When Gov. Jared Polis released his proposed higher education budget last month, he told the Joint Budget Committee his goal was to make college more affordable by holding in-state tuition increases to 2%.
But this week, the JBC learned that the governor glossed over a key detail: His spending plan doesn’t actually provide Colorado’s colleges and universities enough money to do so.
Polis’ proposal for the 2024-25 fiscal year does give the college governing boards a slight funding bump — $41 million, or a 2.9% increase over this year. But that won’t come close to covering the cost of holding tuition increases to half the rate of inflation, as the governor has called for.
Colleges and universities will have to increase spending more than that just to maintain the status quo after a decade of low state funding and falling enrollment. Salaries, benefits and other costs are projected to go up 3.8% next fiscal year, a figure that could rise even further if higher education implements a proposed pay plan for state workers.
Add it all up, and institutions could be as much as $133 million short of what’s needed to hold in-state tuition increases to 2%, according to a nonpartisan legislative budget staff analysis.
The governor’s plan calls for colleges to pass on $80 million of those costs to out-of-state students through a 6.5% tuition hike. The rest, he has suggested, could come through belt-tightening by college administrations.
JBC members railed against the proposal this week, saying it would give public universities more incentive to chase wealthy out-of-state students instead of focusing on educating Coloradans. And that’s if the large tuition increase doesn’t discourage students from coming here. Out-of-state students already pay much higher tuition than Colorado residents.
“It’s not sustainable,” said Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada, the JBC’s vice chair. “I’m very frustrated by that proposal.”
But that’s not the only problem. The Colorado schools that rely the most on state funding don’t have many out-of-state students to lean on.
For five of Colorado’s 10 institutions of higher education, including Colorado Mesa University and the University of Northern Colorado, Polis’ budget proposal would force them to make budget cuts to meet the in-state tuition target, the budget staff analysis suggests.
Colorado already provides less state financial support to public colleges and universities than almost any other state, and tuition costs have risen to the top five in the U.S.
In response to a request for comment by The Colorado Sun, a spokesperson for the governor’s office issued a statement that did not provide any new details. “We look forward to working with the Joint Budget Committee to help students afford higher education,” it read in part.
The JBC will learn more soon. The Department of Higher Education — and university leaders — are due before the committee in January.
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CORRECTION: The polling item in Tuesday’s edition incorrectly reported Colorado Polling Institute founder David Carlson’s marital status. He is the former husband of Rachel Romer. Romer is cofounder of Guild Education and granddaughter of former Gov. Roy Romer. Additionally, the Colorado Polling Institute now reveals its donors.
MORE: The governor’s tuition proposal wasn’t the only thing that drew the JBC’s ire during Wednesday’s higher education briefing from JBC staff.
During the pandemic, the federal government temporarily increased its reimbursement rates for Medicaid, allowing states to cut back on their share of the low-income health care program’s costs. The extra money allowed Colorado to save $57 million in the 2021-22 budget year alone, according to the fiscal note for Senate Bill 213, the 2021 measure that authorized the funding changes.
That spending boost ended earlier this year when the pandemic emergency declaration expired, leaving the state to pick up a higher share of the tab.
Polis’ budget proposal, however, doesn’t replace the lost funding for at least one entity that serves Medicaid patients: the CU Health Sciences Center in Aurora, which is projected to lose $9.8 million in reimbursements in the next budget year. Before the pandemic, the state covered those costs through the General Fund.
The governor’s office told JBC staff the “omission was deliberate,” according to chief legislative analyst Amanda Bickel.
“That’s not a serious proposal, and I don’t support that,” JBC Chair Shannon Bird, D-Westminster, said this week. “Our reinsertion will also be deliberate.”
THE NARRATIVE
A “Colorado Promise” of free tuition?
What if the state could guarantee free college tuition for every Colorado high school student whose family makes under $60,000 a year?
The Joint Budget Committee’s staff believes it can — for as little as $12 million extra a year.
Budget writers are in the early stages of considering a statewide Colorado Promise program, modeled after similar initiatives in other states.
At first blush, the idea sounds far-fetched and expensive. Colorado, as we noted earlier, ranks near the top of the country in tuition costs and near the bottom in public support.
But a staff report presented to the JBC this week found that it’s actually quite feasible. Some of the state’s universities are doing something similar already, using a mix of state scholarship grants, federal financial aid and their own funding.
On the one hand, that low price tag means the program might not have as large an impact as it sounds. But it could still be an effective marketing tool in a state whose high schoolers enroll in college at a lower rate than the national average, the report says.
