Eagle County’s state legislators address how $1.2 billion in budget cuts will impact education, transportation, health care
CDOT, Medicaid will hurt, but new bills bring some hope for affordability
Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily archive
This legislative session, Colorado state legislators were charged with cutting $1.2 billion from a total of $19 billion in order to pass a balanced budget.
On Tuesday, Sen. Dylan Roberts and Rep. Meghan Lukens held a town hall at the Avon Public Library where they addressed the state’s budget cuts and shared the bills they supported that will soon become laws.
2025 legislative session summarized
The 2025 legislative session concluded on May 7 after 120 days. Legislators considered close to 700 bills and passed about 500, most of which were signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis. Polis vetoed 11 bills, a personal record.
The Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, caps Colorado’s revenues and expenditures and requires the state to return its excess revenue to taxpayers.
“In Colorado, we are required to pass a balanced state budget. We cannot deficit spend like they do in Washington, D.C.,” Roberts said. “The reason why we were in that situation was not because our economy is doing poorly — our state actually has one of the best economies in the country.”
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The cap is determined based on a formula built when TABOR passed in 1992 and has not been updated since. As a result, the formula does not account for elements like medical costs and Medicaid, which have increased in cost faster than the inflation rate.
“That is why we have huge issues funding transportation, funding our varying state agencies. That’s why we have one of the lowest funded education systems in the country,” Lukens said.
TABOR, which is part of the state Constitution, cannot be altered or repealed without a statewide vote.
The Legislature passed a balanced state budget by cutting funds primarily from the Colorado Department of Transportation, state Medicaid funding and education.
Transportation
The Colorado Department of Transportation saw significant cuts. Roberts said CDOT’s road maintenance fund was shielded from the worst of the cuts as the state works to maintain Colorado’s highways.
“We’re the only state in the country that has TABOR, that has the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, and our roads can reflect that,” Roberts said. “We have gone to the voters several times to either ask for a sales tax increase for roads or to take out bonds for roads, and the voters have rejected both ideas, so we’ve got to work within the confines of what we have.”
Roberts also worked on bills to keep traffic moving, including Senate Bill 69 that authorizes third-party vendors to help truckers put chains on at chain-up stations, paid for by the trucking companies. The bill will also require rental companies to tell their customers if the car they plan to rent complies with Colorado’s traction laws.
“It’s not going to prevent every closure, but it’s going to hopefully make a difference,” Roberts said.
Health care
In slimming the budget, the state Legislature cut some Medicaid funding. Medicaid funding is split between the state and the federal government.
“We were able to avoid pretty significant Medicaid cuts at the state level in our state budget, but there were some programs, some coverage, treatments that were covered by Medicaid that will no longer be covered by Medicaid because of some of the cuts that we had to make,” Roberts said. “A lot of the savings we were able to find this year were one-time funds or smaller programs that weren’t widely utilized. That won’t be available next year.”
Lukens and Roberts both worked on a bill to support rural pharmacies, which have not been receiving sufficient reimbursement rates for the medications they provide.
“This bill really ensures that we are able to access our prescription drugs in our rural communities but also ensures that those drugs remain affordable instead of having to increase those costs in order to make ends meet to keep our rural pharmacies open,” Lukens said.
Education
Despite cuts to education funding, Colorado’s public schools will receive more funding this year than last year, just not as much as initially promised.
“I am proud to say that we did not cut any money from education this year. We actually increased funding to education, and specifically increased funding to our rural schools,” Lukens said.
Lukens, a current educator herself, sponsored House Bill 1006 that removes the 10-year lease limit on land school districts own if they want to build solar panels or affordable housing, an idea that came from the Eagle County School District.
Housing affordability
“The biggest issue facing both of our districts is, of course, affordability,” Roberts said. “The challenge of continuing to be able to live and to work and retire in communities like the Vail Valley.”
Roberts spoke about two bills he sponsored in the name of affordable housing. Senate Bill 6 allows the state to take out bonds to help with the construction costs of building new for-sale housing for first-time homebuyers. House Bill 1272 reforms the state’s construction defect laws to limit the ability of homebuyers to move to litigation when they encounter issues, which was hindering the construction of affordable condominiums.
“This is a bill that we’ve been trying to get passed for several years,” Roberts said.
Big, beautiful bill will hit rural Colorado hard
Roberts said he has significant concerns about what President Donald Trump calls the “big, beautiful bill.”
“It is really hard to overstate how impactful the big, beautiful bill will be in our state if it passes,” Roberts said. “Particularly our state more than other states because of our budgetary constrictions.”
Cuts to Medicaid funding will have a higher impact in rural Colorado because there is a higher Medicaid enrollment rate than the rest of the state, and less Medicaid funding could force the closure of clinics, which would increase the stress on emergency rooms, driving up insurance rates for everyone.
Roberts said he is also “extremely concerned” about the provision in the bill that would allow the federal government to sell public lands, including 14 million acres of land in Colorado, to balance some of the tax cuts proposed in the bill.
“That would have an extreme impact on places like Eagle County,” Roberts said. “They are saying it is for housing, potentially, but it doesn’t say affordable housing, and it doesn’t require any local approval, so our county commissioners would not be able to weigh in on an auction of a piece of land if it were BLM or Forest Service.”
“I think some version of this bill will pass. The president clearly wants something to pass, and we’re following it very closely, but if we are going back for a special session, that’s not a good thing because that means cuts to important services,” Roberts said.
If the bill passes, the state Legislature may enter a special legislative session in August or September to address the fallout.
“From my understanding, the governor is interested in doing that if that bill passes,” Lukens said. “The issue with that is that the state government does not have any funds to help with the impact of this bill on Medicaid.”
