Follow the money: Why every Colorado taxpayer should check their county budget

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project

Check your county’s budget

I wanted to offer you an example and some encouragement about checking your county (or city) budget. For my example, I chose to focus in on my home county’s (Logan) Human Services budget. I’ll lead you through the process before looking at an interesting pattern I found.

I started, and I recommend you start, by simply inquiring at your county (or through the commissioner’s office) for their budget archives. This was how I arrived at Logan’s archives, the first link at bottom. Budgets are big and complex. You need some way to wrangle the complexity down to size. One way to do that is to do what I did: pick a specific topic and stick to the summaries. You might look at salaries over time. You might look at benefits over time. You might look at road/bridge maintenance. Pick one thing and look at the budget summaries over time. I chose Human Services because I wanted to look at growth in this area of the budget. Depending on how you define Human Services (HS, see screenshot 1a for how Logan County defines it), I think it’s fair to say that our state has greatly expanded this budget item. Did Logan County do the same?

The next broad piece of advice I would offer is to make sure that you understand what you’re looking at and also that you compare apples to apples. Screenshot 2 is taken from the 2026 budget and is the HS summary.

As hinted at in picture 1a, there is more than one funding source for HS, so care is needed. Whatever year you look at first, look in the summary and then look in the long form budget to make sure you know what’s going on.

For Logan County HS, you find it’s funded in part by property taxes, but also by other local funds as well as state and federal money (not to mention any leftovers from the year before). I chose, therefore, to focus in on the things that I could identify year after year in budget summaries. I kept track of the things highlighted in picture 2: I tracked Property Tax Revenue, Other Revenue, Expenditures, and the Mill Levy. Plan in hand, all you need do now is to work the plan.

The second link below is to a spreadsheet where I organized the numbers highlighted above. Take note: I like to be sure of my numbers and Logan County runs two years back on their actual budget amounts. I.e. the 2026 budget will have estimated numbers for that year, preliminary for 2025, and actual for 2024. That’s why my spreadsheets end at 2024. It was the last year actual data was available.

The chart and data are in the spreadsheet, but for convenience I took a picture of the graph and attach it as screenshot 3. If you are adept at spreadsheets, even if you are only looking at things for yourself, I highly recommend making charts. There is power in a visual representation of data; how else can you see broad patterns?

That brings me to the last part for this post, the patterns.

Take a second look at that graph. The red dots are the HS funding via property taxes. The blue dots are the money going out, the yellow is part (the bit outside property tax revenue) of the money coming in. Note that the property tax revenue is staying relatively still.

Note also that the expenses climb, and that they track pretty closely to revenue sources outside property taxes — these would be mainly federal and state money.

Earlier, I’d mentioned that the motivation for looking at Logan’s HS spending was to see if they’d been as profligate as our state in spending. It was unexpected, but I have to say overall that Logan County has shown pretty remarkable restraint on their spending!

To give added weight to this, a quick look at my spreadsheet shows an added detail the graph does not. The mill levy by Logan County (set by commissioners) actually went down in 2020 from 2.700 to 2.300. The county started charging less tax.

At the bottom of picture 1a, there were two sentences worth excerpting here. Quoting:

“Logan County continues to face cuts in funding from the State for Human Services programs while the need for services locally continues to increase. The programs administered by the Human Services Department are funded by state, federal, and county sources.”

If you wondered whether or not the existence of screenshot 1a implied a 1b, wonder no more. Screenshot 1b attached is from the 2018 budget. Note the exact same language about not only what Logan HS does, but it’s funding woes. Every year between 2018 and 2026 had this language.

Revisit the graph of expenditures vs. revenue from earlier, noting how the expenses track the revenue coming from things other than property taxes. I can’t help but see that and think to myself that more money is driving more demand.

Unless I missed something, the overall trend for funding outside of property tax revenue is increasing. I am not sure where the “cuts” alluded to enter the picture.

What does seem to be obvious in the data is that as the revenues rise, the expenses do too. They track nicely. This leaves one with the question of whether there would ever be enough. Is it possible to hit bottom, some magical number where the curve bends?

I encourage you to look at your own local government data. Look for sources of money in and where it’s going.

It can be daunting; it was for me when I started. This doesn’t mean you can’t understand it and can’t find meaningful answers to your questions. If you have a project in mind and I can be of help with tips, I’m happy to help in whatever way I can.

*In essence, the tax rate dropped.

**One suggestion I had in talking to (my now state senator, former county commissioner) Byron Pelton was to check directors. When I asked the county about that, I was told that there was one commissioner from 2013 to 2025 and his replacement came on board in late 2025, but had worked there since 1999.

https://www.logancountyco.gov/Archive.aspx?AMID=36
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lzIY-7G_ElMu7c4gW-gTzGWiumF8WbMems0FfOXe6Fc/edit?usp=sharing

READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

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.