Colorado Politics reporter Marianne Goodland is back with another story that ought to make every taxpayer sit up a little straighter. Her March 11 piece walks through a state audit that found serious accounting failures in Colorado’s unemployment insurance division inside the Department of Labor and Employment. And these were not nickel-and-dime bookkeeping slips. Auditors found errors in the billions, including a jaw-dropping overestimate of payments owed to claimants at $1.5 billion when the real figure should have been about $86 million.
Goodland reports that auditors gave the agency their most serious warning, a “material weakness,” meaning the flaws were big enough that financial statements could not be trusted without major concern. The audit also found the department understated bad debt by nearly $800 million, understated revenue by $1.6 billion, understated expenses by $2.5 billion, and overstated deferred revenue by $75.5 million. Even after the offsets, the net impact still came out to $781.2 million. That is not a rounding error. That is mismanagement with a necktie on.
The article goes on to explain that the department corrected the errors after auditors flagged them, but the root problem was the agency’s failure to follow its own policies and procedures. Staff changed methodology without updating policy or checking whether the changes made sense. Worse, some prior audit recommendations from 2023 and 2024 still have not been implemented, and some fixes will not be completed until August 2027. So yes, once again, the people running the shop are asking the public to relax while they promise they are finally getting serious this time.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Auditors found a “material weakness” in the unemployment insurance division, which is audit-speak for “this is bad enough that nobody should shrug it off.”
- The headline number is brutal. Payments owed to claimants were overstated at $1.5 billion when they should have been around $86 million. That is not a calculator hiccup. That is the kind of miss that makes taxpayers reach for antacid.
- The rest of the ledger was no picnic either. Bad debt, revenue, expenses, and deferred revenue were all materially wrong, with a net impact of $781.2 million. When every line is off, the problem is not bad luck. The problem is how the place is being run.
- Auditors say the agency failed to follow its own documented policies and procedures, and staff changed methods without updating policy or evaluating whether the changes were appropriate. In plain English, they were making it up as they went and calling it administration.
- Some recommendations from prior audits still sit unfinished, including issues tied to IT controls and an unresolved review of about $80 million in unemployment receivables. And some fixes are not due until 2027. Apparently in state government, “urgent” means “circle back in a couple fiscal years.”
My Bottom Line
Again. For crying out loud, again.
Auditors keep turning over rocks in the Polis administration and keep finding another mess underneath. This time it is the unemployment insurance division, where the numbers were so far off that “glitch” does not even begin to cover it. When you overestimate one category by roughly $1.4 billion and pile on a stack of other major errors, you do not get to hide behind buzzwords and press releases. You own it.
And let me be plain about something else. Governor Jared Polis cannot pin this on TABOR, the federal government, cosmic rays, Mercury in retrograde, or whatever excuse is fashionable this week. This is management. This is competence. This is whether the people in charge know how to run a department without setting the books on fire. For seven years, Democrats have had one-party control in this state. At some point the blame belongs where the power sits.
This is exactly why people stop trusting government when it comes asking for more money, more authority, and more patience. Families in Weld County and across Colorado have to balance their own checkbooks in the real world. They cannot be off by hundreds of millions, let alone billions, and then promise to have it cleaned up sometime before the next presidential election. But somehow state government keeps treating basic accountability like an optional elective.
That is why this matters beyond one audit. This is how you end up with a budget crisis. Not by accident. Not by mystery. By years of sloppy management, weak controls, and a political culture that rewards excuses more than results. Colorado deserves adults at the wheel, not a one-party clown car with a spreadsheet problem.
Source: Colorado Politics
