Tag: center for colorado’s economic future

News outlets in Colorado reported last week that researchers at the University of Denver recommended tax hikes to fill yawning future budget gaps. In fact, the researchers made no recommendations. What they did was offer two scenarios for public consideration by which the state could meet its obligations (download the study summary). The first scenario included only program cuts. The second included only tax hikes. Even though the tax-hike scenario has already drawn fire, it is no radical proposal. The hikes, as detailed to the Colorado Independent by the director of the study, would establish rates that would still compare favorably with those in its neighbor-state competitors of the Great Plains and Mountain West.

There is nowhere near enough money for Colorado to continue to do the business of the state as things stand, according to an influential team of researchers at the University of Denver. State lawmakers will either have to raise more money or cut away the kind of programs and services most Americans view as measures of the baseline quality of life achieved over centuries in the world's wealthiest nation.

A full scale invasion of Wyoming by Colorado was one of the recommendations the presenters of a University of Denver study facetiously proposed as it was explained that Colorado's revenue structure is broken and would not be fixed even by a good economy.