New Data: Colorado continues to fall behind in key investment areas

The Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute (COFPI) released new data today updating our 2007 report, Aiming for the Middle: Benchmarks for Colorado's Future. The new numbers show that Colorado continues to fall behind other states in key investment areas such as education, health care, higher education, and transportation. Additionally, the new numbers do not yet reflect the impact of the recession, and raise concerns about Colorado's ability to recover with our current fiscal system.

"The most startling thing about this data is that it doesn’t reflect the effect of the recession," said COFPI Senior Fiscal Analyst Carol Hedges. "This data is from when the state’s economy was in good shape, so we know it only goes downhill from there."

"Colorado has a systemic revenue problem, plain and simple," Hedges went on to say. "The state simply doesn’t have the revenue needed to support the public services that Coloradans rely on, knowingly or not, every single day, and that’s a threat to our collective future and to our economy."