Federal studies have found that many low-income high schoolers don’t believe college is an option because they overestimate the costs and underestimate how much financial assistance they qualify for.
Most Colorado seniors don’t even complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, better known as the FAFSA. The state ranks 46th in FAFSA application rates, the JBC report said.
Given the low price tag — less than 1% of the $1.4 billion general fund budget for higher education — JBC members suggested they may set their sights a little higher.
Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, said middle-income families making between $60,000 and $100,000 likely struggle the most with the cost of college, because they often don’t receive federal aid.
Students can qualify for a free ride at the Colorado State University Pueblo if their families make up to $70,000, the most generous guarantee of any state college, the report said. CU Boulder and Colorado Mesa University limit it to those making around $65,000 or less, while MSU Denver sets the bar at $60,000.
YOU HEARD IT HERE
Benson was the keynote speaker at the luncheon, which was held at Empower Field at Mile High and attended by a who’s who of business and political leaders, many of them conservative. (Former U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, for instance, was in attendance.)
The Common Sense Institute is a conservative-leaning policy nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors. Its influence has grown in recent years through the publication of reports that have been widely cited in news media stories, including in The Sun.
“You can come to (journalists) with a report that is relevant, that will be plugged in easily into a graphic,” Benson said. “They’re like ‘great, thank you, let’s put that on the air.’ Newsrooms have been decimated, newspapers are closing — they don’t have people able to do this kind of work.”
Benson made the disparaging remarks during a fireside chat with Kelly Caufield, executive director of the institute, who mentioned how the nonprofit works with reporters. There were posters throughout the luncheon space touting news articles where the institute’s work has been featured.
“The media, we’ve been very grateful for their interest in our work,” she said.
So you know: When we use the Common Sense Institute’s studies, we always try to provide disclaimers about the nonprofit’s background. The Sun also opted against citing one of the group’s reports in a story earlier this year on Proposition HH when the organization would not provide information on its methodology prior to the article’s publication.
Speaking of reports: The institute released its 2024 free enterprise report at the event. You can read through it here.
MORE: Though the institute doesn’t disclose its donors, we’ve been able to use tax documents to track at least one of them down.
The Colorado Opportunity Foundation, another nonprofit, gave the Common Sense Institute $285,000 in 2021.
The Colorado Opportunity Foundation also donated $825,000 to the Independence Institute and $500,000 to Advance Colorado that year, according to tax documents collected by ProPublica. The Independence Institute and Advance Colorado are conservative policy nonprofits that push for tax cuts and generally oppose Democratic causes.
Michael Fields, president of Advance Colorado, was listed as the principal director of Colorado Opportunity Foundation in 2021, while GOP operative Sean Tonner and former Ready Colorado President Luke Ragland were on the board.
DO THE MATH
64.2%
The share of likely 2024 general election voters in Colorado who said they think unaffiliated voters should continue to be allowed to vote in either major party’s primary elections.
The Colorado Polling Institute on Thursday released more results from the poll the nonpartisan nonprofit commissioned Nov. 26 and 27 among 652 likely 2024 general election voters. The poll had a margin of error of 3.83 percentage points.
Only 25% of those polled said unaffiliated voters, who make up the largest voting bloc in the state, should no longer be allowed to vote in partisan primaries, while 11% said they were unsure.
Digging into the survey’s crosstabs, 44% of registered Republicans said unaffiliated voters should be allowed to cast ballots in partisan primaries, while 48% said no, a statistical tie given the poll’s margin of error. For registered Democrats, 68% said unaffiliated voters should be able to cast ballots in partisan primaries, compared with 18% who said they shouldn’t be allowed to.
The highest margin was, unsurprisingly, among unaffiliated voters, 75% of whom said they should be allowed to cast ballots in partisan primaries, compared with 15% who said they shouldn’t.
The findings come as Colorado GOP leadership has repeatedly tried to block unaffiliated voters from participating in its primaries. The party’s lawsuit in federal court seeking to invalidate Proposition 108, the 2016 ballot measure letting unaffiliated voters cast ballots in partisan primaries, is ongoing.
Among the other results from the poll conducted by Cygnal, a Republican political firm, and Aspect Strategic, a Democratic firm:
See the full topline results here.
STORY: What’s top of mind for Colorado voters heading into the election year
PODCAST: What’s top of mind for Colorado voters heading into the election year
MORE: When the Colorado Polling Institute first launched this year, the nonprofit declined to release a list of its donors. As you may have seen from the correction above, they changed course ahead of the release of their latest poll results.
