The Voice of Liberty

Federal Funds Transparency Act Signed Into Law

Last week, the Governor signed House Bill 1009, sponsored by Senator Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, and Representative Cheri Gerou, R-Evergreen, into law. The measure will increase transparency by requiring state agencies to submit a report on how they spend federal grant money.

“This bill will finally give us an idea of how much federal money the state actually spends, and ensure that state agencies are spending the money prudently,” said Lambert. “We will now know the total amount of money each agency receives and the percentage that goes towards administrative expenses.”

Currently agencies are only required to report how much federal money they receive but, they do not have to provide information on how the money is spent. The bill also requires state agencies to create a contingency plan of what they would do if they were to lose 5%-25% of their federal funding.

It is going to happen and Sen. Lambert's bill will help Colorado be more prepared for it.

Republican House Leadership Out of Step

This year’s Colorado Republican resolutions were voted on Saturday by over 3,000 delegates and the results show strong support for conservative, liberty-oriented values.

Committee Chair Sen. Kevin Grantham and committee members took the resolutions initially  introduced at precinct caucuses, combined and refined them into 61 final resolutions. I talked to Sen. Grantham on Friday: he said the process was involved and sometimes contentious but ultimately successful.

This week the Colorado Supreme Court adopted a new set of State House and State Senate maps that were gerrymandered by the Democrats to significantly alter existing districts.

Two weeks ago Action 22's Monday Morning Update featured an editorial written by Las Animas School District RE-1 Superintendent Jerry Nickell. Mr. Nickell bemoaned the sorry state of education funding in Colorado, sure to get much worse with the November 2011 defeat of Proposition 103. This ballot proposition would have raised Colorado's state income tax rate to 5% (up from 4.63) and the state sales tax to 3% (up from 2.9) for a five year period. Despite being outspent by the teachers' unions (20:1) and claims that "it's for the children" the measure was resoundingly defeated 65% to 35%.

The government's step-by-step takeover of the American healthcare system is underway.  On November 18th, the Health & Human Services department conducted a meeting to discuss this phase of the takeover: According to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, beginning in 2014 all plans in the small group and individual markets will be required to cover all items and services contained in the Essential Health Benefits Package (EHBP), as determined by the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).