By Cory Gaines | Guest Columnist, Colorado Accountability Project
Back in 2021, our governor, upon passage of SB 21-260 proclaimed that we’d finally fix our “damn roads“.
While driving to Denver the other day and having my teeth rattle in my head on a rough section of road (my friend Jerry Sonnenberg has said you better wear your spurs to hang on), I thought back wistfully to those claims. Far from being a measure that collected money to actually fix the surfaces our cars and commerce move on, the bill itself created numerous enterprises only some of which actually work to fix the roads.
I got curious for an update on how much was collected so far and where it’s gone, so I asked around. Today’s posts will be the results of that digging.
This first post will give an overview of the money collected. The other posts will look at CDOT and then others (Colorado Energy Office, CDPHE).
Let’s jump right in. Here’s a link to a spreadsheet the Dept of Revenue maintains for the revenue that comes in from SB 21-260 enterprises. It is the most current data on revenue going from July 2021 to now (well, as “now” as “now” can be, there is a little lag).
To help you navigate what you’re looking at, take a look at Screenshot 1 over at my Colorado Accountability Project. I highlighted Revenue Month 3 in Revenue Year 2023. This row is, in plain English, March of 2023 data.
The first thing I was interested in was the total. Per screenshot 2, that is the last column. It gives total revenue by month and year. That $16 million and change from 5/24 is not a running total by the way. That’s just May. A to-date sum (July 21 to May 24) is about $300 million.
You can poke around and find some other numbers if you’d like. There’s no shortage of them. If you find something noteworthy, please feel free to share to the comments on my website.
Some random things I found:
- The state has collected $161 million in retail delivery fees. Those 27 cents per really add up no?
- We have paid $90 million extra to CDOT for a road usage fee since it started in April 2023.
- EV owners have paid about an extra $30 million in fees to the Bridge and Tunnel Enterprise in CDOT. This was money to make up for a loss of gas tax revenue for EV’s.
And one last random thing I noticed having spent a lot of time reading. A goodly amount of the money you have paid so far into these enterprises have created more layers on the bureaucratic onion. Another goodly amount has gone to efforts to reduce pollution. You’ll see more details on this if you have the tenacity to stick with the second and third post today.
Given that, I think calling the extra money you’re paying thanks to SB211-260 a way to “fix our damn roads” is stretching the truth beyond its elastic limit. (i.e. it’s more disingenuousness from our governor and his fellow Democrats. )
That’s it for totals. In what follows (here and on my website), we’ll look in some more detail at the specific enterprises and what they’re doing.
What is CDOT doing with their enterprise money from SB21-260?
This is the second part in the series on the money our state is collecting from SB21-260 (finally fixing our “damn roads”). If you haven’t yet, read the above first for necessary context.
This post will be link-intensive and provide you the resources to see what CDOT is doing with the money it gets from all the enterprises created by SB21-260. Below are six links and they correspond to the various entities that get fee money.
In order:
1. The quarterly reports for the Bridge and Tunnel Enterprise (an existing enterprise whose funding increased under the bill)
2, 3, and 4. These are links for the Nonattainment Area Air Pollution Mitigation Enterprise (NAAPME). Link 2 is their 23-24 budget, link 3 is their most recent (2023) annual report, and link 4 is their 10 year plan.
5 and 6. These are links for the Clean Transit Enterprise. Link 5 is their most recent (2023) annual report, and link 6 is their 10 year plan.
Lots to digest and I will (mostly) leave it to you to read up. Obviously if you are intersted in the overall direction of any particular enterprise then look at the 10 year plan. If you are interested in where your money is going right now, look at the budgets and annual reports.
If you do dig in and find something worth sharing, let’s talk.
Talking money and where it’s going right now are the most feasible and digestible things we can accomplish here. Let’s focus on that.
With regard to the Bridge and Tunnel Enterprise, their job is, as their name suggests, to collect money and fix roads and bridges. This predates SB21-260, but the extra revenue added a shot of money in the arm so to speak.
What has this infusion of cash done? There are more details in the quarterly reports, but most of what they’ve done so far seems to be bureaucratic document-making (it takes time and money to figure out how they’ll spend your money), plan-making, and pushing up the timeline on some other projects already planned.
There are lots of projects mentioned, but it’s hard to find a direct connection between extra revenue and increased repairs or construction, meaning now that they have this extra money this new unplanned thing is now doable. Their documentation is pretty opaque. Don’t forget this is CDOT after all. The impression I get is that we’ll give extra money to maybe get some things done faster (and make more paper to put in files). Oh, and settle some legal claims that also predated SB21-260.
Moving to the next one on the list, the Nonattainment Area Air Pollution Mitigation Enterprise (NAAPME), you can see what the legislature charged them with doing in screenshot 1 attached on the website.
NOTE: For part 3, please go to my website, the Colorado Accountability Project, as there are many more screenshots to review.