Potholes and Broken Promises: Colorado’s Working Class Deserves Better

By Bobbie Daniel | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

Drive a mile in Colorado and you’ll know the truth: our roads are crumbling, and so is the promise that the government would take care of this basic function. Families scrape by to keep their cars running while the same political elite who’ve run this state for twenty years pour billions into pet projects and leave working people holding the bill.

Colorado’s highways were built the way a farm is built — ditch by ditch, fence by fence, harvest by harvest. Generations of Coloradans invested billions so our economy could function. From rural to urban, our families could get where they needed to go. But now the ditch and fence are broken, and instead of repairing it, the political class is off buying themselves a BMW. Nice ride, maybe, but it won’t water the crops and keep cattle out of the road. That’s exactly what it feels like when the state pours billions into ideological experiments and vanity projects while ignoring the most basic duty of government: keeping roads drivable. 

Bad roads quietly siphon away the equivalent of a family vacation from your bank account. Reports from the Common Sense Institute and TRIP estimate the average Colorado driver spends $800 to $1,100 a year on extra repairs and maintenance caused by poor road conditions. That’s money that could cover groceries, tuition, or a down payment on a reliable car. But Colorado’s political elite never live with the same hardships. For families who own one vehicle, a single repair bill can derail an entire month’s budget — especially when they’re already commuting long distances because progressive policies have made housing near jobs unaffordable.

For years, state leadership has waged war on the industries that once funded our roads. Coal, oil, and gas revenues used to pump billions into transportation, schools, and local economies. Now, those revenue streams have been strangled by regulation and endless permitting delays — sometimes stretching to 1,000 days. You can’t choke off the industries that fuel your economy and still expect to pay for core services like roads, bridges, and public safety. The result? Underfunded schools, roads in disgraceful condition, and a sluggish economy that’s driving people out of Colorado.

When COVID hit, Washington sent billions in one-time aid. Colorado could have used that money to restore K–12 funding, repair roads, and stabilize transportation funding. Instead, it went to new programs and expanded Medicaid for non-Americans to a size so large that the state now spends more from its general fund on Medicaid than on K–12 education. Those COVID dollars were temporary, and now that the tap is off, the state is facing the music: to fund the basics, you have to set real priorities.

This isn’t just sloppy budgeting — it’s a privileged philosophy divorced from reality, one that picks winners and losers based on political fashion. Around the world, we know that model by its real name: socialism. And the result is always the same — eventually, everyone ends up equally miserable. Colorado’s small-scale version is already cracking at the seams: busted highways, failing bridges, underfunded schools, and programs propped up by utopian promises instead of basic math. You can drive a shiny BMW and virtue signal all day, but if the ditch isn’t bringing water to your crops, it doesn’t matter — in the end, you lose it all.

And here’s the kicker: it’s not an accident, it’s the big government doing it to you. They take your money, waste it on their pet projects, and then leave you worse off — driving on busted roads, paying higher costs, and watching opportunities dry up. In the real world, we’d call that what it is: dumb. Dumb policy, dumb choices, and big government so blind it can’t see it’s shooting itself — and all of us — in the foot.

It’s easy to wage war on an industry from behind a desk, to check a political box while destroying thousands of jobs and extinguishing opportunity. My father didn’t have that luxury. He drove two hours each way in a beat-up Chevy Malibu to work in an underground coal mine — just like my grandfather before him. Mining wasn’t just a paycheck. It was dignity, stability, and the ability to provide for a family.

That coal mine didn’t close because the market failed; it closed because the state declared war on coal. And now, the same mindset runs Colorado’s transportation policy — punishing people for driving, pouring billions into transit systems most of us working class will never use, and ignoring the roads we actually depend on. 

If my father had been driving those same roads today, repairs on that old Chevy would have been impossible to afford. For families living paycheck to paycheck, a blown tire or busted suspension isn’t an inconvenience — it’s a crisis. And when you’re commuting hours each day because you can’t afford to live near your job, bad roads aren’t just a nuisance; they’re a direct hit to your livelihood.

When my dad worked nights, he’d come home at sunrise, drop his lunch box in the kitchen, and collapse into bed while I took the family car to school and work. But even that wasn’t enough. To keep up with my college classes at Mesa State a few towns away, while finishing my senior year at Palisade High, I often had to borrow a friend’s car. My days were a blur — racing from campus back to high school, then straight to my shift at Denny’s. That’s life when you grow up working-class: the margin is so thin that one breakdown, one missed ride, can throw your whole world off balance.

