DON’T MISS: Get your tickets to SunFest before sales end Friday. As a Colorado Sun member, you’ll get a big discount.
The all-day event will be held Sept. 27 at the University of Denver. There will be can’t-miss panels on the measure that would overhaul Colorado’s election system, latest polling trends and housing.
Speakers include former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry; Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Shad Murib; Colorado Clerks Association Executive Director Matt Crane; Democratic pollster Kevin Ingham; DU political science professor Seth Masket; and Dan Haley, president and CEO of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.
Lake County has been trying to replace its century-old jail in Leadville for over 20 years now.
But building a new one, local officials say, would cost $65 million — a preposterous sum of money for a county that typically has around 10 people in custody at any given time.
Instead, the county commission scaled back its plans, hoping instead to complete a $12 million renovation of the existing jail. That’s still close to half the county’s entire $25 million annual budget. And even that won’t be enough to retrofit the facility into a fully operational, modern county jail, meaning some inmates will still have to be transferred to other counties.
Colorado’s work to improve jail standards across the state is running into a familiar foe: a lack of money.
At a legislative oversight committee meeting last week, lawmakers heard from a number of local officials on the financial challenges they face, even as the state revs up its plans to begin implementing Colorado’s first statewide standards for detention.
Earlier this year, Gov. Jared Polis signed into law House Bill 1054, which requires jails to follow the new standards and charges the oversight committee with enforcing them over the next decade.
It’s just not clear where local sheriff’s offices will get the money to meet the new standards, which kick in July 2026. Jail needs will likely run the gamut from major construction projects like Lake County’s to hiring more staff or buying new technology to allow for inmates to talk to attorneys and other visitors virtually.
In a sign of the financial struggles to come, the oversight committee last week proposed reviving a 2018 bill that would have expanded a state grant program for court improvements to fund jail upgrades as well. But unlike the 2018 version, which would have provided $30 million a year in help, Democrats said they won’t be proposing any money to fund the program this time around.
Rep. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who chairs the oversight committee, said the new bill would effectively set up “funding mechanisms without actually asking for any funding, which is kind of weak, but that’s where we’re at.”
All eyes will be on the Joint Budget Committee this week for its quarterly revenue forecast, when lawmakers will find out how deep in the hole they’ll be when they start their budget discussions later this year. As of the June revenue forecast, lawmakers faced a deficit of $572 million for the 2025-26 budget, according to Colorado Legislative Council staff. And that was before the legislature passed another round of property tax cuts in August.
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“A HARD SLOG”
The County Sheriffs of Colorado will begin conducting jail assessments in January 2025, with an eye toward fixing problems before the standards take effect in the summer of 2026.
They’re likely to find the most serious jail problems at the state’s largest facilities, which are more likely to face overcrowding and dangerous conditions.
But small rural jails face challenges of their own, and local officials say the cost to fully equip them is hard to justify to voters, with so few inmates in their custody. Jackson County, for instance, only has about five at any given time, officials told lawmakers last week.
Lake County officials say they’ve been holding off on repairs to the county swimming pool for three years in order to find money for the jail.
“You can probably imagine, as an elected official, how popular that has been in the community to — and I’ll just quote — ‘do something for criminals,’ before fixing the pool for the community,” Lake County Commissioner Jeff Fiedler said at the oversight hearing. “It has been a hard slog to stand up and try to do the right thing.”
WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEK
THE BIG STORY
Are PERA contributions still too low?
School districts and state agencies in Colorado now contribute more than 21% of each employee’s salary to the Public Employees’ Retirement Association — a figure that public officials say has hamstrung efforts to raise pay and address widespread shortages of teachers and other public workers.
That’s more than double what employers paid for most of PERA’s 93-year history. But compared to similar public pensions across the U.S., Colorado public agencies actually contribute relatively little to their employees’ retirement, a Colorado Sun analysis of national pension data found.
On the surface, the typical pension provider nationwide actually contributes about what Colorado agencies do. In 2023, the average employer contribution was around 21%, according to Public Plans Data, a public pension research project led by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.
But PERA isn’t your typical pension. It was founded in 1931, a few years before Social Security was created. Today, Colorado remains one of only a handful of states nationwide where most public workers are ineligible for the federal retirement program. Workers don’t have social security taxes deducted from their paychecks, and public employers skip out on their 6.2% payroll tax, as well.
When you compare Colorado PERA only to other public pensions whose members don’t participate in Social Security, the picture changes dramatically.
Nationwide, the median employer contribution is 30% of pay compared to PERA’s 21.4% for most state and school employees. (The state’s annual $225 million payment to the plan adds the equivalent of another 2% of pay to the total taxpayer contribution.)
The median employee contributes only 6.5%, while Colorado public workers shoulder more of the burden, chipping in 11% of their salaries before taxes.
