The (Loveland) Reporter-Herald, March 18, on a warm spring and wildfires:
When Colorado residents think about the devastating wildfires of 2012, their memories are directed first to the High Park fire and Woodland Heights fire in Larimer County and the Waldo Canyon fire in El Paso County - for good reason: those fires resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars’ of damage throughout the state, destroying more homes and creating a heavier burden on emergency crews than nearly any other succession of fires in Colorado history.
What people might not remember is that the fire season that year didn’t start with those summertime blazes, which were the most significant in a long succession of burns that year. Throughout the dry spring of 2012, smaller wildfires erupted across the Front Range, such as with the Hewlett Gulch fire in Larimer County and the Flagstaff fire in Boulder County.
With the start of spring on Monday, now is the time to recognize that so far, the precipitation totals on the Front Range have placed the area into drought status. While the Colorado mountains have been able to boast above-average snowpack totals, the foothills and eastern plains have been struggling to find the moisture needed to make crops grow and keep the wildland fire danger low. In addition, unseasonably warm weather in the mountains threatens to release the snowpack early, causing problems of its own in terms of storage and delivery of the season’s water supply.
Water managers are already aware of the looming issues with this season’s precipitation pattern, but the general public needs to know there is a price to pay for the string of “nice weather” the region has been experiencing.
This isn’t Arizona, so the plants and animals aren’t adapted to the challenges of a low-water environment. Pests that are normally kept at bay because of the freezes and snowfall are finding it easier to wreak their damage. And new homeowners who haven’t lived here long enough to know about the dangers of wildfires need to be brought up to speed on creating the defensible spaces that could mean the difference between losing a home and keeping one intact during a wildfire.
Already, the eastern plains have seen wildfires this month that have consumed areas measured not in acres but in square miles. As winter comes to a dry close, residents should be mindful that wildfire season has already begun - with the threat of even more damage to come.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2ncigJy
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The Vail Daily, March 21, on electric vehicles:
Officials from around Garfield, Pitkin and Eagle counties gathered last week to kick off what they’re calling “REV Up Your Ride,” an effort to sell more electric and gas-electric hybrid vehicles in the region.
The idea behind the promotion is a good one. Modern electric cars and hybrids are brilliant pieces of engineering which run more cleanly than cars powered only by fossil fuels. But do we really need government help to put more drivers in these vehicles?
Let’s start with price.
The base price of a BMW i3 is more than $48,000. Even with hefty state and federal tax credits and a $3,000 dealer discount, this is a premium-priced vehicle. It also has an estimated range of 118 miles. That means a trip between, say, Gypsum and Grand Junction will require a charge. In fact, the car might not make the one-way trip.
That’s the case with many all-electric vehicles. Even electric vehicles with the best claimed range won’t make a round trip from Vail to Denver International Airport without stopping for more electricity. Even in the best case - Tesla’s Superchargers - it’s more time-consuming than a simple fill-up with gasoline.
Again, modern electric vehicles are fantastic. They don’t make sense on the Western Slope as someone’s sole or primary vehicle, unless that vehicle is used only for commuting.
The Audi A3 Sportback e-tron Hatchback is a full hybrid, meaning it has less battery range and can be refueled at any gas station. That means a trip to, say, Zion National Park from this area is as simple as getting in, gassing up and going.
Again, though, this is a premium-priced product, with a base price of nearly $42,000.
There’s nothing wrong with premium-priced products, but why should anyone else subsidize their purchase?
Another problem with these vehicles - as well as lower-priced vehicles from Toyota, Chevrolet and Nissan - is their higher initial prices than conventional vehicles simply can’t be recovered in fuel savings in a reasonable amount of time.
Given the initial cost and long payback on the initial investment, these vehicles seem more like statements about the eco-virtue of their owners than true transportation alternatives.
Using less fuel is good. Using cars that put fewer fumes into the air is good. But those goals simply don’t make sense for most car buyers at current prices, with or without subsidies.
That’s what makes this promotion seem well-intentioned, but ill-conceived.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2nchRGM
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The Denver Post, March 20, on problems with Colorado’s Medicaid system:
What bad timing for Colorado’s Medicaid system to look like it is incapable of accurately billing the federal government for Medicaid recipients or managing the claims providers make for services.
As Republicans look to overhaul the system - House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan fundamentally alters and ultimately reduces federal support of the Medicaid programs run by states - it would be nice if Coloradans could have confidence that ours is responsibly doing its job of providing health insurance to low-income families, children, adults and disabled individuals.
Unfortunately, that confidence may be waning due to two recent (albeit completely unrelated) revelations. The first was that the state over-billed the federal government for somewhere between $20 million and $40 million. The second was that providers of care for disabled adults were having their claims incorrectly denied by a newly launched payment system.
While both are certainly cause for concern, we would all be wise to note that the common thread between the two errors was the roll-out of a new system, as such launches often come with bumps along the road - an important point for Republicans as they weigh whether to rush through Medicaid reforms.
