Higher Ed May Get Funded Though Pinnacol

13 thoughts on “Higher Ed May Get Funded Though Pinnacol”

1. didn’t the Senate, or at least Groff, bounce this issue back to committee or something?

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   1. Let me know if you hear any late breaking news. Goes for anyone.  

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      1. …where it will land, I have no idea:

         The Joint Budget Committee this afternoon rebuffed Senate President Peter Groff’s request that they redraw the state budget to avoid the possibility of deep cuts to higher education.

         Groff, D-Denver, had earlier in the day taken the unprecedented step of asking the JBC to go back to the drawing board after saying that a potential $300 million in cuts to colleges and universities on top of previous cuts that totaled more than $100 million would be “unconscionable.”

         The $17.9 billion budget that the six-member JBC had sent to the Senate, which must approve the spending plan first before it goes to the House, had called for taking $500 million from the assets of a workers’ compensation insurance fund. But the plan to tap Pinnacol Assurance’s assets could run into legal snags, and the default plan would be to cut another $300 million from higher education.

         Groff said he wanted the JBC to look at some $2 billion in tax breaks that range from a sales tax exemption on cigarettes to economic development tax credits. It was the first time anyone could remember that the Senate had sent a budget back to the JBC.

         “It is unconscionable to allow these kinds of cuts to higher education,” Groff said in a statement. “After meeting with leadership on both sides of the aisle, it was clear that the Joint Budget Committee had to go back to the drawing board.”

         Meanwhile, Republicans said the JBC should look harder at furloughs and pay cuts, as well as spending reductions across all departments.

         “We think that the budget committee didn’t do the job they needed to do in spreading the pain,” Penry said.

         But the six-member JBC made no changes, saying there was not enough time to examine tax credits and exemptions in the current session that ends May 6 and that they did not support furloughs and pay cuts. JBC members expressed support for studying the tax breaks and allowing businesses to have input on them.

         http://www.denverpost.com/brea…

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      2. from the same article:

         Keller said it was “extremely frustrating and exasperating” for JBC members to hear senators from both parties say the committee hadn’t looked hard enough at the budget.

         Rep. Don Marostica, R-Loveland, went further.

         “Nuts to them,” an angry Marostica said. “Tell them to go jump in a lake. Josh Penry first, and then all the lemmings will follow.

         “We did look hard enough.”

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         2. Wow – maybe there is hope for the GOP afterall…

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   2. And the elitists in higher education are willing to steal from small businesses and their workers to keep the professors employed teaching basket weaving.

      Every other industry is reacting to the recession by dropping unprofitable lines (autos, etc.) and adjusting budgets to reflect the realities of the market place.

      But not higher education, which immorally believes in stealing from the workers comp insurance fund to keep over paid and under worked tenured professors busy teaching the rich kids from out of state who want to ski.

      I hope the GOP will use this class theft against the Dems and universities in 2010 and beyond. This legislation shows how thoughtless and dishonest the ruling Dems and a few clueless Repubs in the General Assembly are.

      It’s time for the universities receiving taxpayers’ money to cut frivolous courses, eliminate schools (especially the school of journalism which is training kids for fantasy jobs) and high-minded social activities that have had no place in state-supported colleges and universities.

      I suppose I’m asking too much when I ask educators to grow up and share the pain.

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      1. We’re in a deep bucket of excrement, and everybody has to make sacrifices. I’m not opposed to cutting borderline courses (as long as its not done on some ideologically biased basis), and administrators and faculty should have their pay cut 10%. Problem is with many of these people, especially the tenured professors, I believe they have contracts, so you have that problem.

         Like you say, the UAW has been agreeing to cuts in existing contracts to try to save the auto companies, so it could be done. Everyone should feel the pain, I know I certainly have in the past year.  

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         1. And then can under the court throw out contracts and re-work the school as needed. It’s an enterprise so it might be able to do that seperate from the state.

            I do agree that the universities need to get serious about cutting the deadwood, becoming more efficient, and focusing on those classes & majors for which there is a significant demand.

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            1. If CU doesn’t get funded, it’s probably insolvent anyway.

               There’s no doubt GM is going into a structured bankruptcy, that was decided when Waggoner was shown the door.  

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2. Both bills, along with the long bill, passed the Senate last night, largely on party lines. A few Dems crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans against SB 273 and SB 281; Al White (as usual) voted with the majority of the Dems to pass it. (I say as usual because all three bills are part of the budget balancing package, and White as a member of the JBC votes with the other members of the committee to pass them.)

   It was definitely a wild time yesterday. Nobody,  and in particular the members of the JBC, knew what the heck was going on. They legally did not have the authority to rework the long bill, according to a legal services attorney, and so took no action.

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   1. I read both bills are scheduled for a third reading vote on Monday. Looks like the lobbyists don’t get the weekend off.  

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3. Sent to Rep. Nancy Todd.

   Dear Ms. Todd,

   I am not only a Pinnacol policyholder, but am also a former Pinnacol employee.

   While at Pinnacol, I was responsible for designing and developing Pinnacol’s state-of-the art medical payments system, their PPO contracting system and medical case management systems.  These systems have saved Colorado employers literally tens of millions of dollars in benefit overpayment, duplication and fraudulent billing.

   I was also an integral part of the business re-engineering processes that structured Pinnacol to be not only a competitive insurer, but a superior one.

   When the state “spun-off” CCIA, they did so with very depleted reserves, horrible bureaucracy, and millions being spent in fraudulent claims due to the reprehensible mismanagement that occurred.  The state apparently intends to repeat these same mistakes.

   Now, and to the credit of Gary Pon, Pinnacol’s former CEO, and Jeff Tetrick, its CFO, along with the rest of its management team, the company is the picture of financial health, having overcome their reserve deficit, establishing a surplus and becoming a model for other state funds across the country.

   The workers compensation model in Colorado has worked very well, while other states suffer from the unintended consequences of statutory and fiscal interference by their respective governments.

   Now, the reward for Pinnacol’s success in achieving the objectives set out for it by law appears to be the illegal looting of its surplus.

   The surplus was built so that Pinnacol can sustain weak pricing conditions without jeopardizing claims reserves while providing a low-cost, financially secure insurer for Colorado employers.

   Not only that, but the surplus belongs to Colorado policyholders, not to the taxpayers.

   This attempt to expropriate the property of policyholders is an irrational lapse in reason, good judgment, and is just simply nothing less than theft.

   It is morally and ethically wrong, and should this legislation pass, as a Colorado employer, Pinnacol policyholder taxpayer and your constituent, I will not stand for it.

   On the other hand, by making Pinnacol a state agency, a number of my former excellent colleagues in their information services department, many of whom I hired, will become immediately available because of the inevitable politicization and appointment of political lackeys into management which will be completely intolerable to each and every one of them.  Prior to this point, the benefits offered by Pinnacol made them all too expensive to lure away.

   I promise to hire every single one of them and, as a consequence, leave Pinnacol without any IT talent whatsoever.  I drool at the prospect of it.

   Maybe then you can show the new team how to manage the real-time pharmacy benefits interface and to maintain the medpay pricing engine and the utilization review system…

   To prevent these circumstances, and just to do the right thing, I urge you to oppose SB 09-273 and SB 09-281.

   Sincerely,
   
   (redacted)

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