Fork Valley.
In such areas, short-term rentals on platforms like AirBnb and VRBO can make up a significant amount of the local housing stock. McCluskie, citing figures supplied to her by Summit County said roughly one-third of the 30,000 living units in her home county now rent for less than 30 days at a time.
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