Category Archives: Colorado Legislature

May 22

GUEST COLUMN: Say “no” to a special session

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GUEST COLUMN: Say “no” to a special session

By: Michael Fields

May 21, 2016

AFP Michael Fields

Not even 48 hours after the legislative session ended, the governor floated the idea of convening a special session to address the hotly debated hospital provider fee.

This drumbeat has continued in the press, with pressure from countless special interest groups who didn’t get their way during the normal 120-day session. And this all comes after the Senate Finance Committee voted down a bill to move the $750 million hospital provider fee into a separate enterprise fund for the second year in a row.

Proponents of this move want you to believe that to fix roads and help schools, this budget gimmick is desperately needed. They have grabbed onto compelling buzzwords, cleverly invoked as rationale to adopt this plan. These messages are used to pull on people’s heart strings and convince them that enterprising the hospital provider fee would somehow fix our transportation and education needs. The fact is creating this enterprise would be an end-run around our Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) and would not fix our long-term funding problems.

To fully understand what has been going on with our state budget, let’s look at a few numbers:

– The state budget has gone from $19 billion to $27 billion in just seven years. Continue reading →

May 22

Partisan posturing trumps a better Colorado

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Perspective

Partisan posturing trumps a better Colorado

By Henry Dubroff and John Huggins
Posted:   05/21/2016 05:00:00 PM MDT

TABOR local leaders discuss changesLocal leaders discuss possible changes to the state’s constitutional initiative process in a small group during the Building a Better Colorado community summit at Northeastern Junior College on Dec. 7. (Sterling Journal-Advocate)

 

The tensions between populism and policymaking that are so evident in this year’s presidential primaries have trickled down to the state level.

In Colorado’s case, major policy reforms — including those that emerged from last fall’s Building a Better Colorado process of town hall meetings — have at times taken a back seat to partisan posturing.

But the Building a Better Colorado reforms remain a key part of the civic agenda, especially in these three areas:

  • Reform or replace the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), or put in place a “TABOR relief valve” so that the state may keep a bigger share of tax revenue to fund roads, schools and other infrastructure necessary to serve Colorado’s growing population.
  • Reform our primary election process so that the results better reflect the will of voters and also put Colorado where it belongs on the national political map, as the most influential swing state in the Rocky Mountain region.
  • Establish somewhat higher though reachable hurdles for qualifying and approving constitutional amendments, taking into account Colorado’s diverse geographic and demographic interests.

The difficulty in getting TABOR relief approved in the just-finished legislative session underscores how tricky it is to enact reforms in an election year where the Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders insurgencies are having a big impact. In the state Senate, for example, majority Republicans were pushed by the Colorado chapter of the Koch brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity not to tweak the language of the state’s hospital provider fee and exempt it from TABOR limits. The penalty: facing a more conservative primary opponent at the next election.

To read the rest of this Denver Post story about TABOR, click (HERE):

May 13

GOP: Hospital fees under TABOR

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GOP: Hospital fees under TABOR

By Charles Ashby
Tuesday, May 10, 2016

DENVER — Even though it had near universal support outside of the Capitol, Republicans in a Senate committee Tuesday killed a measure that some had hoped would free up money for schools and transportation without raising taxes or fees.

The Senate Finance Committee, on a party-line 3-2 vote, killed a measure to turn the state’s hospital provider fee program, which funds health care programs for the poor, into a state-run government enterprise.

Doing so would free up about $750 million under the revenue caps mandated by the voter-approved Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, something the 1992 constitutional amendment expressly allows.

But Republicans in the GOP-controlled committee said the idea flies in the face of TABOR’s spending limits, saying it would allow for unlimited growth when it comes to Medicaid spending.

“I do believe it is a major cash transfer, and I believe it was set up accordingly so that it would not come under the strong scrutiny of the voters of Colorado,” said Sen. Tim Neville, R-Littleton, who chairs the committee. “I believe that was not by accident.”

The issue has been a major theme of the 2016 legislative session, which ends today.

It actually started at the end of last year’s session when Gov. John Hickenlooper proposed taking the program out from under TABOR, in part because it’s a fee paid by hospitals and not taxpayers.

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May 13

Call a special session

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Call a special session | GJSentinel.com

Call a special session

By The Daily Sentinel
Wednesday, May 11, 2016

One of the bigger disappointments of the current legislative session, which ends today, is that Senate Republicans dodged taking any action on the contentious hospital provider fee.

The House passed two bills, 1420 and 1450, which would have converted the fee to an enterprise, thereby freeing up space under the revenue cap set by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Getting the fee out from under TABOR would have allowed $750 million to be directed toward transportation and education and helped backfill some of the $362 million in severance taxes that lawmakers have used to cover spending gaps since 2006.

Senate leaders delayed introducing the bills until Tuesday, thus assuring they wouldn’t get the required number of readings needed to pass before the sessions ends.

Several Republicans broke ranks to support the House measures, so it would have been instructive to hear arguments in the Senate. In an election year, voters deserve to understand the rationale behind fiscal policy positions and who’s taking them.

