Earned Income Tax Credit offers an important boost to working families

From our friends at the Piton Foundation, some excellent tips about filing your tax return. Check our website for research on why the Earned Income Tax Credit is so important.

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Colorado news roundup: Online retailers shouldn't get a competitive advantage

Remember the debate last year over Amazon.com firing its Colorado-based affiliates? The company cited a new state law requiring it to notify customers of their sales tax liability associated with purchases, although that had no connection to the affiliates. Read background on our website, and for the latest developments check three opinion pieces in today's Colorado news roundup.

Colorado news roundup: Health reform status quo amounted to people-killing profits

Check it out, along with links to all the day's public-policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Colorado news roundup: Senate committee rejects voter proof-of-citizenship bill

The bill would have made it harder for homeless people, the elderly and low-income people to participate in elections. Read about it along with links to all the day's public-policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Colorado school breakfast program is under attack, children are at risk of hunger

From our friends at Hunger Free Colorado:

As you may have read in the newspaper or seen on the news, nearly 60,000 children in Colorado are at risk of losing access to nutritious school breakfasts.


Details here.

Colorado news roundup: Bill aims to help Coloradans avoid foreclosure

It's another reminder the effects of the Great Recession continue, even though experts say the economy is growing again, and people need continued help to get back on their feet. Read about it along with links to all the day's public-policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Colorado news roundup: HUD awards $18.6 million to Colorado homeless programs

It's a relief to report some good news. Read about it along with links to all the day's public policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Experts agree, Colorado is 'Lean Below the Mean'

Coloradans enjoy living in one of the thinnest states in the country when it comes to waistlines.  However, that lean mentality is more troubling when it comes to our state budget's bottom line.  That concern is creating an important dialogue about revenue in 2011.

Recently the Denver Post assembled a bipartisan panel of former lawmakers, and asked them to come up with a plan to address the state's $1 billion shortfall.  You can read the full report, but the abridged version involves "third rail" options, and topping the list is new taxes.  Colorado's revenue problem was also the theme at the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute's Budget Works conference last week.

Whether it's education, Medicaid, or just making sure we have safe roads to drive on, Colorado ranks well bellow the average when it comes to state spending (hence Lean Below the Mean).  The Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute put together a comprehensive, yet approachable, look at our state's spending, and how it relates to others.  As you'll see in the report, Colorado is already about as lean as it gets in terms of state spending.

As another huge budget hole looms in 2011, it's important to start thinking about how long we can keep cutting our way to balanced budgets, and what Colorado looks like after we're finished.

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Colorado news roundup: One way to control health care costs

Our friend Gretchen Hammer at the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved has a commentary on the Health Policy Solutions website breaking down some of the nation's health care problems and solutions. Check it out, along with links to all the day's public-policy news, at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Colorado news roundup: New governor, former lawmakers weigh ideas for maintaining vital services

Check it out, along with links to all the day's public-policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

How health reform improves access to primary care

Much of the attention on national health reform focuses on regulation of insurance companies and the 2014 requirement to buy health coverage. But the Affordable Care Act will also make primary care far more accessible by measures such as training new providers, ensuring preventive care is covered and bolstering community health centers, The Commonwealth Fund notes in an issue brief released last week. Among the report’s findings:

• Fifty million Medicare beneficiaries in 2011 will have free access to currently covered preventive services, such as high-blood-pressure screening, alcohol misuse counseling, and colon cancer screening.
  
• The Affordable Care Act and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the so-called stimulus package) will together support the training of more than 16,000 new primary care providers over the next five years.
  
• The capacity of community health centers will double, serving 15 million to 20 million more people by 2015, to help meet the demand of the newly insured.

Colorado news roundup: College financial aid slashed for 2012, but it could have been worse

Read about it along with links to all the day's public-policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Colorado news roundup: State lawmakers might restrict agriculture land tax break

Read about it, along with links to all the day's public-policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

An innovative, back-to-basics way of helping the poor: Give them money

Hold onto your bootstraps, folks, because this one could come as a surprise. One of the most effective ways to help the poor is to give them money. At least that's the assertion in a New York Times commentary posted this week. The author, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tina Rosenberg, plans to respond to reader comments on Saturday, so it might be worth checking back then.

Rosenberg details the success in Brazil of a "conditional cash transfer" program. Not only has the program helped people who are poor now, it looks to be an effective way of breaking the generational cycle of poverty.

"Here are programs that help the people who most need help, and do so with very little waste, corruption or political interference," she writes.

That's quite a contrast to the prevailing view of helping the poor in the United States. Adopting such a program here would be complicated, to say the least, but still it's interesting to consider success stories from elsewhere in the world.

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Colorado news roundup: Baby boomers' retirement highlights value of Social Security

An editorial in The Denver Post says Congress needs to reform Social Security. The program isn't about to go bankrupt, as some have suggested, but it's definitely worth thinking about how to preserve and strengthen one of our nation's most effective anti-poverty programs. Read the Post's view, along with links to all the day's public-policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Colorado news roundup: Hick's pick for budget job has deep knowledge of fiscal issues

We expecting to be working closely with this guy. Check out the details, along with links to all the day's public-policy news at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Colorado news roundup: State approves up to 9.5 percent tuition increase at CU

Check out the details, along with links to all the day's public-policy news, at the weekday Colorado news roundup.

Today, live: Budget Works 2011

Join us here all day for moment-by-moment updates from Budget Works 2011. During the afternoon, the group will break into three separate sessions, which you can join by clicking the links at the bottom.

1:30 to 2:45 p.m. Breakout Group 1: Messaging, framing and the mind of Colorado Leaders
1:30 to 2:45 p.m. Breakout Group 2: Creative communication tactics
3 to 4:15 p.m. Breakout Group 3: Talking tax ... at the door! Organizing in community on fiscal issues


Conference materials

• Agenda
• Hotel map
• Web resources
• The Colorado Tax Primer
• The Colorado Budget Primer
• Tax expenditures pie chart
• Current Funding and Funding Need as Reported by the State's Largest Budget Programs, from the 2009 Long-Term Fiscal Stability Commission
• Presentation: The big budget squeeze: Why Colorado does not have the resources to provide the services we expect
• Presentation: Colorado's economic landscape and the state budget outlook
• Participant evaluation