Colorado’s lawmakers need to consider the economic concerns of Latinos this special session
- Voces Unidas de las Montañas
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Today is the first day of the legislature’s special session and there’s a lot at stake.
Voces Unidas is monitoring to make sure lawmakers keep the needs of rural Latinos in mind.
Lawmakers have the big task of balancing the state budget now that the so-called Big Beautiful Bill has created a roughly $750 million gap. The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” also created the need for lawmakers to address healthcare and food assistance programs.
The bill created the gap because Colorado’s tax code follows federal tax code, meaning that federal tax cuts also impact how much tax revenue Colorado will collect in state taxes. On top of that, the state will also have to spend more money to implement some of the federal components of the bill, such as new work requirements for recipients of food assistance programs. And if Colorado wants to keep so many Coloradans from losing health coverage or food assistance, it may need to pay for more of it out of the smaller state budget.
We know Latinos, especially rural areas of Colorado, will be the most affected by the federal law, so Colorado lawmakers need to make sure they don’t add to those impacts.
Some of the bills initially introduced Thursday would look to close tax loopholes to allow the state to collect more revenue, but lawmakers have introduced fewer proposals to make cuts. It seems possible that those decisions will be left up to the Governor’s office to decide.
State leaders need to keep the economic burden already placed on working families in Colorado, so that they are careful not to do anything to make it worse.
Data we published yesterday from this year’s Colorado Latino Policy Agenda poll shows that Latinos in Colorado already rank economic issues as their top concern.
Latinos need policymakers to step up, listen to communities, and come up with creative solutions that don’t just leave Latino families and other communities of color to once again be the most severely impacted by budget and service cuts.
