Colorado received nearly $66 billion in federal pandemic assistance over the past two years, a river of money that made its way to every corner of the state — from tourist attractions high in the mountains to large universities and hospitals along the Front Range down to tiny Main Street diners that dot the Eastern Plains.
The Denver Post examined more than 367,000 loans, grants and awards from multiple federal agencies in a first-of-its-kind analysis tracking how federal dollars filtered their way down to the state’s 64 counties. Distributions were hardly even, and the federal response, above and beyond the pandemic, likely caused the gap between the haves and have-nots in the state to widen.
Denver, Arapahoe and El Paso counties alone captured 44 cents of every federal dollar in assistance that could be localized. A dozen resort counties received as much federal money as the remaining 40 rural counties, even though those rural counties had 186,000 more residents. Pitkin County, home to Aspen, pulled in 5.5 times as much money per resident as Crowley, one of the poorest counties in the state.
Coloradans earned $8,000 more on average in income last year than they did before COVID-19 hit. Higher incomes and higher savings accrued disproportionately to households already in the upper-income brackets. Home values and stock prices surged due to federal policies, boosting the wealth of people holding those assets.
— Full story via Aldo Svaldi, The Denver Post
The Big Payout: Colorado received close to $66 billion in pandemic aid. We tracked where that money went.
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