Comment on Bad economies in states to worsen: governors

Lori Jenkins is running as bare bones as she can at the Kindred Kids Child Advocacy Center in Cañon City. The center, which supports children who survive abuse and neglect, has three employees — the lowest number allowed under its professional certification. Jenkins, the center’s executive director, scrapped plans for a satellite office in Salida, and said no to providing educational presentations about abuse to elementary school students. There’s just no money for it. Child advocacy centers across Colorado are scrambling to stay afloat as a much-relied-on federal funding pool dries up at an alarming pace.

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With the Denver Broncos playing well this season, the grimmest show in Colorado can be found in a small room near the state Capitol. That is where the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee has been tasked with cutting hundreds of millions of dollars — even as much as $1 billion — from the state’s $16 billion general fund budget.

Federal aviation officials won’t fund any portion of the project to expand the overloaded Peña Boulevard that leads to Denver International Airport. Colorado Department of Transportation officials also are steering clear. And DIA chief executive Phil Washington, who has guided the airport’s growth to be one of the busiest in the world, faces rising pressure as harried drivers rushing to catch flights frequently back up on the highway, which runs 11 miles from Interstate 70 to the DIA passenger terminal. A $2.1 billion overhaul inside DIA is boosting its capacity to handle record numbers of passengers, projected to reach 82 million this year, up from 69 million in 2019, and 120 million by 2045. But the average drive time to navigate Peña Boulevard, once eight minutes, has tripled to 24 minutes and often exceeds half an hour. “Peña Boulevard is a vital cog in what we are doing here,” Washington said, weighing options in a recent interview.

A new insurance company is forming in Colorado, but it won’t be advertised on television by Patrick Mahomes, an emu or a guy named Mayhem. Instead, this insurer will be overseen by a board appointed by Gov. Jared Polis, run by a former lobbyist and funded through fees charged to State Farm, Allstate, Liberty Mutual and other mainstream insurance companies.

Denver’s Tennyson Center for Children has a long history of supporting traumatized children across Colorado. Now, in the center’s 120th anniversary year, it may be more needed than ever. “We’re seeing kids now with more severe trauma symptoms than ever before, the acuity of their mental health and behavioral health challenges are much more significant,” Tennyson Center President and CEO Mindy Watrous said. But the Tennyson Center is making a difference, she said.