Poverty

House Bill 12-1138

Testimony to the House State, Veterans, & Military Affairs Committee
Lizzy Stephan, Colorado College Fellow
February 15, 2012

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Lizzy Stephan, and I am a fellow at The Bell Policy Center. The Bell Policy Center is a non-partisan, non-profit research and policy organization dedicated to expanding opportunity for all Coloradoans.

This report by the Bell Policy Center finds that, even before the current economic downturn, our state's poor and low-income working families were struggling and falling behind.

In 2004, the Bell Policy Center produced Opportunity Lost, When Hard Work Isn't Enough for Colorado's Families, a review of economic indicators and a status report on the state's poor and low-income working families.

In an update to that report, the Bell finds that working poor and low-income families now fare worse on many of the same indicators examined in our 2004 report.

Testimony to the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee

My name is Rich Jones and I am director of policy and research for the Bell Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank and advocacy organization. I am speaking today in support of HB09-1064, to create the Economic Opportunity Poverty Reduction Task Force to study poverty issues and develop a comprehensive plan to expand economic opportunities in Colorado.

Emailed to supporters June 8, 2009

Behind the headlines
New reports offer insight
on achievement gap debate

By Frank Waterous
Senior Policy Analyst
waterous@thebell.org

With "Race to the Top" federal funding, the state's legislative interim committee on Public School Finance and other education reform efforts in the headlines, we thought that an update on new research related to one of the key topics in education opportunity might be in order.

Provides an overview of the EITC in Colorado, compares Colorado's EITC with the federal tax credit and shows the number of EITC recipients in Colorado by region.

"A close look at the five proposals now being evaluated by the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform takes a big investment of time. I thought it would be helpful for people to be able to compare key elements in each plan at a glance. This new version contains more details about all five proposals." ??? Robin Baker, senior policy analyst

"A close look at the five proposals now being evaluated by the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform takes a big investment of time. I thought it would be helpful for people to be able to compare key elements in each plan at a glance." ??? Robin Baker, senior policy analyst

Colorado fifth in the nation in drop of local funding for K-12 schools; Colorado Public Radio wants listeners to share their experiences with education; Colorado children of undocumented immigrants can pay in-state tuition for college; College access worse for the working poor than for unemployed poor; Bell Policy Center debuts in the blogosphere with Health Blog; Poverty rising to the top of state political agendas; Is the American Dream dead, or did it move to France?

For six years Colorado has not issued an earned income tax credit, or EITC, to those who meet the federal threshold for the credit. The state ties its EITC to a TABOR revenue surplus, so when times are tough for the state, working families also feel the squeeze. Now that the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights is on hold and Referendum C is in play, tax credits are not being given because doing so would reduce the revenue base on which future budgets will be derived.

The self-sufficiency standard is a more realistic measurement of what it takes to make ends meet in communities throughout Colorado. It gives policy makers and the public solid, up-to-date information to make more effective decisions.