And that’s not all. Because Colorado’s pension is so underfunded, most of the employer contribution goes to pay off the $27.5 billion unfunded debt to retirees —not the future benefits of today’s public workforce.
To fully fund a current teacher’s pension, it costs a school district 3.6% of their salary. (In pension lingo, that’s called the “normal cost.”) The vast majority of the contributions — 16% of pay — go toward the pension’s unfunded debt to retirees, with some set aside for health care costs and a reserve fund.
State workers get even less; only 1.8 percentage points of their employer’s contribution goes to their own pension.
The “normal cost” of the average pension that doesn’t contribute to Social Security is 8% of a current worker’s salary, the Sun’s analysis found.
Does that mean PERA contributions are too low? That depends on your perspective.
For three years in a row, PERA employers have fully funded their “actuarially determined contribution” — that’s pension accounting speak for contributing enough to cover the long-term cost of benefits. But that’s assuming the pension’s financial assumptions are correct, and PERA’s recent financial declines suggest they aren’t.
Moreover, there’s growing concern that from the employee’s standpoint, public agencies might not even contribute enough to compete with private sector employers that provide 401(k) retirement plans and Social Security — let alone other public pensions.
Expect to hear more on this next year, when the state completes its first comprehensive study of PERA benefits since 2014.
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THE POLITICAL TICKER
8TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT
The LCV Victory Fund, the federal super PAC offshoot of the League of Conservation Voters, reports spending about $400,000 to help Democratic U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo in the 8th Congressional District. The group spent $373,500 to purchase digital ads supporting Caraveo, as well as $5,000 on ad production and $10,000 on “research.”
Meanwhile, Caraveo’s opponent, Republican state Rep. Gabe Evans, released an ad attacking Caraveo over unlawful immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border and touting his experience in the Army and as a police officer.
UNITE AMERICA
Unite America, the Denver-based election reform organization led in part by Kent Thiry, the former CEO of the dialysis giant DaVita, has formed a new federal super PAC called Republic Renewal. The political action committee was formed in the first days of the month. The group didn’t indicate what its purpose will be in its first filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Unite America is heavily involved in Proposition 131, the Colorado ballot measure that would change most of the state’s primaries so candidates from all parties run against each other. The top four vote-getters in the primary would advance to a ranked choice voting general election.
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ELECTION 2024
Millions poured into campaigns for Colorado’s 14 statewide ballot measures in the first days of September
The latest state campaign finance reports are in, and a lot more money — we’re talking many millions of dollars — has poured into issue committees since the end of last reporting period in August.
Colorado Voters First reported raising $2.9 million from Aug. 29 to Sept. 11. The issue committee is backing a November ballot measure that would change most of Colorado’s primaries so candidates from all parties run against each other, followed by a ranked choice voting general election.
Unite America, the Denver-based group where former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry is cochair of the board, accounted for $1.17 million of that haul, bringing its total investment in the committee to about $4.7 million. Ben Walton, a Walmart heir, gave $750,000, bringing his total donations to Colorado Voters First to $1 million.
The committee also received $1 million during the reporting period from Reed Hastings, the executive chairman and cofounder of Netflix.
Voter Rights Colorado, a group opposing the initiative that’s backed by a list of progressive organizations, reported raising just $15,000 during the reporting period, including $10,000 from the Working Families Party and $5,000 from ProgressNow Colorado, the liberal political nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors.
Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, which is backing a ballot measure to enshrine unfettered abortion access in the state constitution, reported Monday that it had raised $2 million from Aug. 29 to Sept. 11. Half of that came from the New York-based Open Society Policy Center, which is tied to the Democratic billionaire mega donor George Soros.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, another billionaire, donated $750,000 to the issue committee. The North Fund, a liberal political nonprofit that doesn’t disclose its donors, gave $200,000.
The issue committee spent just $85,000 during the reporting period, starting Sept. 12 with $2.2 million in the bank.
The Pro Life Colorado Fund, which opposes the ballot measure and is tied to the Catholic Church, raised $57,000 from Aug. 29 to Sept. 11.
Cats Aren’t Trophies, the issue committee supporting a statewide measure on the November ballot that would prohibit the hunting of mountain lions, bobcats and lynx, raised more than $1 million during the reporting period. Animal Wellness Action, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, accounted for $500,000 of that haul, while the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg gave $300,000, the Big Cat Rescue Corp in Florida gave $175,000 and Boulder environmental scientist Richard Pritzlaff donated $50,000.
Cats Aren’t Trophies paid $1.2 million to a media buying firm as it launches an ad campaign on TV and other mediums.
Colorado Wildlife Deserves Better, the group opposing the initiative, had $375,000 on Sept. 12 after raising $25,000 during the fundraising period and spending $10,000.
Keep in mind: The state requires the committees, as well as legislative candidates, to file reports roughly every two weeks through Oct. 28 as Election Day, Nov. 5, approaches. Things move fast.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
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