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Selective reporting skews the Sun’s take on Colorado’s budget reality
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Selective reporting skews the Sun’s take on Colorado’s budget reality

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Paul's and Eason's disingenuous reporting on the special session The Colorado Sun article linked at bottom has the title "Frequently asked questions — and misunderstandings — about Colorado’s special session to close a nearly $1B budget hole", but the article itself fails to deliver on that claim. The article in reality devolves more into "what do conservatives and Republicans have wrong" editorializing than an informative piece.Don't misunderstand me, the article makes plenty of valid points. I would, in fact, include it on a list of required reading to get a partial understanding of Colorado's budget situation and also of the upcoming special session.But, it is that "partial" in there that is the operative word. What ...
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Gaines: Colorado’s add-back taxes are a backdoor tax on overtime
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Gaines: Colorado’s add-back taxes are a backdoor tax on overtime

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The Great Colorado Add Back? My state senator (B Pelton) alerted me to something you'll almost certainly see in the coming state special session: add back taxes. I thought it would be good to give some resources on that so you'll better understand it and (I hope) be a better advocate on the issue. This is something I will follow up on as the special session gets going; Sen Pelton is running a bill to make such taxes conform to TABOR limits. I have asked for a copy of that bill and will share if and when I get it. There are many different kinds of tax add backs, but I'll stick to the topic of state income tax add backs because I can use the link below as a reference. The State of Colorado weblink at bottom gives ...
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Gaines: Is CDPHE’s harm reduction program normalizing meth and crack on the taxpayer’s dime?
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Gaines: Is CDPHE’s harm reduction program normalizing meth and crack on the taxpayer’s dime?

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project CDPHE's harm reduction via Colorado Health Network, Inc. The Colorado Politics article linked first below is about a meth flyer that was circulating in Denver and causing some heartburn. It's a flyer which offers tips on how to smoke not only meth but also crack cocaine. The flyer was produced and distributed by Access Point Denver.Quoting the article:"Operated by Colorado Health Network, Access Point Denver is a harm reduction program offering services such as drug checking, overdose prevention and sterile needle exchanges to reduce the transmission of diseases among drug users. In June, the Denver City Council unanimously approved a 24-month contract extension worth more than $3 million that funds Access Point Denver’...
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Gaines: Medicaid bloat is eating Colorado’s budget after a decade of federal expansion
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Gaines: Medicaid bloat is eating Colorado’s budget after a decade of federal expansion

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Colorado's Medicaid bloat under Obamacare In the first post of this series, I briefly went over Colorado's Medicaid financing (how much and on what). If you want or need that context, it's the first link below. In the second part of the series, I want to talk about how Medicaid got expanded by the Feds--allowing more people to get on government-funded healthcare-- and how Colorado leapt at the expansion like a shot. There were two recent (and big) expansions of Medicaid: the first was the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) which expanded Medicaid coverage to people (including those without any disability or children)making up to 138% of the Federal Poverty wage. Screenshot 1 is a summary of the changes, it comes from...
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Gaines: Subsidies save some—but in reality, they’re just wealth transfers
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Gaines: Subsidies save some—but in reality, they’re just wealth transfers

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Let me start with a couple non-contiguous quotes from the article linked at bottom. “'By better using the heat beneath our feet to help us, we are leading the nation in innovative clean energy technologies that save Coloradans money, and protect our air quality. Investing in Geothermal heating technology increases energy reliability and serves as a low-cost energy source,' Polis said." “'Geothermal heating technology plays a huge role in helping Colorado reduce emissions from homes and buildings while saving Coloradans money on heating and cooling costs,' said CEO Executive Director Will Toor. 'It’s exciting to see so many innovative geothermal initiatives being made possible due to Colorado’s investment in this technolo...
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Gaines: Instead of schools, state grants funded advocacy for equity, gay forestry—and ‘indigenizing’
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Gaines: Instead of schools, state grants funded advocacy for equity, gay forestry—and ‘indigenizing’

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project In an earlier post (see the first link below), I mentioned a couple of state expenses to the environmental advocacy group Cultivando that had caught my eye in their TOPS expense report.The first was a line item for $500 labeled as "personal services -- professional" charged to the Colorado Energy Office (CEO). The other was a grant for $24,700 to Cultivando charged to the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).I wrote in and got the records back for these expenses. I thought them interesting enough to share. Perhaps they're not big dollar amounts, but they are representative of the kinds of thought processes among policymakers and bureaucrats that put us in the financial state we're in--you know the state where we are short...
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Gaines: Net migration math doesn’t lie—Denver’s policies aren’t working
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

Gaines: Net migration math doesn’t lie—Denver’s policies aren’t working

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Small wonder on Denver's Net Migration A recent report by the conservative-leaning Common Sense Institute (see the CPR article linked first below), has it that Denver's net migration -- inflow take away outflow -- has fallen over 50% in the last decade.Keep in mind that the net migration is still positive, more people are coming than leaving, but we have a decrease in the increase. Quoting the article (with link left intact): "The state's population growth has declined by nearly 53% in the past 10 years, according to a new report released by the Common Sense Institute, a non-partisan research organization. The study measured net migration, which is the difference between people moving into the state and peo...
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Gaines: Colorado’s unelected boards hold the real power—and it’s hurting rural counties
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State, Substack

Gaines: Colorado’s unelected boards hold the real power—and it’s hurting rural counties

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Regulatory Capture and Colorado's Unelected Boards I wrote a bit back (see the first link below) about how our state is increasingly turfing what ought to be legislative control to a series of unelected boards, how legislative laziness has effectively handed over control of our state to them.Rulemaking and regulation might make things more efficient, it might enable higher policy output with less time, but it is not without cost. It's one of those costs I want to cover today: policy by unelected board opens us up to control, not by the people, but by industry and (increasingly in Colorado) advocates.This is due to cronyism in board appointments and also what might loosely be termed a form of "regulatory capture" (if you wil...
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Gaines: Bureaucrats are making the rules—and you’re paying for it
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Gaines: Bureaucrats are making the rules—and you’re paying for it

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Rulemaking in Colorado.** Rulemaking is the process by which our legislature delegates the task of regulating specific actions and behaviors. In a rough sense it works like this. Say the legislature wants to make a law so that building owners don't scrimp on elevator expenses to the detriment of public safety. The legislature, rather than directly telling landlords what to do, will task an executive agency with a general set of constraints, telling the agency to come up with rules and regulations that "protect the public safety" or other such phrases. The executive agency then sets the actual policy: what does safety look like for elevators, how is it checked? If this strikes you as not being too far from having u...
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Gaines: Watch the framing—Karlik’s slant and Polis’ quiet appointments
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Gaines: Watch the framing—Karlik’s slant and Polis’ quiet appointments

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Colorado Politics' Karlik lets his bias slip (again). Colorado Politics judicial reporter Michael Karlik is back at it (see the first link below for an earlier post about his reporting). If it's not using his pen to question the motives of a conservative judge, it's tossing softballs at a liberal judge rather than challenging him. It's framing his questions in such a way as to clearly indicate what the point of the whole endeavor has been. The Colorado Politics article linked second below is a Q and A Karlik had with retired judge John Leopold** to discuss Leopold's signing an amicus brief about the arrests of Minnesota Judge Hannah Dugan. She was the one who hustled someone ICE had a warrant for out the back door whe...
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