Rocky Mountain Voice

Menu

Tag: State Budget

Wolf Claims to Exceed Annual State Allocation Topping One Million Dollars
No Comments
The Coloradoan, Approved, State

Wolf Claims to Exceed Annual State Allocation Topping One Million Dollars

By Miles Blumhardt | The Coloradoan More than $700,000 in wolf depredation claims by ranchers in 2025 have been recommended for approval by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, doubling the amount budgeted by the state. Six claims totaling $706,460.91 were listed among agenda items to be heard at the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting March 5 in Denver. Claims listed under the consent agenda can be removed for discussion at another meeting, approved or denied by vote of the commission, which has final say. The agenda also shows three claims totaling $53,611.71 that CPW is recommending be denied. The awarded claims are only a partial list of total claims statewide in 2025. Total compensation to ranchers for wolf depredations will exceed $1 million, an amount&...
Read More
From $8 Billion to $16 Billion: How Colorado’s Medicaid Budget Doubled in a Decade
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

From $8 Billion to $16 Billion: How Colorado’s Medicaid Budget Doubled in a Decade

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice If you ask most Colorado families how they feel about health care right now, the answers aren’t complicated. It’s expensive.It’s confusing.It keeps going up. And for taxpayers helping fund Colorado’s Medicaid program — known as Health First Colorado — another question has started to surface: If enrollment has come back down, why hasn’t spending followed? Ten years ago, Colorado’s Medicaid agency operated on roughly $8 billion. Today it’s closer to $16 billion. The Common Sense Institute (CSI) calculates that as 101 percent growth over the decade. CSI reports that the rest of the state operating budget grew 64 percent during that same period. The story of enrollment is different. ...
Read More
Federal Reimbursement Model of ‘Perverse Incentives’ Fuels Colorado Medicaid Expansion
No Comments
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 ...
Read More
From 51 defeated bills to $8M in revenue: How Cobalt reshaped Colorado abortion policy
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

From 51 defeated bills to $8M in revenue: How Cobalt reshaped Colorado abortion policy

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice A Colorado abortion advocacy organization is celebrating a decade of legislative defeats—51 abortion-restriction bills blocked since 2010—while reporting record spending and a surge in out-of-state demand. On its website, Cobalt says it has “testified against and helped defeat 51 anti-abortion bills at the Colorado General Assembly since 2010.”  Webpage from Cobalt Advocates referencing its 51-bill claim. Viewed Feb. 19, 2026. A February data report shows more than $2.4 million spent in 2025 on abortion procedures and practical support, including travel and lodging. Those numbers, drawn from Cobalt’s own reports and IRS filings, reflect more than annual fundraising success. They trace a broader shift in Colo...
Read More
Colorado Lawmakers Face Tough Choices As Medicaid Drives Increased Spending
No Comments
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...
Read More
Democrats Push Sweeping Tax Plan Reversing Federal Tax Benefits For Colorado Business
No Comments
TSS Colorado, Approved, State

Democrats Push Sweeping Tax Plan Reversing Federal Tax Benefits For Colorado Business

By: Ed Sealover | TSS Colorado Democratic legislators are poised to unveil a quartet of bills next week that could decouple Colorado law from hundreds of millions of dollars in new federal tax breaks, end tax exemptions on downloadable-software sales and rein in several long-standing corporate deductions. The bills, written in cooperation with the Colorado Fiscal Institute, are largely a reaction to last year’s federal passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that offered significant corporate tax breaks and blew a hole in Colorado’s budget, CFI policy manager Caroline Nutter said. Because Colorado conforms its tax code to federal code, any cut in income produced by federal changes reflects in revenue reductions to the state government as well, leading to a $1.2 billion l...
Read More
Budget Crunch Drives Colorado Medicaid Board To Approve New Caps On Disability Services
No Comments
The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Budget Crunch Drives Colorado Medicaid Board To Approve New Caps On Disability Services

By Jennifer Brown | The Colorado Sun Medicaid benefits that pay for people with disabilities to go on community outings and cover household cleaning, cooking and laundry are the latest services facing cuts as Colorado deals with a major budget shortage.  A governor-appointed board that sets rules for the state Medicaid program voted 6-1 Friday to preliminarily approve the cuts, despite rejecting other cuts requested by Medicaid officials this year.  The federal-state health insurance program will save $1.2 million in state money this year and $10 million next year by placing stricter caps on the number of hours that caregivers are paid to take people on outings through a benefit called “community connector.” Capping the hours allowed for “homemaker” services,...
Read More
CMU student leaders press governor hopefuls on taxes, energy and rural control
No Comments
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

CMU student leaders press governor hopefuls on taxes, energy and rural control

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice TPUSA chapter leaders from Colorado Mesa University opened Monday night’s gubernatorial forum with a question more typical of a legislative hearing than a campaign rally. Instead of easing into the forum, they went straight to TABOR. “How would you approach balancing Colorado’s budget while complying with TABOR? And what are your priorities when it comes to taxes, refunds and state spending during periods of surplus and economic stagnation?” Six candidates were at the forum that evening. Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer told the crowd she almost didn’t make the trip, saying she rearranged her Joint Budget Committee schedule and decided to “head on over to Grand Junction” when the weather held. Rep. Scott Bottoms of Colorado Springs share...
Read More
Democrat TABOR Revenue Reclassification Plan Draws Scrutiny at State Capitol
No Comments
Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Democrat TABOR Revenue Reclassification Plan Draws Scrutiny at State Capitol

By Nash Herman | Complete Colorado Similar to last year’s Senate Bill 173, legislative Democrats are returning this year with another effort to bypass Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) by reclassifying certain state revenue streams.  While Senate Bill 26-042 may have some plausibility under specific TABOR terms, it raises broader concerns about the runaway growth of Colorado’s state government, and the mechanisms legislators pursue to evade voter consent over taxation.  What the bill does  While TABOR generally limits the growth of a portion of state revenue to a modest formula of population growth plus inflation, it allows for certain carve outs such as “damage awards” and “collections for another government.”  ...
Read More
Colorado Budget Panel Halts Proposed Medicaid Pay Reductions for Family Caregivers
No Comments
Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Colorado Budget Panel Halts Proposed Medicaid Pay Reductions for Family Caregivers

By Marissa Ventrelli | Colorado Politics The Colorado General Assembly’s budget decision-makers have put proposed pay cuts on hold for people who care for a family member with a disability who receives Medicaid. The Joint Budget Committee made the decision after hours of testimony from family caregivers and several advocates. The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing has been struggling to manage a substantial spike in Medicaid spending, which accounts for about one-third of the state’s budget, even as Colorado faces a $1 billion budget deficit. Members of the JBC earlier expressed concerns with Gov. Jared Polis’ proposal last November on how to plug that deficit, which included a plan to fund Medicaid below its projected growth. “This isn’t a tr...
Read More