Sitting at my home desk preparing to write this column, I couldn’t be happier to see the mounds of snow outside the window. May el Niño be all for Southwest Colorado that’s been promised. For those not fans of winter weather, remember what this moisture will do for us in the spring and summer.
While I wish I could stay at home to enjoy winter, it’s time for me to head back to Denver for the next legislative session, starting mid-January. It’s highly possible, though disappointing from a policy-focused perspective, that this session will be dominated by antics stimulated by the 2016 election cycle. However, my work will focus on a few specific areas. I’m sponsoring bills from the water and wildfire interim committees, a couple of others related specifically to my district and, finally, several bills focused on Colorado’s biggest budgetary challenge, containing health care costs.
I’ve heard from constituents who are extremely alarmed that their health insurance, which they’re now required by federal law to carry or pay a penalty to the IRS, costs as much or more than their home mortgage. Others absolutely refuse to be put on Medicaid, especially since they know that there are too few health care providers able to take below-cost payments from governmental programs.
I wish I was shocked that health insurance costs have not gone down as promised, but continue to climb skyward. The new federal and state laws didn’t deal with the critical challenge of escalating costs. Consequently, the costs of an expanded Medicaid population and the level of mandated coverage by the federal Affordable Care Act are eating up Colorado’s state budget and raising premiums for those not on governmental programs.
With a state balanced budget requirement, health care expenditures are crowding out essential funding for education, roads and the long list of to-do’s for Colorado’s infrastructure — critically needed for the population growth the state expects to gain. This is where our focus should be in the next legislative session.
However, instead, the governor’s budget proposal does some fancy footwork around TABOR rather than looking for long-term, bipartisan solutions. His proposal stretches the imagination to justify tucking away $100 million of collected hospital fees rather than paying TABOR refunds to taxpayers as required by our state Constitution in this comparatively flush time of state revenues.
To me, it’s incredibly short-sighted to deepen citizen cynicism by skirting the constitutional requirements of TABOR for a woefully inadequate fix to our budget challenges. Instead, we should place infrastructure funding as a higher priority by seeking to reduce or eliminate state programs that don’t support the basic functions of state government. Many Coloradans are struggling to make ends meet in their households and legislators should accept the same challenge. I’m committed to working on this and hope to have company.
More budgeting gimmicks, frustratingly similar to recent years of swiping away $500 million in severance taxes for programs totally unrelated to the tax’s statutory purpose of mitigating energy development impacts and addressing water infrastructure needs, are not the answer.
Many pundits and political observers are perplexed at what is going on in the presidential primaries on both sides of the aisle. The Colorado Legislature would do well to absorb that not-so-subtle messaging from voters and work harder to find bipartisan policy solutions that match people’s expectations and pockets.
Ellen S. Roberts, R-Durango, is president pro tempore of the Colorado Senate. She represents Senate District 6 which encompasses Montezuma, Dolores, La Plata, Archuleta, Montrose, San Miguel, San Juan and Ouray counties. Contact Sen. Roberts by phone at (303) 866-4884, or by e-mail ellen.roberts.senate@state.co.us.