the denver post

By Wade Buchanan

Backpackers have a saying: Leave it better than you found it.

For generations, Coloradans have done exactly that. Ranchers and farmers, rural residents and city-dwellers, businesses large and small, they all dreamed big and invested in themselves and their children's future – in our future.

They built schools, they built colleges, they built hospitals, they built roads through the mountains, they built dams, they irrigated fields, they built parks, they built cities.

They built a great state.

(Online edition headline: College isn't what it used to be, but it's critical)

By Frank Waterous

Recently, the value of a college education has come into question. Robert J. Samuelson of The Washington Post, for one, said the "college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness."

In these tough economic times, with unemployment high and college graduates facing a bleak job market, the question might seem worthy of debate. But that's because the question misses the mark on two crucial points:

On Wednesday, February 29th, two enterprise zone bills (House Bills 1241 and 1251) will come before the House Finance Committee for action.

By Aldo Svaldi
The Denver Post

The new year brings with it a decent bump in pay for about 74,000 Colorado workers earning the minimum wage.

Colorado's minimum wage increases 3.8 percent, or 28 cents, to $7.64 an hour effective today. That's the biggest increase since the state linked its minimum wage to inflation back in 2006.

For an employee making that wage full-time, the increase translates into an extra $582 a year.

By Allison Sherry
The Denver Post

WASHINGTON – An imminent battle to extend tax cuts to more than 161 million Americans next year – including 2.5 million in Colorado – could get ugly as Republicans and Democrats spend the weeks before a Christmas recess wrangling about how to pay for them.

This year, the median household, which earns $50,000 annually, saw roughly $1,000 back in its paychecks after President Barack Obama and Congress agreed to shave 2 percentage points off of what workers normally pay into the Social Security trust fund.

If Colorado were to implement a statewide paid-sick-leave law, it could cost the state 14,000 jobs and $1.93 billion in reduced economic output over four years, according to a study by the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

No such statewide proposal exists. However, a municipal paid-sick-leave ordinance will appear on the Denver ballot in November.

An NFIB official said the federation did not calculate projected impacts of the Denver ordinance but chose to estimate statewide impacts in the event that a paid-sick-leave law is proposed for Colorado.

With increasing attention being focused on Colorado's fiscal condition and three anti-government ballot measures, two recent articles and an editorial in The Denver Post caught our eye, and we wanted to share them with you.

Reporter Tim Hoover provided a solid, balanced overview of Amendment 61, which would greatly restrict borrowing by state and local governments. The Post followed up with an editorial against the amendment.