Marianne Goodland at Colorado Politics reports that Colorado’s unemployment insurance division has been caught with what auditors call a “material weakness” in its accounting, which is government-speak for a mess big enough that nobody can shrug it off and call it a rounding error. The audit found the Department of Labor and Employment both overstated and understated major figures by eye-popping amounts, including an overestimate of payments owed to claimants at $1.5 billion when the number should have been about $86 million.
Goodland lays out that the errors went well beyond one bad spreadsheet. Auditors found the agency underestimated bad debt expense by nearly $800 million, understated revenue by $1.6 billion, understated expenses by $2.5 billion, and overstated deferred revenue by $75.5 million. The net impact came to $781.2 million, and the department’s own failure to follow its documented policies and procedures was cited as the reason. In other words, this was not some cosmic accident. It was management.
The article also notes this was not the only warning light flashing on the dashboard. The department still has unresolved audit recommendations from prior years, including IT control failures and an unresolved question of whether roughly $80 million in old unemployment receivables should be collected or written off. The department says fixes are coming, but some will not be completed until August 2027. That is a long time to ask taxpayers to sit quietly while the adults sort out the books.
The Bullet Point Brief
- State auditors found “serious issues” in the labor agency’s unemployment insurance accounting and labeled it a material weakness. That is not a typo. That is the audit equivalent of a fire alarm.
- The agency overstated payments owed to claimants at $1.5 billion when the figure should have been about $86 million. That is not a glitch. That is a financial faceplant.
- Auditors also found nearly $800 million in underestimated bad debt expense, $1.6 billion in understated revenue, $2.5 billion in understated expenses, and $75.5 million in overstated deferred revenue. When your books look like a carnival funhouse mirror, maybe stop calling it a paperwork issue.
- The audit blamed the problem on the department failing to follow its own policies and procedures after staff changed methodology without updating policy or evaluating whether the changes were appropriate. So yes, once again, the system apparently ran on vibes and crossed fingers.
- Some recommendations will not be fully implemented until August 2027, and older audit findings are still hanging around unresolved. Nothing inspires public confidence quite like government saying, “We have a plan,” after the auditors have already kicked in the door.
My Bottom Line
Again. For crying out loud, again.
This is what one-party rule looks like when it gets lazy, insulated, and convinced it will never really be held accountable. Not every government screw-up is a scandal, but when auditors keep turning up major errors in the Polis administration and the numbers have commas in the billions, the word “pattern” starts to matter. You do not get to wave this off as a harmless bookkeeping hiccup when bad accounting can distort budget decisions, public services, and the public’s understanding of what is actually going on.
And let’s put to bed the usual excuses before they crawl out of the spin room. This is not TABOR’s fault. This is not Washington’s fault. This is not some mean old external force picking on Colorado’s sainted managerial class. According to the article, auditors said the labor department failed to follow its own policies and procedures. Staff changed methodology and did not update policy or evaluate whether the change made sense. That is not oppression. That is mismanagement.
This is also how you wind up with a budget crisis nobody in power wants to own. When agencies cannot keep clean books, lawmakers make decisions based on distorted information, and taxpayers are left holding the bag after the people responsible issue another breezy promise to fix it in a year, or two, or by the next lunar eclipse. Colorado families have to balance the checkbook in the real world. It would be nice if the people spending their money had to do the same.
The most galling part is that this is sold to the public by a political class that never runs out of confidence. They always have a press conference, always have a talking point, always have someone else to blame. But when the auditors show up with receipts, suddenly it is all process improvements and implementation timelines. No. This mess belongs to Jared Polis and seven years of Democrat one-party control. The bill comes due, and guess who pays.
Source: Colorado Politics
Share your thoughts...