Josh Block, the budget director for the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF), explained to us that his office caught the first error by noticing that the state’s portion for Medicaid coverage was coming in under budget.
The Affordable Care Act created two categories of Medicaid recipients in Colorado: Those who qualified under the original Medicaid threshold continued to receive 50 percent of their coverage from the federal government; but those who earned more and qualified under the new threshold were receiving 100 percent of their coverage from the feds.
Colorado was inaccurately billing the federal government for people who had originally qualified under the lower threshold, but who later earned enough money to fall into the Medicaid expansion category.
The state should have pushed those individuals to its “transitional Medicaid” program, a state program created to help combat the cliff effect that happens when a family’s income increases.
Colorado skipped the transitional program and counted those individuals as part of the expansion, and received 100 percent of the funding from the feds.
The mistake was an honest one, it seems, and the impact on the state budget shouldn’t be big, even if President Donald Trump takes a dim view of letting states keep ill-gotten federal funds.
The second error came from a completely different side of HCPF. Those billing the state’s Medicaid system for care provided to disabled individuals found their claims being erroneously denied.
The Denver Post’s Jennifer Brown reported that the error came as part of the March 1 transition to a new system for filing the claims from a system that had been in place since 1998. As with any transition, hiccups are to be expected. We hope the rest of the transition goes smoothly after these claims get resolved and that HCPF continues to improve its operations.
We must move forward with caution as we change the Medicaid system, while also constantly seeking improvements to this bloated federal and state funded program.
Editorial: https://dpo.st/2nQPImP
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The (Colorado Springs) Gazette, March 19, on fixing Colorado’s roads and highways without tax increase:
Gov. John Hickenlooper and state legislators have made one thing clear. They won’t fix highways and bridges unless voters capitulate on a tax hike. Shiny new buildings for the Department of Transportation, yes. Roads and bridges, no.
Politicians hope voters will get so tired of potholes, traffic jams and crashes they will vote for new taxes in return for getting state government to conduct one of its most fundamental roles.
House Bill 1242, with bipartisan support, would ask voters to increase the state sales tax from 2.9 cents to 3.5 cents. As a concession to Republicans, the bill redirects $50 million in existing revenues to transportation and reduces vehicle registration fees by $75 million a year. The net gain for transportation is $677 million annually for 20 years, beginning in January.
Here’s what it would look like in Colorado Springs. City taxpayers fork over a combined sales tax of 8.25 cents each time they spend a dollar. If statewide voters pass the tax hike, the combined sales tax in Colorado Springs goes to 8.87 cents on the dollar.
At 8.87 cents, our sales tax would nearly tie New York City’s 8.875 percent combined tax. We would have the 10th highest sales tax in the country, undercutting the Big Apple by only 0.005 percent.
Given the federal and state lawsuits against our community, and the hundreds of millions we must spend to upgrade stormwater infrastructure, we might need another local sales tax hike. That could make us the first major city in the country with a combined sales tax of 10 cents on the dollar or more. Sales taxes are so regressive they are paid even by those on social services who can barely afford basic goods.
Even with our community’s high sales tax dilemma, we could support a tax hike for roads if it were the only true option. No entity has been more outspoken regarding the need to widen I-25 between Monument and Castle Rock than The Gazette’s editorial board.
Problem is, new taxes aren’t the only option. State government’s budget has grown by nearly 40 percent in the past five years. As pointed out in an op-ed in the Aurora Sentinel by Araphahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler, a likely Republican contender for governor, the state budget is growing four times faster than the state’s population and more than four times wage growth.
With record revenues, Hickenlooper proposed a record-breaking $28.5 billion budget for fiscal year 2017-18. The governor and Legislature could come up with $677 million for roads and bridges by reprioritizing just 2.3 percent of the budget. By readjusting a flat 2 percent, they could budget $570 million for transportation.
The $426 million in revenue growth in this year’s budget is countered by $143 million in new Medicaid costs, $243.5 million in constitutionally mandated new K-12 education spending, reserve repayments, taxpayer rebates and mandatory transfers to transportation and building. In all, the new revenues are dwarfed by $926.1 million in new constitutional and statutory demands on the general fund.
We’re not saying a shift in priorities would be easy. We’re suggesting that strong leaders in the legislative and executive branches of government should be able to reprioritize 2-to-2.5 percent of the budget for something so important as roads, bridges and highway safety. If they can’t do that, they’ve lost any semblance of fiscal control.
Though we can’t support the tax proposal, we are intrigued by another measure vying for November’s ballot called “Fix Our Damn Roads.” The Independence Institute, a Denver-based free market think tank, wants voters to pass a law requiring the Legislature to reprioritize 2 percent of the budget to pay for $2.5 billion in bonding for bridges and roads.
“If lawmakers aren’t willing to do their jobs, then we’ll ask the voters to do it for them,” said institute president Jon Caldara.
We’d prefer legislators get busy prioritizing roads without the force of voter-imposed mandate. If they don’t, voters are likely to commandeer another slice of the budget.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2nlXmI2
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