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The State of Opportunity
The Bell Policy Center believes Colorado should be a state of opportunity — a place where all people can build better lives for themselves and their families.
Opportunity motivates effort. It unleashes the talents of individuals, feeds a dynamic economy, and stimulates creativity and invention.
Turning this vision into reality is the mission of the Bell Policy Center.
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Bell judges the 2008 legislative session an overall success
In the most recent edition of Opportunity News, the Bell gives a comprehensive overview of legislative achievements and disappointments in this past session. "While this session lacked a signature, highly visible initiative, the actions taken represent real progress toward opening doors of opportunity for more Coloradans," said Wade Buchanan, president of the Bell Policy Center.
Read the entire Opportunity News here
Read our report: The Truth About Payday Loans
A report from the Bell and the Center for Policy Entrepeneurship that uses data from the Colorado Attorney General's office to show that payday loans trap hard working Coloradans in a long-term cycle of debt.
With an average APR of over 350%, state data shows that these loans are harmful products that do not help people, but rather ensnare them in a cycle of debt.
Learn about payday lending reform bill, HB-1310
A must read!
Looking Forward
Colorado's fiscal prospects after Ref C
“We want this report to serve as a resource to Coloradans as they discuss where to go from here. It compiles a reliable set of projections about future fiscal conditions and provides the context in which future decisions need to be made.” — Wade Buchanan, president, The Bell Policy Center
Looking Forward is written by a team of eight analysts from the Bell Policy Center, Colorado Children’s Campaign and Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute. They focused on the six-year study period of FY 2007-08 through FY 2012-13 — the last three years of the Referendum C time-out and the first three years of the new Ref C revenue cap.Looking Forward projects revenues and expenditures for the five largest state agencies, assuming a continuation of 2007 levels of service. It analyzes the effects of TABOR, the Arveschoug-Bird 6 percent spending formula and the varying forces that drive spending, agency by agency. It also looks at the future needs of the state’s capital budgets, including transportation and capital construction.
“The bottom line is that 2007 is probably as good as it’s going to get for state services. Services aren’t back to the levels they were at before the recession, and yet the challenge now is to prevent falling behind again.” — Wade Buchanan, The Bell Policy Center
“What we need now is a serious, informed, statewide discussion about the kind of state we want our children to grow up in. If we aspire to higher goals for our schools, colleges and universities, health care, transportation systems and more, then we need to start a conversation in Colorado about how we get there.” — Megan Ferland, president, Colorado Children’s Campaign.
Under TABOR, decisions affecting state revenues in Colorado are made by the state’s 2.5 million registered voters rather than the 100 state legislators.
“We can’t just take this information up to the Capitol and think we’ve done our job. This is something we need to take to Coloradans throughout the state. This is a conversation we all need to participate in.” — Maureen Farrell, executive director, Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute.
Visit the Looking Forward homepage
Link to Health Blog • Read the press release
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The Health Blog is tracking the work of the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform and provides a public forum to debate aspects of health care reform.
Come join the blog and help contribute to the open discussion about meaningful health care policy in Colorado.
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July 16, 2008
Report: Flexible policies would benefit
low-wage workers and employers
Many families find themselves caught between competing demands from work and home, and outdated and inequitable public and private policies contribute to these conflicts, says a report from the Mobility Agenda, a think tank that focuses on improving job conditions and strengthening the labor market.
The policies and resulting practices disproportionably affect low-wage workers, according to the report, Work-Life Policies for the Twenty-First Century Economy.
Even after a generation of dramatic changes in the work force, notably a sharp increase in the number of working mothers, polices have seen little change. Nearly half of all American employees report conflicts between jobs and other personal responsibilities, and a majority of workers are not covered by policies that allow for a more rewarding work-life balance, such as paid sick days, family and medical leave or flexibility in the workplace.
Low-wage workers are among the hardest hit – only 39 percent of low-wage jobs offer any sick days for personal illness, compared to 79 percent of mid- and higher-wage occupations. In addition, 38 percent of the 44 million low-wage workers toil in jobs with limited flexibility, work longer hours and cannot afford to take time off when they are ill.
The Mobility Agenda recommends a comprehensive set of work-life policies, including paid sick days, paid family and medical leave, workplace flexibility and scheduling predictability. And such policies don’t just help families – they help single people who need flexibility in dealing with family and other obligations.
Researchers assert that flexibility in workplace policies results in higher worker satisfaction, lower turnover and savings for employers. .......
July 10, 2008
Spending on mandatory programs
leaves little for kids, report shows
Kids' Share 2008 takes a comprehensive look at trends in federal spending for children's programs. Researchers at the Urban Institute tracked federal spending on children from 1960 through 2007 (with projections through 2018) and charted the changes between spending on children and spending on other priorities.
The report shows that the amount of federal spending on children's programs is declining and will likely continue to decline unless children's programs gain greater importance relative to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
According to the Urban Institute, budgets for children's programs saw almost no growth, while Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security costs escalated and crowded out spending on kids. Between 1960 and 2007, federal spending on children rose from 1.9 to 2.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). For the non-child portions of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, spending nearly quadrupled, rising from 2.0 to 7.9 percent of GDP.
Growth in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs is mandatory and automatic. In contrast, increases in many children's programs are neither automatic nor mandatory, and spending for children's programs is becoming increasingly discretionary.
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July 2, 2008
Amendment 46 becomes a hotly debated issue
Melissa Hart, from the Equal Opportunity Campaign and law professor from CU Boulder, and Jessica Peck Corry, policy analyst from the Independence Institute and proponent of the Amendment 46, recently debated Amendment 46 on DemocracyNow.
Watch the video here
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Archive of Highlights
2008 • 2007
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