Monthly Archives: March 2016

Mar 03

AG: hospital fees can be enterprise; money helps hospitals with Medicaid, indigent care

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BY PETER STRESCINO THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
Published: February 29, 2016; Last modified: March 1, 2016 10:34PM
Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman on Monday said that creating an enterprise designation for the hospital provider fee is constitutional. The program, which raised $1 billion in 2014-15, can be exempted from the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights computations without violating the amendment.
Coffman’s announcement means she believes the program that collects fees from hospitals to draw matching federal dollars would meet the three tests needed to qualify as a “government-owned business” outside TABOR’s spending limits.

“I think it’s the right decision,” said Mike Baxter, Parkview Medical Center’s president and CEO, who has openly worried about cuts in federal funding coming back to Parkview. The money helps pay costs for uncompensated care. Hospitals pay into the fund. Parkview paid $27 million to the fund and received $43 million after the federal boost. St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center paid $14 million and received $27 million back, according to The Denver Post.

“We’re pleased with today’s opinion from the attorney general,” said Brian Moore, president and CEO of St. Mary-Corwin. “We have been in favor of moving the hospital provider fee to enterprise status in an effort to protect our ability to serve our community.” Continue reading →

Mar 03

TABOR has marvelous ideas

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TABOR has marvelous ideas

Once again, TABOR is under assault by those who only see taxpayers as an unlimited ATM (Gazette, Feb. 28, Section A, Local & State, “Town hall on budget mess cast blame on TABOR”).

Quoting from the article, “TABOR caps government revenue collections based on inflation and population growth, sets state’s tax structure and restricts government spending.” What a marvelous idea! Michael Merrifield (D, House District 18) laments that legislators “get permission from the voters to raise taxes.” Another marvelous idea.

The federal government under the current administration has expanded the U.S. debt to $17 trillion or about $50,000 per person. Considering that 47 percent of the population pays no federal taxes, we taxpayers are on the hook for much more. TABOR has kept the Colorado legislators from going on perpetual spending sprees and concomitant tax increases.

We also need TABOR legislation for the U.S. Congress.

Denny Modlin

Colorado Springs

http://gazette.com/letters-teflon-label-has-been-…/…/1571257

Mar 02

Hullinghorst to introduce Colorado hospital-provider fee bill despite continued GOP opposition

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Colorado House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst is wasting no time in advancing her efforts to turn the hospital provider fee into an enterprise fund — announcing Tuesday that she will introduce a bill to make that move.

The new bill comes just one day after the state’s attorney general said she considers such a maneuver to be legal and constitutional.
Colorado House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst and Senate President Bill Cadman speak together in times of more agreement — at the official bill-signing for the 2015-16 state budget.

Bill Cadman & Dickey Hullinghorse

Colorado House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst and Senate President Bill Cadman speak… more

Ed Sealover | Denver Business Journal

But while Hullinghorst may have a legal opinion on her side from Republican AG Cynthia Coffman, she remains no where close to agreement with the top Republicans in the Legislature, Senate President Bill Cadman. Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, went as far as to say Tuesday that any bill from the Gunbarrel Democrat is dead on arrival if it, like her failed 2015 effort on the subject, it does not reset the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights revenue cap by pulling the current provider-fee revenues out of the calculations and lowering that cap in future years.

The opposing reactions continue the pattern of the past two months, in which supporters of turning the seven-year-old fee into an enterprise fund — and thus freeing up more money in the budget for transportation and education — believe they have found an opening through which they can move forward, only to be reminded by Cadman that the majority caucus in the Senate feels the proposals to unconstitutional or at least unwise.

The fee, charged to hospitals for each night they keep a patient in a bed, generates more than $1 billion in combined state and federal funds to increase Medicaid rolls in this state, but it also is expected next fiscal year to push the state over the TABOR revenue cap and require the state to refund tax money to residents. Continue reading →

Mar 02

Blake: Funding transportation needs adds fuel to the fire

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Blake: Funding transportation needs adds fuel to the fire

March 1, 2016 4:50 PM· By Peter Blake

File photo: Todd Shepherd

File photo: Todd Shepherd

If you are looking for an opportunity to pay higher taxes, this is your year.

Already on Colorado’s 2016 ballot is a single-payer health plan that would boost the state income tax rate to 14.63 percent, highest in the nation.

On its heels comes a planned initiative sponsored by the Colorado Contractors Association, which wants more money to build roads and mass transit projects.

Not by increasing the state gasoline tax, now 22 cents a gallon, but by increasing the state sales tax, now 2.9 percent, by up to three-quarters of a cent.

The final figure has yet to be determined, said Bill Ray, spokesman for the planned initiative. The organizers have until March 25 to propose their final ballot language.

They are working backwards from a goal of raising $500 million to $600 million more per year, which under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) has to be listed on the ballot question. They will consider the state’s current revenue stream and then figure out how much higher the tax rate must be to raise the money.

If taxes are a must, user-pay levies are generally considered the fairest. Those who drive their cars over the roads pay their taxes at the pump. Those who don’t drive don’t have to pay.

But earlier polling by the CCA determined that an increase in the gasoline tax would be “roundly rebuffed” by voters, said Ray.

Continue reading →