Colorado Democrats have once again unveiled their favorite magic trick: making something more expensive in the name of making it affordable.
Colorado Politics reports that Senate Bill 155 would create yet another government “enterprise,” this one funded by a 0.5% fee on the total premiums collected on multiperil homeowners insurance policies. The money would go out as grants for “resilient” roofs meant to reduce damage from hail and other extreme weather. Sen. Kyle Mullica says the bill is about “saving the people of Colorado money.” That is adorable.
Because here in the real world, when politicians slap a new fee on insurance companies, insurance companies do not gather in a circle, absorb the cost out of moral enlightenment, and sing “Colorado, My Colorado.” They price it in. They spread it around. They pass it on. The bill even tries to forbid insurers from passing the cost to policyholders “as a surcharge,” which is a wonderful little specimen of legislative make-believe. Fine. Then it won’t show up as a line item called surcharge. It will just show up in the premium, because insurers are not charities and math is not woke.
And that is what makes this so insultingly stupid. Everybody already knows homeowners insurance in Colorado is brutal. The article says Colorado has some of the highest rates in the country, and the state’s own Division of Insurance found hail is the biggest cost driver, accounting for up to 54% of a premium’s cost in some areas. So the ruling geniuses look at a market already staggering under weather losses and decide the answer is to build another fee-fed bureaucracy with grants and codes of conduct and enterprise jargon. They cannot help themselves. A problem appears, and within minutes somebody at the Capitol is trying to hatch a funding mechanism with a noble adjective and a board.
The best part is that Mullica opposed a similar bill last year when the fee landed more visibly on homeowners. This year, the same basic impulse comes back with a costume change: do not charge the homeowner directly, charge the insurer and pretend that is different. That is not policy evolution. That is a shell game for people who think consumers never notice the pea moving under the cup.
Of course prevention matters. Harder roofs are not a dumb idea. Fraud controls on roofers are not a dumb idea. But the moment Democrats decide the answer is another enterprise funded by another quasi-tax dressed up as a fee, you know exactly where this ends: more administrative clutter, higher costs, and another round of speeches about why none of it is technically a tax as your premium climbs into low orbit.
Colorado homeowners do not need another Gold Dome racket stapled onto an already miserable bill. They need fewer cost drivers, fewer gimmicks, and fewer lawmakers who think changing the label on a burden changes who pays it.
Source: Colorado Politics
Just Stop It
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