The topic of the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund has come up many different times in CSI’s work, including a previous episode of this show. Yet despite the tremendous amount of attention on the issue from external parties and business leaders, Colorado remains 1 of only 9 states with an outstanding federal loan balance to the US treasury, that was used to support the state’s unemployment insurance trust fund which went insolvent in August of 2020. That balance is just over $1B.
In 2020 legislators chose to not make the $225M payment to PERA required under SB18-200. A current bill under consideration proposes to make up for that missed payment plus the lost investment returns. Though not as substantive a transfer as we discussed in previous episode, this would go far in reducing some of the pending risk to taxpayers and PERA members. (found here).