CPE: Issues

Issues
Economic Opportunity | Education | Health Care

Economic Opportunity

Colorado Payday Lending Reform Initiative
Payday lending, or deferred deposit loans, are cash advances on a borrower’s upcoming paycheck. They are advertised as short-term credit products to assist borrowers with immediate cash flow needs, but generally result in long term debt with an average APR of 353% depriving working Coloradans of more than $76 million each year in unnecessary interest and fees.

CPE and the Bell Policy Center formed a broad coalition of organizations working for meaningful reform. During the 2008 legislative session, CPE played a leading role in support of House Bill 1310 (Rep. Ferrandino; Sen. Groff), which followed the recently enacted Oregon legislation and would have established a simple, cost-efficient and effective means of regulating the payday loan industry. In February, we released with the Bell Policy Center “The Truth About Payday Loans: How Hardworking Coloradans Take the Bait and Get Caught in A Cycle of Debt,” a report that clearly demonstrates how payday loans trap borrowers in an unanticipated and costly cycle of debt they cannot easily escape.
More on payday lending reform

Colorado Earned Income Tax Credit Coalition
CPE is a part of a coalition of organizations working to make the Colorado Earned Income Tax Credit permanent, rather than a TABOR refund mechanism. Created to balance the 1999-2000 permanent reductions in the state income tax rate, the EITC was paid in 1999, 2000 and 2001, but has not been paid since, due to a lack of TABOR refunds the following years and then the enactment of Referendum C in 2005, which suspended TABOR refunds for five years. Restoring the state EITC would pump $52 million into Colorado’s economy and allow 264,000 low-income working Coloradans to keep more of their hard-earned money and spend it in their local communities.

CPE strongly supports House Bill 1362 (Rep. Kefalas; Sen. Boyd), which proposes using $46 million of unused federal money for the state EITC. The bill proposes to use Federal TANF block grant money, and some funds from the Unemployment Insurance (UI) account, to fund the state EITC for the next two years. Two triggers have been set up to ensure the integrity of the UI. After 2010, the tax credit will be funded as tax credits are usually funded: an offset to state revenue.
More on the Colorado EITC

Child Care
For the 65% of American families with two working parents, or one working parent in a single-parent household, securing child care is very difficult and often acts as an economic barrier. For low-income families, support from employers and state and federal child care subsidies is a necessity, because without them working parents are less likely to retain a job for a long period of time and may even be forced to forgo advancement opportunities in the workplace because of the amount of time they must devote to caring for their children. To address the rising cost and unavailability of quality child care, many states have been successful at expanding access to child care through various incentives. CPE has begun groundwork on identifying effective measures and developing policy recommendations to improve child care options for working Coloradans.
More on child care

Education

Higher Education Access Alliance
HEAA is a growing coalition of community-based and policy organizations led by four Colorado nonprofit organizations – Center for Policy Entrepreneurship, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, Metro Organizations for People and Padres Unidos y Jóvenes Unidos – and its members include the Bell Policy Center, Colorado Progressive Coalition and Donnell-Kay Foundation. HEAA is committed to increasing higher education opportunities for all Colorado students, regardless of immigration or economic status and is conducting extensive research to measure attitudes and opinions on this issue. In the coming months, HEAA will form a statewide network of students, parents, educators, community and business leaders, and elected officials to promote higher education access and success for all students.
More on HEAA

Concurrent Enrollment Programs
Concurrent or dual enrollment programs allow high school students to take college courses while still attending a Colorado public high school. These programs use K-12 pupil funding to pay for the courses at a local college or vocational school, and aid lower income and minority students in paying for a postsecondary education. Not only have these programs been shown to reduce high school dropout rates, by giving hope to students and infusing expectations for college, but they have also been shown to grant college access and success for underrepresented student populations. In March 2003, the Colorado State Board of Education adopted Rule 5.18 to prohibit funding for so-called “fifth-year” concurrent enrollment programs, allowing students to remain in public high schools for more than four years. Several organizations and individuals worked hard to repeal this unfair rule in the summer of 2007 and ensure that future policies do not restrict, either intentionally or unintentionally, such programs. CPE continues to advocate for the protection and statewide expansion of these effective and necessary programs.
More on concurrent/dual enrollment programs

Arts in Education
In today’s public education system, test-driven accountability has become the norm, thanks in large part to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and the culmination of fifteen years of standards-based reform. School districts in Colorado and nationwide have made significant changes in curricula to meet the growing demand for improving performance in reading and math, decreasing their focus on integrating arts into educational programs. But studies clearly demonstrate that students involved in arts programs experience significant improvements in cognitive development, academic achievement and school attendance. CPE is researching the importance of arts in education and is developing policy recommendations that would benefit Colorado students.
More on arts in education

School Lands
In 1785, Congress began granting large areas of land to newly created states for the support of public schools. When Colorado gained its statehood in 1875, Section 7 of the Colorado Enabling Act required that the land and its income “are hereby granted to the said state for the support of common schools.” And the Colorado Constitution states that, “The people of the state of Colorado recognize that the state school lands are an endowment of land assets held in a perpetual, inter-generational public trust for the support of public schools, which should not be significantly diminished.”

But for the past several years, legislators have spent up to $31 million of these annual school land trust earnings to help fund the state school finance act. This action can be interpreted as a violation of the state constitution, since the adoption of Amendment 16 in 1996 requires that any school land trust revenues should be in addition to, and not a substitute for, other education dollars. Because in recent years state legislation to end supplanting and promote the growth of the permanent fund has failed due to the short-term state fiscal impact, CPE and the Colorado Education Association have prepared a possible legal action to stop the state’s use of land trust interest and lease revenue to meet its funding obligations under Amendment 23, which was passed by voters in 2000 and requires a minimum annual rate of state funding growth.
More on school lands

A Smarter Colorado

A Smarter Colorado is a citizen initiative to retire a 28 year-old tax subsidy for the oil and gas industry in order to allow our state to make important investments in the future by 1) Creating a Colorado Promise Scholarship fund that will directly help families and students meet the rising costs of higher education and create a well-educated workforce ready to lead in the 21st century, 2) Protecting Colorado’s wildlife, mountains, water and air, 3) Providing safe roads and clean drinking water in areas impacted by oil and gas production, and 4) Investing in clean energy technology and the new energy economy.