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Colorado Tax Data Raises Questions About Calls For Higher Taxes On Wealthy
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, State

Colorado Tax Data Raises Questions About Calls For Higher Taxes On Wealthy

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Colorado’s “rich” are already paying a lot (A LOT) Tax Day, both the day when tax returns are due and the day at which you have worked enough to pay your taxes (and start working for yourself) recently passed. Around that date I saw something online giving a breakdown of Federal tax receipts vs. income group and it got me thinking about Colorado’s tax receipts vs. income. After doing some digging I have some data to share, and, as the top line here suggests, the “rich” in Colorado are already paying quite a bit. Certainly a giant percent of state revenue compared to how many filers there are. As I’ll show below, if you look at the percentage of total tax receipts vs. the percentage of taxpayers ...
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Denver’s Right of First Refusal Puts Government in the Middle of Private Property Sales
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Denver’s Right of First Refusal Puts Government in the Middle of Private Property Sales

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I saw a post by a reader on Twitter recently. It shows how Denver is proposing to implement a 2024 law passed by the state legislature. Let’s start with the 2024 bill. It’s linked first below. I took a screenshot of the bill’s fiscal note summary and attached those as screenshots 1 and 2. As you can see from the highlight in screenshot 2, it just wouldn’t be Colorado if we didn’t throw a bone or two to nonprofits. In summary, the bill allows local governments (for buildings of a certain size depending on whether your municipality qualifies as urban or rural/resort) either the right to purchase a property if it’s already listed as affordable housing for “an economically or substantially ...
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SB26-147: A Great Idea Almost Certain to Be Vetoed
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

SB26-147: A Great Idea Almost Certain to Be Vetoed

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project     SB26-147: a great idea almost certain to be vetoed The CPR article linked first below was my first introduction to the bill SB26-147, which is linked second below. The focus of the article is on how the legislature is pushing back on Governor Polis’ micromanaging by requiring his staff to register and hold to the same rules as any other lobbyist would. Quoting from the article with link intact: “Currently, lobbyists are required to register a stance on any bills they’re trying to influence with the Secretary of State’s Office, which makes that information publicly available. Legislative liaisons doing the same type of work for state agencies or the governor’s office directly don’t have those dis...
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PERA Program Designed to Help Rural Schools Has Potential for Abuse
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

PERA Program Designed to Help Rural Schools Has Potential for Abuse

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project A reader messaged me recently about concerns they had in their own local district. The concern centers around who was getting hired (well, re-hired) at their local school district. For a number of reasons, it’s not feasible to go and check out the reader’s district, but I hung on to the story because it felt like a good learning opportunity to share something I learned about, and it might be a concern you share. As best as I can tell (there may have been laws that refined or changed the original program), a 2017 law which I link to first below created a program in PERA, the Public Employees Retirement Association, to help get teachers into rural schools. In order to understand how this works, I have to bac...
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Energy Foundation China Has Been Generous to Those Dealing in Colorado Politics
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Energy Foundation China Has Been Generous to Those Dealing in Colorado Politics

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Energy Foundation China has been generous to those dealing in Colorado politics. One of my recent op eds is linked below. It was a fair bit of research, but worth it. There is a group named Energy Foundation China, which, though it has a San Francisco address for its headquarters, is strongly tied to Beijing, the Chinese government, and the CCP. Another important thing to note is how generous Energy Foundation China has been to environmental and other nonprofits here in Colorado. I was barely able to scratch the surface given how interconnected the nonprofit ecosystem is here in Colorado, but I detail the heavy hitters in a recent op ed below. Follow the money. https://completecolorado.com/202...
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Counties forced to pay: State landfill mandates come without funding
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Counties forced to pay: State landfill mandates come without funding

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Funded mandates on county landfills? One of the consistent complaints coming out of municipal and local governments is the sheer number of unfunded mandates our state government puts on them. For some context on that, I link to an Advance Colorado report on them first below. Not all mandates come from the state legislature either. Sometimes they come from one of the copious unelected boards running more of the state than they should. A recent decision by the unelected Air Quality Control Council imposed significant costs on smaller, municipal landfills regarding methane controls. As usual, this mandate did not come with any dollars to help fund it. My state senator, B Pelton, has put forward a bi...
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Insurance relief or government growth: Colorado bills reveal two competing paths
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Insurance relief or government growth: Colorado bills reveal two competing paths

Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The two bills linked at bottom (SB26-049 and SB26-155 respectively) present an interesting contrast in policy intended to lower homeowners insurance premiums. I thought a comparison of the two might be illuminating. It’s not going to be entirely black and white, these aren’t polar opposites, but in looking at the bills together I think you can get a sense of the “legislative style” of those involved. The fiscal notes of both provide a pretty apt summary, so let’s start there. Screenshots 1a and 1b show the summary for SB26-049. Screenshots 2a and 2b show the summary for SB26-155. In the former you increase the people who qualify for grants from an existing enterpr...
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CPW nominee under scrutiny as broader concerns surface about board power
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

CPW nominee under scrutiny as broader concerns surface about board power

Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Some questions for CPW hopeful Christopher Sichko Last Wednesday I posted about the upcoming Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee confirmation hearing for three of Gov. Polis’ CPW appointees. If you want or need the context from the earlier newsletter, you’ll find it linked first below. A reader noted something interesting about one of the commissioner candidates. When I read what they wrote, I got curious and thought I would follow up with Mr. Sichko. The second link below is to a 10/25/2024 article in Elevation Outdoors entitled “LOCAL HEROES: Christopher Sichko, PHD”. The relevant part comes from the bottom of the article. Quoting: “Sichko says, ‘My ultimate goal is to support the regener...
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Are lawmakers getting the full picture? Concerns raised about Capitol health research
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Are lawmakers getting the full picture? Concerns raised about Capitol health research

Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I have followed and written pretty extensively on how a group tied to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science is funding a group of four “legislative fellows” with the stated intent of providing nonpartisan, unbiased scientific information to legislators. See “Related” below if you want to read that op ed. I recently had a chance to sit down to discuss this work with Jon Caldara on an episode of Devil’s Advocate. That video is linked first below. Embedding people in the legislature with outside funding is concerning, but concerns don’t automatically equal problems. I mentioned in the video that the public work I’d seen from the fellows seemed pretty benign. Taping with Mr. Caldara inspired me to go back into ...
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