Early on, some Republicans argued that converting the fee eliminated refunds to taxpayers. But budget negotiations removed that scenario from the equation. In a parallel universe, funding for roads and schools without a tax increase sounds like something the GOP would get behind.

“I don’t quite understand a lot of my fellow Republicans saying, ‘Oh, we have to preserve TABOR,’” John Suthers told The Colorado Independent last week. “The easiest way to preserve TABOR, and not increase taxes, is to remove the provider fee from the calculation. But obviously there’s a group in the Senate that feels differently.”

In 2009, Suthers, who was then Colorado’s Republican attorney general, urged lawmakers to make the new fee an enterprise. The current attorney general, Republican Cynthia Coffman, says converting it now is perfectly legal.

 

Continue reading →

May 13

PLF files brief in Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights case

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PLF files brief in Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights case

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The Colorado Department of State requires companies to pay a business and licensing charge for filing various statutorily mandated corporate documents. The Department considers this charge to be a fee. But most of the money raised from the charge is not used to defray the cost of providing the business and licensing services, the classic purpose of a fee. The lion’s share of the business and licensing charges go to the Department’s Cash Fund, and less than 15% of the Fund is used to defray the cost of operating the Business and Licensing Division. Because most of the money raised from the business and licensing charge is used to provide the Department of State’s general services, it has all of the hallmarks of a tax, and should be labeled as such.

Colorado courts examine three factors to determine whether a charge is a tax or fee: (1) the language of the enabling statute; (2) the primary purpose for which the money is raised; and (3) whether the primary purpose of the charge is to defray the cost of services for those who must pay it. The District Court of Denver concluded that while the first two factors support characterizing the business and licensing charge as a fee, the third factor did not because the primary purpose was not to defray the cost of providing business and licensing services. Unfortunately, the court did not explain how it would consider the factors in this balancing test, instead concluding that TABOR did not even apply to the business and licensing charge.

PLF’s brief raises two points. First, we argue that Colorado courts should apply a presumption that TABOR applies to all charges. Colorado voters made it clear that they wanted to limit government growth when they enacted TABOR. Colorado Courts would give effect to the Colorado voters intent by applying a presumption that TABOR applies. Second, we suggest that Colorado courts follow the footsteps of other state courts in conducting the balancing test that determines whether a charge is a tax or fee, by giving stronger consideration to the third factor—whether the charge is meant to defray the cost of providing a service to those who must pay it—and de-emphasizing the first factor which considers the label given to the charge. Indeed, if Colorado courts give too much weight to the government’s characterization, governments will have a perverse incentive to mislabel charges to avoid TABOR’s requirements. Under this test, the business and licensing charge is clearly a tax. Thus, the charge would illegal because it was not submitted to the voters.

PLF files brief in Colorado Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights case

May 13

7 winners and losers: Breakdown of the 2016 Colorado legislative session

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7 winners and losers: Breakdown of the 2016 Colorado legislative session

By: Megan Schrader

May 11, 2016 Updated: May 11, 2016 at 10:45 pm

photo - Colorado State Capitol Building
Colorado State Capitol Building 

The 2016 Colorado legislative session may go down in history as the year of little change.

The politically divided chambers in the General Assembly resulted in neither party having much success with their lengthy agendas.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing for political moderates or independents who don’t care about party agendas, but for everyone else, they’ve got something in the loss column this year.

That means 2017 won’t see major policy changes on things like clamping down on construction defects litigation or equal-pay legislation.

Here is a look at some of the winners and losers from the session, which concluded Wednesday:

WINNERS

The Joint Budget Committee

Any politician who can emerge from 120 days of politicking and still look like a high-functioning, level-headed individual. The three Democrats and three Republicans on the Joint Budget Committee received more than their share of accolades for crafting a 581-page budget that somehow managed to appease both sides. Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, and Rep. Millie Hamner, D-Dillon, led the committee to a $25.8 billion budget that averted major cuts and – perhaps more significantly – the gridlock all too common across the nation when politicians dig in their heals.

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May 07

Colorado’s hospital provider charge: A tax masquerading as a fee

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(Editor’s note: This synopsis is excerpted from an Independence Institute Issue Paper on the Hospital Provider Fee Cash Fund, which can be found here:  http://www.i2i.org/the-hospital-provider-fee-fund/)

What is the Hospital Provider Fee?

In 2009, the Colorado General Assembly passed the Colorado Health Care Affordability Act of 2009, HB 09-1293, which imposed an up to 5.5 percent charge on hospital bills. It created the Hospital Provider Fee Cash Fund and the Hospital Provider Fee Oversight and Advisory Board within the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF). Funds raised by the provider charge are deposited in the Cash Fund and do not revert to the General Fund. Payments made to hospitals by the Cash Fund are supplemental payments over and above Medicaid reimbursements made to hospitals for services rendered. The Act stipulates that “a hospital shall not include any amount of the provider fee as a separate line item in its billing statements.”

