Weekly brief · 20 August 2026

Colorado prices every bill, and most prices never change

Every figure here is read from a published document, or worked out from figures that are. Each one is checked again from this page every time it is built.

A fiscal note is the price tag before the vote

Colorado's legislative staff estimate what a bill will cost before the legislature votes on it. The estimate is called a fiscal note, and it is public.

7,078 bills from 2016 onward have one. Of those, 2,213 were estimated to cost the state nothing.

A bill is often priced more than once, because the note is rewritten as the bill changes. Comparing the first estimate against the last: 2,519 did not change, 548 fell and 352 rose.

The legislature cut the reserve it requires itself to hold

Colorado holds part of its General Fund in reserve. That is money set aside rather than spent, so a bad year does not force cuts partway through.

House Bill 26-1363 cut the required reserve to 13%, for two years. The budget then balances against the lower requirement.

The reserve ends $340.1M short of what the old rule would have held. Taxpayer refunds were cut by $110.7M in the same package.

The FBI restated Colorado’s crime rates

Twenty-eight published rates changed when we re-read the FBI's figures this week. Most moved by a tenth of a point.

Colorado's homicide rate for 2024 now reads 4.5 per 100,000. Aggravated assault reads 352.7.

The FBI revises its data. We publish the newest reading and print the date beside it.

A note on the checking

Every figure above comes from a document that states it. Each one is read again from this page every time the page is built.

This week that check found a problem in our own work. A tile on the dashboard, and five figures beside it, were not in the document they cited. The tile now says what the document says. No other figure changed. The corrections log has the detail.

Where these figures come from

Every figure above is one of two kinds, and this is which. FACT means a publisher printed the figure and we read it there. CALC means we worked it out from figures a publisher printed, and the arithmetic is on the methodology page. Nothing here is estimated.