u/RooseveltsRevenge

After transportation funding took the brunt of last year’s state budget cuts, the Colorado Contractors Association came up with a plan to stop it from happening again.
Their proposal, a constitutional amendment known as Initiative 175, would enshrine road funding in the state constitution, giving it legal protections from funding cuts that are only provided to one other public service: K-12 education.
The state’s budget woes have only grown in the meantime, leading lawmakers to slash spending on healthcare, childcare, affordable housing, state worker pay and higher education as they try to address recurring shortfalls of over $1 billion a year. Legislators even scaled back a top bipartisan priority at the statehouse: Colorado’s new K-12 funding formula, which aimed to pump tens of millions of additional dollars into schools each year.

The measure’s backers have rejected calls to pull it from the ballot, dismissing cries from a wide range of interest groups that it will lead to $700 million in additional cuts to other services.
Now, with just days left in the legislative session, top state lawmakers are rushing to pass a bill to neutralize the ballot measure. If the ballot measure passes, House Bill 1430would offset the spending required by Initiative 175 by temporarily cutting Colorado’s main funding source for roads, the state gas tax, as well as other transportation fees. That would effectively limit how much money the state has to spend on roads, sparing other programs from funding cuts.

By moving this bill now, legislators are telling Coloradans their votes don’t matter,” Tony Milo, president and CEO of the Colorado Contractors Association, said in a statement.
But — after years of playing defense against conservative ballot measuresthat have exacerbated the state’s budget crisis — statehouse Democrats say they’ve lost patience with groups that use the initiative process as leverage to get what they want from the Capitol. The contractors association and several other top supporters of Restore Our Roads are construction companies that would benefit financially from the measure’s passage.
“There is an immense frustration that we are experiencing when special interests legislate at the ballot for funding their particular special interest,” Joint Budget Committee Chair Emily Sirota told The Colorado Sun.
“When one deep-pocketed special interest is able to present a very narrow question to the voters like that, it’s really misleading because you’re not being asked the rest of the question,” added Rep. Sirota, a Denver Democrat. “‘Would you prefer to fund roads instead of your hospitals and schools and other services that your community relies upon?’”

Nonpartisan state fiscal analysts say the sales tax changes would blow a $264 million hole in next year’s general fund budget, which starts July 1, plus $539 million the year after that.
And, because the measure would amend the state constitution, lawmakers wouldn’t be able to make future cuts to road spending without voter approval. Budget writers in both parties say that will require immediate and ongoing cuts to healthcare and education.

For decades, Colorado has primarily funded road construction through the 22-cent state gas tax, which is losing value to inflation and the rise in electric vehicles. The state also charges a number of fees on drivers, including vehicle registrations and an additional surcharge on gasoline.

Lawmakers have also passed measures over the years to devote general fund dollars to transportation, most recently in 2021 with the passage of Senate Bill 260. But when the budget gets tight like it is now, transportation funds are often among the first to wind up on the chopping block.
In the wake of the Great Recession, lawmakers eliminated transportation spending from the general fund for six years before restoring some funding. Last year, the legislature cut more than $100 million from the 2021 transportation funding package to help close a $1 billion budget gap.

But even critics of the ballot measure agree that Colorado roads are poorly funded. The Colorado Department of Transportation says the state still needs to spend as much as $350 million a year more to keep up with maintenance and construction needs, according to a 2022 report. The American Society of Civil Engineers give Colorado’s roads a D+ on their annual infrastructure report card.

In recent weeks, the ballot fight spilled out into public view, when a coalition of healthcare organizations, education groups and liberal advocates sent a letter warning of the damage it would do to public services.
“Initiative 175 decimates Medicaid, K-12 and education funding by design,” wrote the group, called Keep Kids First. “Colorado absolutely needs thoughtful solutions to address transportation challenges. However, steep cuts to health care, education, and other essential services are not the answer.”
Restore Our Roads replied with a letter of its own dismissing the concerns as fearmongering, and said budget cuts weren’t their problem.
“Nothing in Initiative 175 cuts a single dollar from healthcare or classrooms,” the Restore Our Roads campaign wrote back. “Decisions about how to prioritize funding for each and every state program rests with elected officials and are not attributable to this proposed measure.”

Wasn’t going to post the follow up but #55’s acting in this is actually pretty solid. His “they skate like shit” had me howling.

With multiple apartment complexes still offering one to three months of free rent on new leases, concessions hit a record of $180 in savings per month in the first quarter. That’s equivalent to skipping rent for four to five weeks a year and effectively paying about $1,580 a month. Average rents also dropped 3.4% from a year ago to $1,758, and were barely up $4 since December.

And then there was this:

“Our current average of $1,758, this is the same exact dollar-for-dollar rent that we had in” first quarter 2022, said Scott Rathbun, with Apartment Insights and author of the quarterly report. “So basically, rents today are at the same level they were … four years ago.”

The plunge is credited to the rental market trying to absorb tens of thousands of new apartments that have been built in the past five years. That’s pushed prices for some studios and one-bedrooms below 60%, 70% and 80% of area median incomes that some affordable-housing ordinances require. The average rent for a one-bedroom was $1,551, before concessions, according to AAMD data.

Today’s $1,758 price comes after more than 70,000 new apartments were built in five years, flooding the rental market with modern amenities and brand new spaces. That increased the number of apartment rentals by 18% to 452,591 apartments today.

Normally, the Denver market absorbs 10,000 new rentals a year. But in 2024, nearly 20,000 new apartments came online. Another 15,330 came online last year. Landlords began offering incentives and discounts to attract new tenants. That pushed Denver’s concessions to be the highest in the nation, according to Zillow.

At the end of last year, Denver ranked third in the nation for the largest decline in effective rents, falling 7.3%.

And there are another 46,000 apartment units proposed or under construction in metro Denver. But about 20,000 of the proposed units are in limbo because they “just haven’t been economically feasible to move forward and break ground for four years,” Rathbun said.

Cornerstone Apartment Services, which manages about 8,000 units mostly in downtown Denver, also shared its figures. Average rents are down 4.2% from a year ago to $1,384, said Jim Lorenzen, the company’s president.

What’s more telling though, he said, is how much a new tenant is paying compared with the person who just moved out. That’s down 6.6% to $1,268. Comparably, AAMD’s average asking rent for Denver County was down 2.9% in the past year.