State budget plan cuts health care, adds new prison
Public assistance slashed to fill $1.5 billion budget hole
Colorado could start paying for a new prison in the next year, while programs that pay for health care get cut.
Lawmakers in charge of drafting the state’s budget voted on Wednesday to back a multimillion-dollar plan to pay a private company to reopen an old prison, since the state is running out of space in its current facilities.
At the same time, the budget committee proposed tens of millions of dollars in cuts to health care assistance. The proposals still need the full legislature’s approval, but they give a preview of what the final budget will likely look like.
Lawmakers have to make cuts somewhere. Coloradans voted in 1992 to limit the growth of the state’s budget, and this year there’s a $1.5 billion shortfall due to several factors including lower-than-expected tax revenues – in part because the economy hasn’t been great, and in part because state taxes are linked to federal taxes, which were cut last year.
Health care spending has become the biggest line item in the state budget in recent years, making it a natural target for cuts. But spending on prisons has also increased, meaning lawmakers could vote to spend less on keeping Coloradans healthy while continuing to spend more locking them up.
Need to Know
📬 Colorado officials are defending the state’s mail-in voting system after President Donald Trump issued an executive order that could interfere with it. The order seeks to create a federal list of eligible voters and put the U.S. Postal Service in charge of determining who can get a mail-in ballot for federal elections. Officials and experts say the order is likely illegal, since the Constitution gives states the authority to run elections. Even if it survives legal challenges, it probably can’t be implemented ahead of November’s elections. (Votebeat, Colorado Newsline, Colorado Politics)
🏛️ Tina Peters, a former elections clerk in Mesa County, will get a new sentence for crimes she committed while trying to prove debunked 2020 election conspiracies. A state appeals court said the judge who initially sentenced Peters to over eight years in prison wrongly punished her for First Amendment protected speech and beliefs. President Donald Trump issued a pardon to Peters, but the appeals court said it doesn’t cover state crimes. Gov. Jared Polis had previously indicated that he thought Peters’ original sentence was too harsh. (Colorado Sun, Denver Post, CPR, Colorado Attorney General’s Office, Read the court’s opinion)
📃 A self-described “public Christian school” in southern Colorado is at the center of a new lawsuit alleging a local school board in Pueblo County violated open-meetings laws when it appointed a board member with ties to the controversial school. Riverstone Academy — created to challenge limits on public funding for religious schools — sued the state earlier this year, arguing that the possibility of losing public funding amounts to religious discrimination. (Chalkbeat)
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Something Good
🌳 My neighborhood’s sustainability group had its monthly meeting last night, and I enjoyed connecting with my neighbors to plan clean-ups, educational workshops and other actions to strengthen our community and build resilience. There’s a whole network of sustainable neighborhood groups across Colorado, so if it sounds interesting to you, see if your neighborhood is already participating or learn about starting your own group.