American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

A bill proposed for the next legislative session would improve a state loan-repayment program for rural health professionals with the aim of attracting more providers to rural areas. The Colorado Rural Health Center (CRHC), the Colorado Community Health Network (CCHN) and the Governor’s office are jointly proposing the bill, according to Terri Hurst, policy analyst at CRHC. She expected it to be sponsored by Representative Sara Gagliardi, D-Arvada, and Senator John Morse D-Colorado Springs.

As high-speed broadband service has increasingly become a key utility in America, residents in many of Colorado’s rural communities are finding that they simply don’t have access to speeds needed to download music or movies–or simply research in a timely fashion. But the stimulus package may help some communities change that.
Today, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack [...]

Just outside of Central City in Colorado’s Gilpin County, the historic Perigo gold mine drains metal-laden water at an average of 70 gallons per minute into a small perennial stream known as Gamble Gulch. Below the mine for six miles, the gulch is virtually devoid of life, according to the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety.

A design for a proposed project has been completed, but Colorado won’t bid it out for construction because it worries that if it does, it open itself up, in perpetuity, to a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act.

The Denver Post published a factchecking piece on the disparity between the number of jobs reported to have been created so far in the state by the American Recovery Act and the number of actual jobs created. Turns out the people reporting the jobs were confused and overinspired. Is a part-time job a job? Is [...]

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act celebrated its six-month anniversary this week. ProPublica looks back at six months of stimulus coverage and finds a mixed record on one key aspect of the package: how well the government has met its own pledge of transparency.
The Recovery Act isn’t only one of the largest bills of its [...]

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan may be talking big about promoting innovation with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) education dollars, but Colorado schools won’t see any sweeping developments this fall. That doesn’t mean, however, that the stimulus program won’t be making an impact. Federal Recovery funds are being used to prop up current programs and to lay the groundwork for more ambitious future change.