Hey Governor Polis:

Try Cutting Spending Instead of Picking Pockets

Colorado families are still reeling from the highest inflation in forty years, skyrocketing property taxes, and insurance premiums that doubled in many counties. Yet the moment the state discovers a budget hole, Democrat leaders reach for the same tired playbook: raise taxes or raid someone else’s savings. This time, Governor Jared Polis and his allies in the legislature are eyeing the Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA) as the next piggy bank to smash open. Enough is enough.

The Latest Heist: Raiding PERA to Plug Budget Gaps

The Democrats floated a plan to divert $500 million to $1 billion from PERA’s automatic contribution increases, money that teachers, firefighters, and state workers were promised would shore up the pension fund’s long-term health. Polis has not outright rejected the idea and has publicly mused about “reforming” the 2018 PERA fix (SB 18-200) that finally put the system on a path to full funding by 2048. Translation: take money that current workers paid into under a legal contract and spend it on new government programs instead.

PERA’s own actuaries warn that any diversion would push the unfunded liability back above $50 billion and raise the risk of eventual insolvency. Yet Polis and Senate President Steve Fenberg call it “flexibility.” Colorado taxpayers call it theft.

Families Cut Back, Government Doubles Down

When a Colorado household faces higher grocery bills and a 42% jump in property taxes since 2020 (Colorado Futures Center, 2025), the adults in the room do simple math: cancel the streaming services, eat out less, postpone the vacation. When Governor Polis faces the same crunch, it hires more bureaucrats and dreams up new ways to extract cash from citizens.

State general-fund spending has ballooned from $11.5 billion in FY 2018–19 (the year Polis took office) to a proposed $44.8 billion in FY 2025–26, a 290% increase in nominal dollars while population grew only 9 percent (Colorado Legislative Council Staff, October 2025). Even after adjusting for inflation and population, per-capita spending is up more than 60%. That is not “living within our means.” That is living beyond our children’s means.

“Revenue is down” only because TABOR refunds kicked in when  Coloradans overpaid during the post-COVID boom. Instead of returning every penny as the constitution demands, Polis fought tooth-and-nail to keep surplus funds through Prop HH (defeated 2023), then again through LL and MM measures he and his cronies sold to the voters in November 2025 and is now trying again with new “fees” and accounting tricks.

Theft by Another Name

Governments love euphemisms. They never “take your money.” They “enhance revenue streams,” “close tax loopholes,” or “reallocate resources.” Let us speak plainly: when the state seizes money you earned, money you were forced to hand over under threat of fines or jail, that is theft dressed in a suit.

PERA contributions are a textbook example. Public employees accepted lower take-home pay in exchange for a secure pension. The state matched those contributions under a contractual obligation. Now Polis wants to break that contract and spend the money on pet projects. If a private CEO pulled the same stunt with his employees’ 401(k), he would be in federal prison.

A Radical Idea: Shrink Government Instead

Colorado is not poor. We are the eighth-richest state by median household income and have enjoyed among the fastest economic growth rates in the nation for a decade (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2025). The problem is not lack of money. The problem is lack of discipline.

Here are a few modest places to start cutting instead of stealing:

• Terminate the OmniSalud program and every other state-funded health-care benefit for non-citizens. In FY 2024–25 alone, Colorado taxpayers spent over $300 million to provide full Medicaid-style coverage to undocumented adults and $120 million more on emergency and prenatal care for non-citizens  (Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing, 2025). That is money taken from Colorado citizens to subsidize health insurance for people who broke federal law to get here, while 187,000 legal Colorado residents remain uninsured.

• Eliminate the 1,400 positions added to state government since 2019 that even the governor’s own budget office cannot tie to core services (OSPB Staffing Report, 2025).

• End corporate welfare handouts like the $200 million “economic development” slush fund that mostly benefits connected developers.

• Repeal the avalanche of new regulatory boards and licensing requirements that added $1.2 billion in compliance costs to small businesses last session alone (Common Sense Institute, 2025).

• Sell the state airplane and stop flying bureaucrats first-class while lecturing the rest of us about carbon footprints.

The Real Solution Coloradans Want

Polls show 68% of voters want government to live within its means before any new taxes or fund sweeps are considered (Magellan Strategies, October 2025). They are tired of being treated as an ATM for politicians’ ambitions.

Governor Polis ran as a “different kind of Democrat” who understood markets and fiscal restraint. It is time he remembers that campaign promise. Leave PERA alone. Return the TABOR refunds. Cut the bloat, cronyism, and duplicative programs. Do what every Colorado family has to do when money gets tight: spend less.

Because the money in PERA, the money in our paychecks, and the money triggered for TABOR refunds is not yours, Governor. It is ours. Stop stealing it.

Michael J Badagliacco, “MJB”

Michael is a father of five, grandfather of three, United States Air Force veteran, international recording artist, and Editor-in-Chief of the Colorado DOGE Report. He is passionate about the United States of America and the founders’ genius in crafting the Constitution.