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Colorado Progressives Blame TABOR For $1.5B Budget Gap While Expanding Costly Tax Credits
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Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Colorado Progressives Blame TABOR For $1.5B Budget Gap While Expanding Costly Tax Credits

By Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado Karl Marx, co-author of The Communist Manifesto, once wrote “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” We’re watching a version of this play out at the Colorado State Capitol. Like thousands of enlightened technocrats who came before them, Colorado’s progressive legislators believe that they are uniquely endowed to once and for all fix structural flaws in the state’s budget and finally bring “fairness” and “equality” to Colorado.  If they could only eliminate the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR, heavily tax the rich, and preserve their preferred special interest tax breaks, then Colorado would have heaven on Earth.  Really, this farcical display will only serve to destroy Co...
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Colorado Lawmakers Weigh $500 Million In Cuts As $1.5 Billion Deficit Looms
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Colorado Lawmakers Weigh $500 Million In Cuts As $1.5 Billion Deficit Looms

By: Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee is working through a list Wednesday of about 150 suggestions to cut as much as $1.5 billion in general fund dollars out of next year’s budget. The largest on the list prepared by JBC staff is $198 million in cuts to the funding for the annual senior and disabled veterans homestead exemption. Funding for the homestead exemption has to come out of general fund dollars in the 2026-27 budget because the state does not have a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights surplus that would normally cover that cost. The other side of the issue is Gov. Jared Polis’ support for a proposal to allow Pinnacol Assurance to privatize, with the hopes that half of the funds Pinnacol would pay the state as a result ...
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America’s debt reality: Interest payments now eating 15.5% of federal revenue
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ContraPloy, Approved, Commentary, National

America’s debt reality: Interest payments now eating 15.5% of federal revenue

By Jim Swift | Commentary, ContraPloy (Various & Sundry section) The federal debt is big. But how big is too big? At time of this writing, it’s $38 trillion and change. Is that too much? Who knows? The only practical way to understand it is to compare it with another number. A popular approach is to compare it with Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These days, the national debt is around 119% of GDP. That seems bad. Actually it’s worse, because it’s comparing the money the federal government borrowed with the goods and services everyone produces. If we compare the national debt to just the revenue the federal government collects, it’s more like 600%. But is it too much? Who knows? Another approach is to compare it with the population of the country, which is around 343 million sou...
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Colorado Budget Gap Swells To $1.5 Billion As Lawmakers Brace For Cuts
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DENVER7, Approved, State

Colorado Budget Gap Swells To $1.5 Billion As Lawmakers Brace For Cuts

By Nick Coltrain | Denver7 New forecasts set the stage for the final push on the state budget. DENVER — The fiscal picture for Colorado’s state government has somehow gotten even murkier — and potentially much worse. Lawmakers walked into Thursday’s key economic forecasts pessimistic about what the reports would tell them about the state budget. They walked out of it with one forecast warning they now needed to close a $1.5 billion deficit in the next week or so, an increase over the $1 billion prediction from just a few days earlier. That does not account for some cuts the committee has proposed but not yet finalized. READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT DENVER7
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Federal Reimbursement Model of ‘Perverse Incentives’ Fuels Colorado Medicaid Expansion
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Federal Reimbursement Model of ‘Perverse Incentives’ Fuels Colorado Medicaid Expansion

By Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado Colorado’s ongoing budget-gap struggles are the predictable result of structural problems with Medicaid.  Paragon Health Institute, a non-partisan research institute, recently published a new report, Preserve and Improve Medicaid, which explains the program’s inherent challenges and how states such as Colorado can take advantage of One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) reforms to improve outcomes.  However, it remains ultimately up to Colorado legislators to address the program’s systemic issues.  Medicaid’s ‘perverse incentives’ As economist Linda Gorman recently explained, the rapid 2010 expansion of Medicaid did not produce large gains in physical health, suggesting that the new expansion ...
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Colorado Lawmakers Face Tough Choices As Medicaid Drives Increased Spending
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Colorado Lawmakers Face Tough Choices As Medicaid Drives Increased Spending

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics This week, the state Senate is reviewing revisions to the 2025–26 state budget, which has been reduced by hundreds of millions of dollars in each round of cuts. But the bottom line is that, because of Medicaid costs, the state will spend more in 2025-26 than lawmakers approved in the 2025 session. Last week, the 29 bills in the supplemental package were approved by the House, with most passing with broad support. That didn’t mean all of them did: bills changing the budgets for the departments of state, treasury, health care policy and financing, personnel, public health and environment and higher ed all passed largely along party lines. A supplemental for the Department of Corrections, which increased its budget by $29...
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Lawmakers admit the problem: One-time money built permanent government
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Lawmakers admit the problem: One-time money built permanent government

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Reporters talk about shared reality, some want it to be their reality. Over and over I have heard and read journalists discussing our "shared reality"--the need to operate from a basis of fact.I don't disagree.The problem is that many of those same journalists want to substitute their take on reality, they want to be the arbiters of fact.This is not their role.I wrote an op ed on this dynamic using some statements and "reporting" by 9News' Zelinger and Clark as an example.More on the topic in the link below.https://completecolorado.com/2026/01/08/colorado-journalists-shared-reality-deciders/ Were it not for TABOR (weakened as it is) … I wanted to share the Sun article below, but per...
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Denver Budget Cuts Cost City Over 1,100 Years of Experience
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, Local

Denver Budget Cuts Cost City Over 1,100 Years of Experience

By Deborah Grigsby | The Denver Gazette Last summer, the city of Denver lost nearly 160 employees as part of structured layoffs to help Denver Mayor Mike Johnston close a $250 million budget gap. But the city lost much more than just its employees. It lost more than 1,158 years of combined experience, according to analysis and reporting from Axios. Along with the loss of 265 years of experience among 30 employees, the city’s transportation department took the biggest hit, followed by planning and development, which lost 128 years of experience. READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT THE DENVER GAZETTE
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Polis Takes a Victory-Victim Lap in Final State of the State Address
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Polis Takes a Victory-Victim Lap in Final State of the State Address

By Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics Gov. Jared Polis on Thursday took an 82-minute victory lap in his eighth — and final — State of the State address. He touted his work in the areas of early childhood development, education, health care, housing and public safety, pointing to major initiatives he has launched. He sought to paint a picture of a strong state under attack by the Trump administration. Indeed, he blamed much of Colorado’s woes on federal actions, notably funding cuts and a policy agenda from the White House that he described as “not the Colorado way.” To Polis, policies coming out of Washington, D.C. — uncertainty over tariffs, an immigration crackdown, letting a key health care subsidy expire — are standing in the way of Colorado’s progress. ...
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Audit Finds Financial Strain Growing in 16 Colorado School Districts
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Audit Finds Financial Strain Growing in 16 Colorado School Districts

By: Marianne Goodland | Colorado Politics Sixteen school districts in Colorado, almost all of them rural, are showing signs of financial stress, according to an audit released on the fiscal health of the state’s 178 public school districts. Eighteen other districts, however, are moving off the list with improvements to their fiscal health in the 2023-24 fiscal year. The Ellicott School District, east of Colorado Springs, was under the bullseye Monday, with five missed benchmarks in 2023-24, up from one in 2022-23. The district had no missed benchmarks just two years earlier.  School districts with two or more missed financial benchmarks, 2021-2022 to 2023-24. Of the 16 school districts that missed financial benchmarks, four were in rural El Paso County. The...
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