You can see a full list of their donors here.
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THE POLITICAL TICKER
COLORADO LEGISLATURE: State Rep. Alex Valdez, D-Denver, took House Speaker Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon, to task for not appointing any representatives of color to serve as a committee chair in the chamber. “To be serving in a chamber in 2023 where not a single person of color will be leading a committee, working to set the course for Colorado, is absolutely unacceptable,” he said on X, said the site formerly known as Twitter. “The speaker missed an opportunity to show that she believes diversity and inclusion are important.”
CAMPAIGN FINANCE: The Secretary of State’s Office is delaying a planned revamp of its campaign finance and lobbying systems after the Department of Personnel and Administration determined a request for proposal it issued earlier this year was unsuccessful. Deputy Secretary of State Chris Beall told the legislature’s Joint Technology Committee on Wednesday that the office hopes to seek a phased approach to the upgrades, with a solicitation inviting potential bidders for the project to negotiate with the state. The legislature set aside $1.6 million to update the system, but apparently that wasn’t enough.
ELECTION 2024: State Rep. Richard Holtorf, R-Akron, signed a pledge to only serve three terms in the U.S. House if he’s elected next year to represent Colorado’s 4th Congressional District.
CONGRESS: U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Lakewood, commended retailers who agreed to stop selling water-bead products this week because they present a danger to small children if swallowed. Pettersen and two other House members had introduced legislation to ban the beads outright. But Target, Walmart, Amazon and others agreed to stop selling them this week. “As the mom of a toddler, dangerous toys that look fun but actually have harmful — or even deadly — consequences are my nightmare,” Pettersen said in a news release.
STORY: Elisabeth Epps, Bob Marshall removed from Colorado House Judiciary Committee by speaker
STORY: Feds propose 20-year ban on mining, oil and gas drilling on 225,000 acres in Thompson Divide
STORY: A (very) last-minute guide to buying health insurance in Colorado
STORY: $3B trimmed from Xcel Energy’s ambitious plan for new solar, wind electricity generation in Colorado
STORY: $1M in grants offered to Colorado farmers with new ideas about conserving water
STORY: Colorado pitches even more “intensity” caps on oil and gas to help fight ozone
COLORADO PUBLIC RADIO: Lawyer on Denver Health board says he’s stopped lobbying for tobacco giant Altria after getting a call to resign
THE DENVER POST: Black Coloradans, less likely to own a home or have a degree, deserve a deeper study of racial inequities, lawmakers say
THE SUMMIT DAILY: Wolves could be reintroduced to Colorado as early as Monday, wildlife officials say in federal court
COLORADO NEWSLINE: Colorado GOP threatens criminal complaints against its own previous leaders
ELECTION 2023
Final 2023 campaign filings are in — and the 2024 cash is already flowing
Five issue committees and a nonprofit that opposed Proposition HH spent a total of more than $3.1 million to defeat the property tax relief and state funding measure on the November ballot.
That compares with the $2.7 million spent by Property Tax Relief Now, the lone committee that supported the initiative, which was soundly rejected by voters.
That’s according to final campaign finance reports filed this week.
No on HH was the group that opposed the ballot measure that spent the most money, at roughly $2 million. It received nearly $1.2 million from Advance Colorado Action, a conservative political nonprofit that doesn’t reveal its donors and is what The Sun refers to as a dark-money group.
Advance Colorado Action also reported directly spending $556,000 on TV and print advertising in opposition to Proposition HH.
Advance Colorado Action and No on HH are the subjects of a campaign finance complaint filed by Democratic consultant Curtis Hubbard, seeking to force Advance Colorado to register as an issue committee and disclose the source of its money. It also claims No on HH used information from Advance Colorado in its advertising, which should be considered an in-kind donation.
The two groups were given an opportunity to file documents by Nov. 21 remedying the allegations, but the Secretary of State’s Office wouldn’t provide those to The Sun.
(Hubbard has served as an adviser to The Colorado Sun but has no influence over editorial decisions.)
Other observations from the final election 2023 campaign finance reports filed this week:
MORE: Get ready for 2024, as the oil and gas industry gears up for a ballot initiative battle.
Protect Colorado, the industry’s issue committee, brought in $3.4 million and spent $2.3 million in November. The organization’s donors included Chevron, Occidental Petroleum and Phillips 66.
The spending went toward signature gathering to get an initiative that would prevent state or local governments from banning the use of energy sources, such as natural gas, for heating, cooling or cooking.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
Corrections & Clarifications
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