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How Medicaid growth is crowding Colorado’s budget priorities
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Colorado Accountability Project, Commentary, State, Top Stories

How Medicaid growth is crowding Colorado’s budget priorities

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Medicaid and Colorado’s Spending on Same I wanted to share Nash Herman’s op ed from Complete Colorado with you. I will leave it to you to read it in full, but there are a couple of pertinent things to share. The op ed does a good job of providing an overview of what will likely be a big issue this legislative session: Colorado’s Medicaid spending, a largely self-caused injury. In typical government fashion, the relevant state department, the Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing, engaged a third party and paid them $600K to study the issue. The contractor came back and recommended that, quoting the op ed, “... the state should prioritize reductions in behavioral health, long-term...
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Medicaid Cuts For Disabled Coloradans Advance Without Board Approval
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Medicaid Cuts For Disabled Coloradans Advance Without Board Approval

By Brian Eason | The Colorado Sun State Medicaid officials said they have authority to continue with the plan through an executive order from Gov. Jared Polis and that they will ask again for board approval. When it came time for any of the Colorado Medical Services Board members to make a motion, there was only dead silence.  For two hours, the 11-member board that governs the state Medicaid program heard pleas from parents who provide round-the-clock care of their adult children with severe disabilities. And when the testimony was over, no one on the board would make a motion that would result in cuts to the parents’ monthly pay. The request from Medicaid officials for an emergency rule change that means a 10% pay cut for families of Colorado’s most vul...
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Rising Inmate Numbers Put Pressure On Colorado To Expand Prison System
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CBS Colorado, Approved, State

Rising Inmate Numbers Put Pressure On Colorado To Expand Prison System

By: Shaun Boyd | CBS Colorado Gov. Jared Polis' budget director, Mark Ferrandino, is sounding an alarm. He says the Colorado Department of Corrections is limiting new admissions as it reaches capacity, and the state needs to open a new facility to house a growing number of inmates. Ferrandino urged Colorado's Joint Budget Committee to approve funding for more beds in the short-term.  "We are going to get to a place, unless the forecasts significantly change, where we are going to need additional capacity," Ferrandino told the committee.  Ferrandino said the state has closed seven prisons over the last 15 years, as Colorado's prison population has dropped by nearly 6,000 inmates. But he says the population is now growing rapidly, and the state...
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Protests over ICE center in Hudson reveal liberal hypocrisy
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Protests over ICE center in Hudson reveal liberal hypocrisy

By RMV Editorial Board Hundreds gathered outside a dormant prison in tiny Hudson this week. They braved freezing cold to protest plans for a new ICE detention center. Signs demanded justice. CBS Colorado captured the scene. https://youtu.be/D0iUjF-7B5s?si=MRLq2wBXKyFbYqqP One organizer told reporters the facility would not protect or serve communities. A resident feared people packed like sardines in a can. Another warned expansion drives families into shadows and erodes trust. The last census puts Hudson at 1,651 people. Someone at the protest warned that a 1,200-bed detention center would somehow double the town overnight.  That only works if detention beds are treated as permanent neighbors, or if the facility somehow brings in far more p...
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TABOR under pressure: How “think of the children” messaging is shaping Colorado’s education debate
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State, Top Stories

TABOR under pressure: How “think of the children” messaging is shaping Colorado’s education debate

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Note the “won’t someone think of the children?!” framing I don’t think there are any specifics yet, but as of last week, there were plenty of rumors about the Democrats taking another stab at TABOR, this time in conjunction with their paymasters the teacher’s unions. If you read the Sun article linked first below, you’ll see one possible form this effort could take: some way or another, tying lifting the TABOR cap to directing money into education. Doing so would obviously enable supporters to frame opposition as being cold hearted: won’t someone please think of the children? I have discussed framing before, and the best way to counter it is to be aware of the framing, presenting counter...
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Colorado Teachers Union Pushes Ballot Measure Targeting TABOR Spending Limits
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DENVER7, Approved, State

Colorado Teachers Union Pushes Ballot Measure Targeting TABOR Spending Limits

By: Blair Miller | Denver7 DENVER — The largest union of Colorado educators rallied outside of the Capitol on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to refer a measure to the ballot that they believe is a solution to funding struggles plaguing schools in the state. The measure that the Colorado Education Association (CEA) is spearheading is centered upon the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR), which voters approved in 1992. TABOR limits the amount of money the state government can keep and spend, while requiring voter approval to keep excess funds collected. Without that voter approval, extra revenue is refunded to Colorado taxpayers. The CEA would like voters to decide if they would like to raise the TABOR spending cap, which was called "outdated" several t...
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‘Fully funded’ education: Panelist cites 30–70% increase as Sen. Kipp says “TABOR is why we don’t have nice things”
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Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

‘Fully funded’ education: Panelist cites 30–70% increase as Sen. Kipp says “TABOR is why we don’t have nice things”

By Colleen Enos | Commentary, Christian Home Educators of Colorado Friday, January 16th, Day Three of the legislative session, began in a manner that seemed to promote general agreement in the Colorado House of Representatives. Since the upcoming Monday, January 19th, was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a legal state holiday, the House began with a resolution recognizing Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Things went south when Representative Naquetta Ricks compared Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations to the German Gestapo of Adolf Hitler. This was a shocking statement to make in the middle of recognizing the civil rights efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. Representatives DeGraff and Bottoms brought some much-needed perspective to the conversation, in addition to Rep...
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Colorado prison beds could run out by 2026 and lawmakers face hard choices
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado prison beds could run out by 2026 and lawmakers face hard choices

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project Spidey sense is tingling on the jail population … I had a reader mention something I thought worth sharing. Colorado has a problem. Our jail’s are nearing capacity. On top of that, we’re struggling to find people willing to guard them.A Corrections1 link is first below. It’s a copy (without the paywall) of a Denver Post article detailing how a Colorado budget analyst for the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee said we’re going to run out of beds for men in prison as early as 2026. Quoting with link intact: “Colorado’s prisons will run out of beds for men in the next fiscal year unless significant changes are made to either reduce the prison population or increase capacity, a state analyst projects in a n...
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Runaway Medicaid Spending Forces Colorado Toward Hard Choices
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Runaway Medicaid Spending Forces Colorado Toward Hard Choices

By: Nash Herman | Commentary, Complete Colorado The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee (JBC) recently held a hearing with the Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing (HCPF), the Governor’s office, and Manatt, a healthcare consulting firm, to address the unsustainable growth of Colorado’s Medicaid spending. Here’s a look at some of the highlights from the hearing. Runaway spending According to HCPF and the Governor’s office, General Fund spending on Medicaid increased at an average rate of 6 percent from fiscal year 2015-16 to fiscal year 2018-19. However, after the federal government windfall from COVID, General Fund spending blew up, growing at an average rate of 19 percent from fiscal year 2021-22 to fiscal year 2024-25. Health c...
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The numbers Polis didn’t tweet about Colorado’s workforce decline
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

The numbers Polis didn’t tweet about Colorado’s workforce decline

By Mike O’Donnell | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice I found it curious that Governor Polis felt a need to post to his half a dozen, die-hard, mentally-ill supporters on ‘X’ this week, a tweet to the effect that contrary to President Trump’s assertion that people are leaving Colorado “in droves,” Colorado’s population has continued to GROW under his august leadership since 2019. To support this assertion, he pasted a screenshot from factcheck.org stating that “since Polis took office in 2019, the moderate upward trend in the state’s population over the last decade has continued, although the data is only through 2022.” https://twitter.com/GovofCO/status/2010759061692641539 This fact checker also stated that similar supporting data was available from the ...
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