How this site works

WorksBetter is a free public site about Colorado's money. It answers one question: where does your money go? The state's enacted budget is $49.6B, about $8,243 for every Colorado resident.

From here: where each $100 goes, the projects on a map, this week’s brief, and your own household. Here is why you would use it: this page makes the state budget your household’s.

Type your ZIP code, and it estimates what you pay the state and where it lands. Nothing you type is sent or stored. The math runs in your browser. Read it yourself, at colorado.worksbetter.org

Follow Your Dollar estimates what one household pays the state, and where it lands. Type a ZIP code and the page names the county. ZIP 80202 is Denver County.

Nothing you type is sent or stored. The math runs in your browser, and nothing leaves it. The income starts at the Colorado median, $97,113, a FACT from the Census.

Say this household files jointly and has three cars. That household pays in about $3,467 a year, or $289 a month.

Most of it is the flat 4.4% income tax, $2,887; then sales tax, gasoline and vehicle fees. Where it lands: $1,437 of it goes to health care, the largest line at 41.45%. Move the numbers yourself, at colorado.worksbetter.org

The state's whole budget is $49.6B: about $8,243 per resident, or $136 million every day. Of every $100 the state spends, Health care takes $41.45. K-12 education takes $15.87, and Higher education takes $13.23.

Who pays for it: General Fund 35.0%, Federal funds 31.0%, Cash funds 28.2%. Every state project over $10 million has a pin here; the largest circle is I-70 Floyd Hill.

I-70 Floyd Hill Improvement Project: $905M, underway, source grade A. First estimated at $700M in 2020; the 2025 estimate is $905M, up $205M, or 29%. Every figure links to its record, at colorado.worksbetter.org

Open a project record and two things are yours to do. First, follow it. Enter an email, and a confirmation link comes first; one click unsubscribes. We keep your address and the fact that this is followed, and nothing else about you.

Second, rate it. How well does this project use public money? Five answers, from poor use to good use, and room for a comment. Your rating is stored without your name or any identifier, and counted into a total. No rating and no total is published here. Comments are grouped into themes for leaders. Follow the projects that matter to you, at colorado.worksbetter.org

Some fields on this site are blank. This one is spend-to-date. The state does not publish what it has spent on this project, so the field is left blank, not estimated. The state's ledger does not carry CDOT's payments, and CDOT posts them per contract, not per project.

At the ZIP-code level the box stays empty: the state publishes nothing at that grain. The state's payment ledger, TOPS, records no ZIP code or location, so spending by ZIP cannot be read from it.

These rules are written down, and every figure carries one of them. FACT is copied from an official record, with the record named.

CALC is arithmetic on facts, with the formula printed beside it. PENDING is blank, on purpose, with the reason on file. A plausible number with no source is worse than an empty field. Until the state publishes it, the gap is the finding. Read the rules yourself, at colorado.worksbetter.org

Bills and Laws lists 7,310 Colorado bills and has read the fiscal note on 7,078 of them. Filter by session, by outcome, by subject, or by whether the estimate moved. Or type a bill number, and the list narrows to one.

HB26-1113: Modifications to Elections, 2026 Regular Session. The fiscal note read $0 at first, and $10,000 at the last revision.

Each fiscal note is dated and linked, so you can open the note itself. Your ZIP is looked up in your browser. Nothing is sent or stored. Type it, and the page marks your own House and Senate districts. Your districts, and the ones this ZIP also reaches, are marked in the roll calls below.

Then the roll call: every member, and how each voted on every recorded vote. Look up a bill you care about, at colorado.worksbetter.org

Questions people ask about Colorado, each with one labeled answer. Pick a topic, and the deck deals only those questions. Education. Pause the deck to read a card, and step through it with the arrows. Every card is answered from a public source, or left honestly blank. Nothing on a card was written for this film. Do kids still graduate? 85.6% of the class of 2025 graduated in four years. That is just under the last published national figure, 86.6%, from 2022. The chip says FACT, and the source is named right under it.

Share it: WorksBetter writes the post, the link and the card, and you pick the platform. Every card carries the same link: see the record.

It opens that measure's own record on Ask WB, with its label, its source and its whole series. Start over, and the whole catalog is back. And Ask WB holds hundreds more like it, by subject, every one sourced. Start at colorado.worksbetter.org, and find the one that matters to you.

Every Thursday, a short brief reports what changed in the public record that week. If little changed that week, the brief says so. It never pads a quiet week.

The three most recent briefs are on the home page; every earlier one is a link away. Type your ZIP, add an email, and one report a week comes built around your county. Every brief stays up, at the address it was published at.

The county you gave is saved on this device, so the brief opens on Denver County. One item in this week’s brief touches Denver County, and the county’s own figures follow it. Watch your money where you live, at colorado.worksbetter.org

Near You answers one question: what is the state paying for near you? Start with a ZIP code. It is looked up in your browser, and never stored or sent. ZIP 80202 is in Denver County, placed there by the Census Bureau’s own file. The county is saved on this device until you tap Forget. Where a city has its own page, it is linked here: Denver.

The map draws the county and every project with a place. Tap a dot to see that project. In Denver County: 36 projects, grouped by stage, the largest first in each group.

Follow Denver County for one email a week on what changed there. Nearby, outside the county: the 3 closest projects that are either funded or underway. See what the state pays for near you, at colorado.worksbetter.org

Projects lists every Colorado project on this site, 1,478 in all, each on one row. Appropriated this year: $160.4M. Requested and refused: $761.1M.

Search the table by name, or narrow it by size, stage, county and agency. “Floyd Hill” matches 3 of 1,478 projects. A project with its own page opens from its row. This one also carries Pacing: spending against the calendar.

Is the money keeping pace with the calendar? CDOT’s monthly dashboards answer it. Each chart puts time used, money paid and CDOT’s percent complete on one scale.

All four contracts: 35.6% paid with 41.3% of the time used, 5.8 points behind an even pace. The shaded band between the two lines shows whether payments run ahead of the calendar or behind it. Check every project’s pace yourself, at colorado.worksbetter.org

Colorado’s dashboard links five cities, each with a page of its own. Denver’s own budget: where will $5.41 billion of the city’s money go?

This is the city’s budget, not the state’s, and the two are never added together. Some state money reaches the city, so a sum would count it twice.

Every figure names its quantity. Per Denver resident, that is about $7,307. Follow the money where you live, at colorado.worksbetter.org

The Budget is one page now: the state budget, past the headline. As you read, this bar stays pinned at the top, and each button jumps to its part.

Right now: LCS estimates a $2,300.3M reserve this budget year, against $2,175.7M the law requires. TABOR limits the revenue the state may keep; revenue above the cap goes back to taxpayers.

The dates ahead run to January 2027, when the next Governor takes office. Where it goes: what the state has enacted, year by year, and how its mix compares to all states.

What’s owed: what the state has borrowed and owes back, and the pension shortfall. What a day costs: a community corrections bed is $71.48 a day, and a local jail bed is $77.16.

Every number links to its record: the document, the page, the table and the line. Read the whole budget, at colorado.worksbetter.org