Tag: Colorado Legislature3.

By Bobbie Daniel | Commentary, The Business Times In the business world, there’s one principle that separates success from failure: You can’t spend what you don’t have. If a company tried to launch a dozen new initiatives without funding them, investors would walk, creditors would call, and the board would be out by morning. Yet somehow, that’s exactly how the State of Colorado has been operating. Each year, new laws are passed that sound good on paper but come with no money to make them work. Those costs get quietly pushed down to local governments — and ultimately to taxpayers. We call them unfunded mandates, and they’re the public-sector version of bad business. Here in Mesa County, we’ve been tracking these costs for two years, and the numbers tell the story. This year alon...