State workers would receive their largest raises in at least a decade under Colorado’s $40.6 billion state budget proposal — but it still might not be enough to adequately staff state mental health facilities and prisons.
Worker shortages loomed large in this year’s state budget discussions, with lawmakers on Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee approving across-the-board pay raises, as well as targeted bonuses for some of the state’s hardest-to-fill positions.
Lawmakers on Monday introduced the 2024-25 spending plan, known as the long bill, in the Colorado House, where it’s expected to be debated this week. It would then move to the Senate before it can be signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis.
Under the state’s collective bargaining agreement with its employee union, state workers are owed 3% across-the-board raises in the 2024-25 budget, which starts July 1.
On top of that, the state plans to implement a new pay plan that rewards longevity — the first time since the 1990s that the state has provided raises based on seniority. Not all would benefit right away, but the average worker would get another 3.7% bump as the state adjusts its pay levels to account for years of service. Lawmakers approved similar raises next budget year for nonunion workers who don’t qualify for the pay plan.
“This is a historic investment in state workers — bringing back longevity pay,” said Hilary Glasgow, the executive director of the state employee union, Colorado WINS. “We’re still facing a shortage. But I think that the legislature is taking steps to address that.”
All told, the pay bumps will cost the state $229 million next year — $133 million of which will come from the state’s general fund.
The pay raises, coupled with rising costs of state-sponsored services like Medicaid, which is expected to cost state taxpayers $351 million more next year, left the budget writing committee with little discretionary money to spend on new programs despite a projected $1 billion increase in the state’s $15.2 billion general fund.
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The rise in personnel costs doesn’t end there.
Lawmakers approved a 2% increase for private health care providers who get reimbursed for Medicaid services through the state — plus targeted increases for some medical specialities — at a cost of over $135 million to the general fund.
The proposed budget also calls for another round of signing bonuses to lure nurses, social workers and other health professionals into the public workforce. This time, lawmakers plan to offer incentives of $25,000 spread out over 12 months, up from the $14,000 the state provided this budget year.
But even as JBC members approved the bonuses — at a cost of $9.6 million in the next budget year, which starts July 1 — they acknowledged it won’t solve the long-term problem.
“It feels like it’s a Band-Aid. It’s a Band-Aid on a sucking chest wound,” Rep. Shannon Bird, a Westminster Democrat who chairs the JBC, said at a meeting earlier this month. “We have so many problems cascading because we don’t pay people enough money.”
Pay is improving. But some departments face a crisis.
The administration’s latest pay study found that state employees make about 8% less than workers in comparable public and private sector jobs — even after a 5% bump in the current budget year.
Pay and working conditions are improving, says Glasgow, the union leader. But the state dug itself into a large hole. High turnover in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic left around 1 in 5 state jobs vacant. And Colorado can no longer rely on federal stimulus money to provide bonuses to essential workers.
Today, the state needs about 400 additional medical workers to fully staff the most affected divisions within the Department of Corrections and Department of Human Services, according to JBC documents. That represents a vacancy rate of more than 43%.
Some positions have proved even harder to fill: More than 60% of health technician jobs at DHS are vacant, while the DOC has had similar problems hiring social workers.
The shortages have hamstrung the state’s ability to treat the mentally ill at a time when more and more patients are being placed under the state’s care through the criminal justice system.
“This is the department that handles the sickest of all of them,” Leora Joseph, the director of the Office of Civil and Forensic Mental Health, told the JBC at a hearing in December.
The Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo, for instance, had 100 fewer direct care workers, including nurses, in 2023 than in 2018, Joseph said. But court orders to treat the mentally ill more than doubled in that time, rising from 1,054 in 2018 to 2,737 last year.
Colorado now has the third-worst waitlist in the nation for people waiting in jail for forensic psychiatric beds, which are used to treat people found incompetent to face criminal charges. The state owes $12 million in fines this budget year under a consent decree in which state officials agreed to reduce the time people spend waiting in jail for treatment — the latest in over $30 million in fines paid since the decree began in 2019.
The shortages have left the state relying heavily on contract workers hired through staffing companies, which can cost the state upward of twice as much as a permanent employee. The state expects to spend close to $90 million in the current budget year to hire contract nurses and other health professionals in the departments of Corrections and Human Services.
Lawmakers wonder: How much is enough?
Recent efforts to increase salaries and offer bonuses have helped, state officials insist. They just haven’t come close to solving the problem.
“I think that for a long time, people saw state employment as a very stable career where you could provide for your family,” Glasgow told The Colorado Sun in an interview. “You’d own a home. You’d have all the trappings of having a good job — retirement and good benefits.”
In many state jobs, that’s no longer the case. Housing costs are so high, the administration has turned to state-funded housing for corrections officers — many of whom the department is now having to recruit from out-of-state.
The JBC approved $360,000 in funding to continue housing 50 correctional workers in Buena Vista, but turned down a $16 million request to build new workforce housing for correctional officers in Denver and Sterling.
In DHS, when the $14,000 hiring bonuses were first instituted in 2023 using federal stimulus funding, the department was able to hire 40 nurses — but 25 who were already on staff left for other jobs in the same period, according to JBC documents.
That’s left lawmakers wondering how much in salary and benefits it would take to persuade nurses to work for the state long term over contract work.
DHS nurses make around $50 an hour on average, but the state pays contract agencies more than double that — $109 an hour per nurse, according to JBC documents. Trouble is, they don’t know how much the contract nurses receive in pay after the contract agency’s cut, which could be as high as 40% in some cases, JBC staff said.
As a result, lawmakers are hesitant to approve higher salaries until they have a better idea of what a competitive wage would be. The budget committee voted unanimously in favor of the bonuses, but pledged to revisit pay raises after the legislative session.
“This is a case where we see very similar challenges in the private sector,” Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat who sits on the JBC, said at a meeting this month. “Nursing staffing is just a mess at public hospitals, private hospitals, anywhere you go, it’s a mess. … How much of this is us trying to do all the same things we’ve seen not work in the private sector, when really we’ve just got to increase pay?”