By Cory Gaines | Complete Colorado (via Colorado Accountability Project)
Pretend that your employer accidentally overpaid you, say $20 extra a month for a couple years. Neither of you notice until one day you get an email telling you about the mistake. The mistake has been fixed and your pay will be $20 less going forward. Also, you now owe your employer $240. Not a pleasant thing to consider.
Fresh on the heels of Governor Polis signing the state budget, we got similar bad news. Due to an accounting error there’s a $67 million “oops” in the budget.
The mistake stretches all the way back to the hurried 2020 legislative session and a bill rushed through for Polis’ signature. SB20-215 created the Health Insurance Affordability Enterprise, another of those government-run “businesses” which attaches a fee to many health insurance policies (any policy regulated by the state’s division of insurance).
These fees go to Governor Polis’ pet reinsurance programs as well as subsidies for low-income residents, including, incidentally, those here illegally. Like all enterprises, this revenue was not subject to the revenue limits the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) puts on the government.