For a year, since COVID-19 reached our state, Coloradans have faced unprecedented threats to the health of our communities. Throughout it all, essential workers have gotten us through the worst of the pandemic and are keeping our communities and economy going. Many of those front-line workers are Colorado’s state employees, who work tirelessly to fulfill […]
state workers
Posted inCOVID
Colorado state workers ordered to take unpaid furlough amid state budget shortfall
Gov. Jared Polis announced Tuesday that he will order most of Colorado’s 30,000 government employees to take an unpaid furlough to help address the state’s budget crunch. The move — expected to be formalized in an executive order — applies to executive branch employees making more than $50,000 a year and is tiered to lessen […]
Posted inNews, Politics and Government
Half of state employees don’t think equity, diversity and inclusion are prioritized. Here’s how Colorado is responding.
Colorado surveyed its roughly 30,000 state employees last year and asked if they thought leadership was making workforce equity, diversity and inclusion a priority. Only a little more than half of Colorado’s workers who responded said yes. “That number should be much higher,” said Kara Veitch, the executive director of Colorado Department of Personnel and […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Politics and Government
What PERA’s bad year means for public workers, retirees and taxpayers in Colorado, explained in charts
A bad investment year at a precarious time for Colorado’s public workers’ pension will mean more sacrifices than state lawmakers expected when they approved a sweeping deal to stabilize the retirement system’s finances in 2018. The good news: Unlike the legislature’s prior attempts to fix the Public Employees’ Retirement Association’s funding woes, safeguards are kicking […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Politics and Government
Low pay. Cuts to PERA. For some state workers in Colorado, it’s like the recession never ended.
When Colorado state workers took a temporary 2.5% pay cut in 2011 to shore up the state’s pension plan, Jane Wilson didn’t like it, but she understood. The country was in the midst of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. And the stock market’s 2008 freefall had put the Public Employees’ Retirement Association […]