Colorado lawmakers, despite laboring through one of the worst economic climates in decades, managed to score more cash for transportation this year, make significant changes in how the state will budget future money and pass fairly significant health care reform.
Not bad for 120 days’ work.
Yet, before anyone unfurls a Mission Accomplished banner, we should note that more than $1 billion is still needed for Colorado’s highways; eliminating the state’s 6 percent spending cap could hurt overall transportation funding; and the health care reform likely won’t have immediate benefits for the majority of Coloradans with coverage but who are burdened by high health care costs.
Still, it’s progress.
Transportation
A colossal failure of leadership last year resulted in an actual decline in state money for transportation. But this year, Democrats came through with a vehicle-registration fee hike that will generate $250 million annually to repair the state’s 125 bridges that have been deemed structurally deficient.
Gov. Bill Ritter’s blue-ribbon transportation panel has suggested the state needs an extra $1.5 billion a year to keep up with maintenance and to upgrade the state’s crumbling highways. While lawmakers provided only a tiny slice of that, we’re glad they mustered the fortitude to at least do that much. It’s a good step forward.
Budget
This session was quickly consumed by the state’s budget, and a growing shortfall. The Joint Budget Committee suggested cutting $300 million from higher education — an unacceptable amount that would have devastated our state’s colleges and universities, especially community colleges.
There was a brief furor over raiding a quasi-public firm, Pinnacol, to make up the shortfall, but lawmakers finally, and wisely, balanced the budget with employee furloughs, a raid on anti-smoking programs, smaller higher ed cuts, and cuts in Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals. Lawmakers also had little choice but to eliminate the senior homestead property tax exemption, which will cost some senior citizens hundreds of dollars a year.
Because of the byzantine way Colorado budgets its money, there’s very little discretionary spending to cut if there’s a shortfall. However, Senate Bill 228, which was revamped toward the end of the session, should give the state some of the flexibility it now lacks. By eliminating the state’s 6 percent spending cap, and replacing it with a new spending limit based on 5 percent of personal income, the state will have more flexibility over a larger amount of money it already collects. The law also calls for putting more money into a rainy-day fund, which we’ve long considered to be a smart idea.
Health care
One of the drivers that pushes your health insurance premium ever higher each year is the practice known as cost-shifting. It is the bland phrase for how everyday people with insurance are left to pick up the tab for the uninsured patients whom hospitals are obliged to treat.
House Bill 1293 aims to ease this burden by tapping matching federal funds to increase the number of those covered by government insurance and thereby reduce cost-shifting. The Colorado Healthcare Affordability Act is a good idea. It will impose a fee on hospitals, raising $600 million annually. That money would then be used to collect $600 million more in matching federal funds.
Truly sweeping health care reform is still a possibility this year at the federal level, but state lawmakers were right not to wait. As with transportation and the state budget, incremental progress on health care may not solve underlying issues that still must be addressed, but lawmakers deserve credit for moving forward nevertheless.
