A call for clear, accessible transparency

Your recent front-page article, “Medicaid Spending Explodes,” in The Colorado Springs Gazette highlights a reality many Coloradans are beginning to feel: Medicaid is now one of the largest and fastest-growing components of our state budget. Current projections place total Medicaid spending at more than $20 billion, consuming roughly one-third of Colorado’s General Fund.

At a time of mounting budget pressures, this level of growth calls for more than broad summaries. It calls for clear, accessible transparency.

While overall spending figures are publicly available, many services are grouped into broad categories, making it difficult for taxpayers to understand what is truly driving cost increases. This becomes especially important as new services are added to Medicaid coverage. For example, abortion is now a taxpayer-funded Medicaid benefit in Colorado, yet related expenditures are not clearly itemized in public reporting.

When Amendment 79 was presented to voters, fiscal impacts were described as minimal or indeterminate. Regardless of how those projections were understood, taxpayers today deserve a clear accounting of actual expenditures.

Transparency should not require technical expertise or formal records requests. It should be readily available to the public.

In a time of significant fiscal challenges, clarity is not optional. It is essential to responsible governance.

Wendy J. Smith, ACNP-retired

Colorado Springs

Reasons to keep Boulder open

Here are three life-saving reasons to keep our Boulder street open. We all know Boulder is a vital East-west street for our emergency trips east to Memorial’s emergency room, and west to our shopping district on Tejon, and to Cascade Ave, to I-25, or north to the Fine Arts Center and CC. As merchants, we fear limiting access to Tejon street would be another blow to our businesses downtown. With new apartments south on Wahsatch, adding that traffic plus rerouting Boulder traffic to Platte will be a transportation disaster.

Second. We already have a wonderful track and field arena and facilities a few blocks north of Palmer, at North Junior High. This track eliminates the need for a second, redundant track-and-field arena. Spending millions for a track field to be used for a short two-month season would be a waste of needed educational funds for teachers and would close our emergency corridor to Memorial.

Third. Seconds count. Reality, yes, seconds are a matter of life and death. I know. I was an EMT and captain of the Idledale Rescue Team. Our training instructors and Doctors stressed, “You cannot think in minutes. In emergencies, you don’t have minutes. You only have seconds to save the heart attack or stroke victim or child choking and gasping for air.” With some Council members voting to close Boulder, we ask, if it’s your choking child, or at your age, a heart attack, how many seconds, possibly minutes, do you want to add to your life saving race to Memorial? Closing Boulder is more than a bad action, closing Boulder is a very deadly vote. Council members, keep Boulder open. The life you save may be your own.

James and Mary Ciletti

Colorado Springs

Questioning headline’s clarity

The AP Headline “Transgender Athletes Banned from Female Olympic Events” is an improvement on previous headlines but is still misleading. Previous headlines that suggested proposed bans would prevent individuals who identify as transgender from athletic participation were always flatly untrue. The question was always whether males should compete in female events, because females were not attempting to compete in male events and males who identified as female were not prevented from competing against other males.

Under the new IOC policy, females who identify and present as male are still able to compete against females, so it is not true to summarize the policy as “transgender athletes banned from female events.”

John Stonestreet

Colorado Springs

Trump’s endeavors to protect us

I’m writing this letter to ask Democrats to take note, and please do something for your country.  In the late 1960s, I was a member of the Teamsters Union, and they told us back then to vote for the Democrats; they’re the party of the union, and so I voted for the Democrats.

Back then I  was not as politicaly involved as I am today. And then along came Jimmy Carter and I voted for him. It wasn’t long before I questioned why I voted for that bumbling idiot. After that I said I would not vote a straight ticket again (I would eat those words later) and I voted for the man or woman I thought would do the best job. Then along came Bill Clinton who was running for President of our great country . I found out he was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. Now I came to this country from Canada, joined the U.S. Army, and served in the Vietnam War, and I wasn’t about to vote for him at all. so I began voting straight Republican.

We have an election coming up this year and it isn’t a big deal to switch parties. I did it, and it didn’t hurt one bit, and I haven’t regretted it. If you can’t see that President Donald Trump is protecting this world by denying the Iranian government nuclear weapons, you’ve got to be so blind with Trump derangement that you don’t see a thing. But if you’re not suffering from that derangement  vote the right way this time. Let’s keep things working for us. 

Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries tell lies every day about I.C.E. agents terrorizing and beating people up at the airports, and all they want is open borders, and we all know how that went with illegals coming into this country and committing violent crimes against American citizens. Please don’t let that happen again. Please join with me and the rest of America and back Trump in his endeavors.

Eric DesPres

Calhan