COVID-19 March 10, 2021 9:10:41 pm

Polis, legislative leaders unveil $700M second stimulus

By Dan Mika

DENVER — Just minutes after the U.S. House sent a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package to President Joe Biden’s deak, Gov. Jared Polis and leaders in the General Assembly are aiming to issue a second state-funded stimulus.

The approximately $700 million in funds are carried forward from the last fiscal year after the state saw a better revenue forecast than first expected when states and cities across the countries feared the pandemic would cause long-lasting sales tax revenue drops.

In a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Polis described the windfall funds as an opportunity to position Colorado’s economy for rapid recovery as vaccinations increase and, if all goes well, the general public can start getting shots by late April.

“Thankfully, those worst-case scenarios didn’t come to pass, and so we have one-time carry-forward funds with the opportunity to jumpstart Colorado’s recovery, putting Coloradans to work today to build a lasting legacy for our future.”

While a bill to enact the stimulus has yet to be introduced, the funds have been proposed to be broken down in the following manner:

$100 million to $128 million in small-business funding, including added funds to small-business and startup loan programs, additional dollars to cultural organizations and forgiving portions of sales taxes that bars and restaurants would normally have to remit to the state. That portion also earmarks $10 million to issue a 10% credit against the costs of hosting a meeting or event at a hotel through the rest of the year.

Between $345 million and $445 million on infrastructure programs, including $170 million for major roadway improvements along tourism-heavy corridors, $30 million for capital projects on local Main Streets, $60 million to $80 million for housing, $50 million to $75 million for middle and last-mile broadband internet projects and $30 million to $40 million for supporting clean-energy projects.

$47 million to $66 million for health and education-related matters, including between $5 million to $10 million to fund summer school programs for students who fell behind academically during remote schooling, $5 million to $10 million for filling empty commercial space with child-care businesses and between $10 million and $15 million to rent hotel and motel rooms for those experiencing homelessness.

$70 million to $131 million on rural improvements, with $20 million to $35 million in grants for expanding and diversifying the agricultural supply chain and $10 million to $25 million earmarked for watershed grants designed to help reduce the extremity of wildfires.

-$34.4 million to $55.4 million for workforce issues, including $15 million to $25 million for workforce center grants and $10 million to $15 million for the Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Initiative that funds residents who are returning to higher education after not getting a degree during their first stint in college.

The stimulus launch included Republican leaders, who showed some support for the program but cautioned that they will push back against spending it they deem it to not be in the interest of supporting economic recovery, opening schools to in-person learning or repairing public infrastructure.

“You have my word, we will come together and we will support those bills in a bipartisan way,” House Minority Leader Hugh McKean (R-Loveland) said to Speaker Alec Garnett (D-Denver). “…And when there are things that are outside that rubric that we have, then we will heartily encourage those dollars to go to families that when they sit down at the kitchen table and say we need a dollar raise so we can keep paying the bills, we’ve done everything we can to help.”

The new package comes months after Polis recalled legislators last fall to pass an earlier stimulus, with about $57 million earmarked for small business grants. Those funds were required to be issued by late February at the latest.