The provider fee raises revenue for the state

In FY 2014-15 provider charges collected $688 million. The revenue comes from payments of the charge and increases in federal Medicaid matching funds. Suppose a day in the hospital costs $1,000. If the federal match is 50 percent, Colorado Medicaid pays the hospital $1,000 and receives $500 from the federal government. Its net cost is $500. Continue reading →

Apr 30

Colorado Springs politician once again bucks Republicans

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Colorado Springs politician once again bucks Republicans

By: Megan Schrader •
April 29, 2016• Updated: April 29, 2016 at 6:10 pm

Kit RoupeDENVER – State Rep. Kit Roupe, R-Colorado Springs, was one of five Republicans to vote for a bill Friday that would allow the state to retain millions of dollars that otherwise would have to be returned to voters under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.

House Bill 1420 passed 39-26 on Friday and is headed to the Senate, where its success depends on what committee it is assigned to by Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs.

The bill removes from the general fund revenue generated by a fee charged on hospital stays so that money no longer counts toward the TABOR threshold (the point where revenue has grown too fast and money must be returned to taxpayers). The hospital provider fee revenue would instead go to a separate enterprise fund, where it is exempt from TABOR and outside the purview of lawmakers.

“I began considering the switch of my vote when I learned that it really wasn’t a bed tax, per se, and that over the course of the last several years we’ve actually taken money that was not ours out of hospital provider fee to pay for balancing the state budget,” Roupe said.

The hospital provider fee was established by lawmakers in 2009 to help pay for the expansion of Medicaid in Colorado. The money is collected from hospitals, matched by the federal government then returned to hospitals based on which facilities treat the most Medicaid patients.

Republicans hammered Democrats on Thursday – when the bill was heard the first time – over the growing cost of Medicaid and the decision to implement the fee. At the time, several Republicans, including then-Attorney General John Suthers, warned the fee should go into an enterprise fund instead of the general fund.

Now Democrats agree, saying having the growing fee’s revenue in the general fund will crush the state’s ability to provide money for transportation infrastructure and education. House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Boulder, estimated it could cost state services $1 billion by 2020. Hullinghorst’s HB 1420 and companion House Bill 1450 recommend retaining that money by forgoing TABOR refunds and using the funds on prioritized projects. Continue reading →

Apr 30

In Colorado, School Funding Lags Despite A Booming Economy

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In Colorado, School Funding Lags Despite A Booming Economy

Jenny Brundin By Jenny Brundin Apr 29, 2016
 
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Audio: CPR’s Jenny Brundin Reports On School Funding

Douglas Bruce, a driving force behind the Taxpayer’s Bill Of Rights, celebrates the amendment’s passing in November 1992. Critics say it now limits how much money is spent on education in Colorado.

(Courtesy Denver Public Library, Rocky Mountain News archives / Jay Koelzer)

This story is part of the NPR reporting project “School Money,” a nationwide collaboration between NPR’s Ed Team and 20 member station reporters exploring how states pay for their public schools and why many are failing to meet the needs of their most vulnerable students. Colorado’s economy is hot. The unemployment rate is 3 percent. And shiny new skyscrapers are rising all over Denver as revelers pour fistfuls of cash into downtown bars and restaurants.

But no one invited Colorado’s public schools to the party.

“They have outdated technology, larger class sizes. They’ve lost the opportunity to offer certain programs. They can’t retain teachers. They can’t attract teachers,” says Tracie Rainey with the Colorado School Finance Project, a nonprofit research group.  “They’ve had fewer school days, furlough days, all sorts of maintenance issues.”

The list goes on. Many educators and parents had hoped that, as Colorado’s economy roared back from the Great Recession, the nearly $5 billion that lawmakers had cut from the state’s public schools would come back with it.

They were wrong.

“I was told that an improved economy would mean cuts would continue,” says Shannon Bird. The concerned mother of two school-age children lives north of Denver and has made several trips to the state Capitol to lobby for more funding. “Lawmakers told me their hands are tied.”

How is it that the nation’s 14th richest state ranks 42nd in how much it spends per student? Especially in a year that taxpayers can expect rebate checks from the state totaling $156 million?

Most Restrictive In The Country

The simple answer is, that’s what voters wanted. In 1992, they amended the state’s constitution with something called the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR.

 

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Apr 30

Republicans join Democrats to change hospital provider fee

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Republicans join Democrats to change hospital provider fee

Brown, Coram join Democrats

By Peter Marcus Herald staff writer

Reps. J. Paul Brown of Ignacio and Don Coram of Montrose on Friday joined majority Democrats to support restructuring a hospital fee to pay for state services. Three other Republicans also supported the bill, which passed 39-26.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

Reps. J. Paul Brown of Ignacio and Don Coram of Montrose on Friday joined majority Democrats to support restructuring a hospital fee to pay for state services. Three other Republicans also supported the bill, which passed 39-26.

 DENVER – Two Southwest Colorado Republicans resisted pressure from conservative interests Friday and supported a restructuring of a hospital fee to pay for state services.

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Reps. J. Paul Brown of Ignacio and Don Coram of Montrose joined majority Democrats to support the bill, which passed 39-26. Three other Republicans also supported it.

A second companion bill directs where the anticipated savings – expected to be about $730 million next year – would go.

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