Denver Metro Chamber President and CEO Kelly Brough joined over 100 other organizations voicing their support to reauthorize the hospital provider fee as an enterprise fund at the Capitol on Tuesday.
Two bills aimed at addressing this issue, House Bill 1420 and House Bill 1421, were introduced on Monday. The first bill would reauthorize the hospital provider fee as an enterprise fund, removing those fee dollars from being counted toward state general fund revenue; the second bill would allocate the money freed up by the change to education and transportation.
“Now is the perfect time to address this problem because we are not eliminating a taxpayer’s refund this year,” Brough told the House Appropriations Committee. “If we fail to correct the current situation, we run the risk of losing hundreds of millions of much-needed dollars for roads, bridges and education in coming years.”
For more than a year, the Chamber has advocated reenacting the hospital provider fee—a fee assessed to hospitals to expand health care access through matching federal dollars—as an enterprise fund and removing it from the general fund because those dollars are counting toward caps put in place by TABOR (the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights). We feel that counting this fee with the state’s overall revenue doesn’t accurately reflect the state’s true economic growth.
Leaving the hospital provider fee in the general fund—showing more state revenue—creates more consequences because that false economic growth then triggers funding cuts to transportation and education.
If these two bills are passed, K-12 and higher education stand to receive a combined $89.5 million. Transportation will receive about $700 million in funding by 2020.
Both bills passed out of the committee on Tuesday and will next be heard on the House floor today.
We feel now is the right time to address this issues, as no TABOR refunds will be at stake. Click here to read Brough’s full testimony. To learn more or get involved, click here.
Tax Haven Bill Dies
The Chamber and its affiliate Colorado Competitive Council testified on Monday in opposition to House Bill 1275 at the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee. The committee ultimately voted against moving the bill forward.
The bill would have required Colorado companies to pay state taxes for any foreign affiliates that are incorporated in tax haven jurisdictions.
The Chamber is pleased to see this bill die because of the impact it could have on companies currently headquartered here or considering relocating to Colorado. Chamber Executive Vice President and Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation CEO Tom Clark previously testified against the bill, noting that when the state had a similar policy in the 1980s, it was ineffective in capturing those taxes and deterred major companies from relocating to Colorado.
The Chamber is taking positions on bills weekly during the legislative session. Click here to see all the bills the Chamber has taken positions on this session.