That’s a reality the political elite in this state don’t seem to understand. Maybe some of them did grow up with hard times, but their policies sure don’t reflect it. If they had even an inkling of what it’s like to juggle two towns, three jobs, and a single family car, they’d know their grand theories don’t work outside the walls of a lecture hall. The idea that we’re all supposed to live in cities, ride buses, or pedal through Colorado winters on a bike is laughable when you live in the real world. 

People who’ve never lived with scarcity can’t grasp what it’s like to hold everything together with duct tape and prayer — and then watch your own government pull the rug out from under you in more ways than one.

The people making decisions today live in a privileged reality where the basics are always covered, so they push policies that only make life harder for the rest of us. It’s no wonder our problems, like our potholes, keep getting worse. The folks in charge keep kicking the can down the road — literally. The state gas tax, our main source of road funding, hasn’t been adjusted in 35 years. Vehicle registrations have doubled in that time, while per-car revenue has dropped by more than half. And inflation — fueled by government overspending — has driven road construction costs up nearly 50% since 2021, cutting the value of every transportation dollar in half.

This spring, Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee pulled $140 million from CDOT’s budget to help cover the state’s $1.2 billion deficit, including $65 million stripped directly from highway funds. Honestly, I can’t blame them. If CDOT insists on spending road money on everything except roads, who can fault the JBC? The real failure is with CDOT and this administration, which have abandoned their core mission.

In 2021, the legislature passed a $5.4 billion transportation package with new delivery fees, ride-share fees, and fuel tax hikes, promising better roads. Instead, much of that money has been diverted into projects designed to push people out of their cars. When the state funds luxury trains for tourists while working people bounce through potholes on their way to work, it’s no wonder frustration is boiling over.

This is more than an inconvenience; it’s about safety and economic survival. Our $47 billion agriculture industry depends on reliable roads to move hundreds of millions of tons of goods each year. Urban Colorado depends on rural Colorado for its food and its recreation. But instead of supporting that connection, the political elite keep treating agriculture as the enemy. They bury family farms in suffocating regulations, spend $3 million on campaigns telling people not to eat meat, and host a governor-backed “MeatOut Day” that landed like a lead balloon in ranch country. And all the while, they ignore the broken rural roads farmers and ranchers rely on just to move their cattle, their hay, their grain.

The truth is, building a better future doesn’t come from government force — it comes from freedom. When government protects the individual instead of trying to control them, people are free to think, create, and produce. A rancher raises cattle, an engineer designs cleaner energy, a small business owner fixes roads and hires workers — and each offers that value in a marketplace where others freely choose to trade for it. That exchange is honest, it’s voluntary, and it fuels real innovation. It also allows people to keep what they’ve earned, which becomes the capital they reinvest in new tools, better technology, and stronger communities. That’s how you get cleaner energy, cheaper energy, safer roads, and new inventions that take us from point A to point B — not through heavy-handed mandates, but through the ingenuity of free people. History shows us this works. Central planning always collapses under its own weight, but free enterprise builds, adapts, and improves. If we want Colorado to thrive, we need a government that gets out of the way of its people and trusts them to build the future.

That’s why the 2026 November Colorado Ballot Initiatives 125 and 126 matter. They’re not just about fixing potholes. They’re about restoring a government that serves its people instead of bossing them around. They’re simple: every dollar already collected from gas taxes, vehicle registrations, and delivery fees must go to roads, highways, and bridges — nothing else. Not experiments. Not ideological projects. Just the basics. It’s the common-sense rule every farmer and rancher knows: you fix the ditch and mend the fence if you want to live to see another day. You keep the water flowing and the fences strong, or everything else falls apart.

Next fall, voters will have the chance to say enough is enough. Protect the money we already pay. Fix what’s broken. Whether you’re in Grand Junction, Pueblo, Sterling, or Denver, you deserve a state government that treats the basics as the priority. The political elite who’ve run Colorado for 20 years have forgotten that. They’ve left working families — from ranchers hauling cattle to the coal miner — holding the bill for their neglect.

The working class isn’t asking for luxury. We’re asking for fairness — roads that don’t wreck our cars and a government that puts the essentials first. 

In 2026, let’s fix what’s broken. Colorado has lived with enough broken ditches, broken fences, and broken political theories. It’s time to mend them — and get back to trusting Coloradans to build the future with freedom, ingenuity, and hard work.

Bobbie Daniel is the Mesa County Commissioner for District 2 in Western Colorado. Raised in Palisade and born to a hairdresser and coal miner, she brings a working-class perspective shaped by small business ownership, public service through AmeriCorps and decades of community involvement. Daniel has served on numerous local boards and advocates for local solutions, individual liberties and policies that strengthen families and small businesses. She lives in Grand Junction with her husband and their four children.

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.