New Minimum Wage Takes Effect in Boulder, Colorado
Littler / By Luke Gilewski, Libby Valenzuela, and Jennifer Harpole
The City of Boulder has enacted its own local minimum wage ordinance, which took effect January 1, 2025, setting the city’s minimum wage at $15.57 per hour. The new law adds another challenge to multi-jurisdiction compliance for employers as the city’s minimum wage is higher than the State of Colorado’s, which increased to $14.81 per hour on January 1, 2025.
Since 2020, Colorado law has allowed local governments to enact their own minimum wages. As a result, communities across Colorado began exploring an increase to their local minimum wage, but to date, only three communities have adopted such laws – Denver, Edgewater, and unincorporated Boulder County.
Since the City of Boulder is located within Boulder County, employers with operations in both the city and the county will need to navigate a situation where employees performing similar work may be subject to different wage rates depending on their specific location on any given day. For comparison, effective January 1, 2025, unincorporated Boulder County – including Niwot, Eldorado Springs, Eldora, Allenspark, Gold Hill, Hygiene, Coal Creek Canyon, and those parts of Gunbarrel that are not part of the City of Boulder – has set its minimum wage at $16.57 per hour or $13.55 per hour with tip credit. The county’s wage will increase by a fixed amount each year until it reaches $25.00 per hour in 2030, before being indexed to inflation thereafter. This dynamic creates an added layer of complexity for employers, who must carefully track employee assignments across these differing localities to ensure compliance with local wage laws.
The City of Boulder’s ordinance applies to employers with one or more “covered” employees, which are defined under the ordinance as individuals performing, or expected to perform, four or more hours of work for an employer in any given week within the City of Boulder. The ordinance defines “work” as “any services performed physically within the geographic boundaries of the City of Boulder on behalf of or for the benefit of an employer whether on an hourly, piecework, commission, time, task, or other basis.” Excluded from the law are individuals traveling through Boulder’s jurisdiction with no employment-related or commercial stops, individuals providing volunteer services that are uncompensated except for reimbursement for expenses such as meals, parking, or transportation, and independent contractors. Interestingly, the ordinance states that independent contractors are defined by federal – not state – law…
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Health Care for Poorest Coloradans is at Risk as Medicaid Costs Dominate Budget Debate in Legislature
The Denver Post | By Nick Coltrain and Seth Klamann
In October, a group of Medicaid providers warned Colorado lawmakers that they were in trouble.
One after another, the providers — from hospitals, mental health clinics and community health centers — described a budgetary collision that’s played out for more than a year: Hundreds of thousands of Coloradans lost Medicaid coverage after the pandemic ebbed, resulting in less money for the clinics’ already-thin operations. Though those patients’ health insurance disappeared, they still needed care — but it’s no longer been reimbursed by the state.
The results, the providers said, have been layoffs, hiring freezes, reduced hours and anxious number crunching.
“This is very serious,” said Devra Fregin, the executive director of Clinica Colorado, whose clinics treat low-income patients. “Something needs to change, or we’re not going to be able to serve our state to the best of our ability.”
The providers’ pleas found a legislature — and a Medicaid system — at a crossroads. As clinics ask for help, lawmakers convening this week for the 2025 legislative session are bracing to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the state budget.
Legislators have said they’re loath to cut Medicaid and further strain a sagging system. But the program takes up roughly a third of the state’s general fund budget, and K-12 schools — which lawmakers recently celebrated funding fully after decades of exploiting legal loopholes — account for another third.
That reality may force legislators to spread the pain to the most critical parts of the budget. It also may spark a deeper examination of Medicaid, the safety-net system that provides coverage for roughly a quarter of the state’s residents. On Monday, budget-writers are set to hold a daylong hearing combing through the spending of the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which manages Medicaid.
Citing that coming hearing, department officials declined an interview request last week. In emailed responses to written questions, executive director Kim Bimestefer said HCPF was “very concerned about state budget constraints and the impact on Medicaid over the short and long term. Despite some recent fluctuation, medical inflation continues to outpace growth in other goods and services.”
She said the agency also planned to discuss potential cuts during the Monday meeting with lawmakers.
The fiscal debate is set to dominate the legislature, which meets for four months beginning Wednesday, as lawmakers jockey for sparse funding for new programs — while also fighting to protect their priorities in a budget that must be balanced.
“I don’t want to cut Medicaid, and I don’t think there’s huge political appetite to cut Medicaid,” said Sen.-elect Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat who sits on the Joint Budget Committee and previously served in the House. “I think there’s political appetite to try to fix what is going wrong.”…
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From Immortality to Ugly People: 100-Year-Old Predictions About 2025
Akron Beacon Journal | By Mark J. Price
Nearly 100 years ago, a group of deep thinkers dared to imagine what life would be like in 2025. Some of their prophecies were completely off target, while others proved to be weirdly accurate. [Including:]
- The future looked ugly to Albert E. Wiggam, an American psychologist. According to his calculations, homely, dull people were having more children than beautiful, intelligent people. “If we keep progressing in the wrong direction, as we have been doing, American beauty is bound to decline and there won’t be a good-looking girl to be found 100 years from now,” he told an audience in Brooklyn, New York. Looking around the auditorium, he added: “However, this lack is not apparent yet, especially here in Brooklyn.”
- Thanks to science, people would live to be 150 years old... The advances of medicine and surgery will have been such that most of the ailments and limitations of old age will have been eliminated. Life will be prolonged at its maximum of efficiency until death comes like sunset, and is met without pain and without reluctance. There will be no death from disease, and almost any sort of injury will be curable.
- In a hundred years, there will not be numerous nations, but only three great masses of people — the United States of America, the United States of Europe and China.
- The earth will be under one government, and one language will be written and understood, or even spoken, all over the globe.
- People would use a pocket-sized apparatus for communications to see and hear each other without being in the same room.
- Horse-drawn vehicles are fast disappearing from our streets, but jackass-driven automobiles will still be with us 100 years from now.
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Thinking of our Members, Colleagues, Patients, Loved Ones, and First Responders Affected by the SoCal Fires
Coalition for Compassionate Care of California | By Moore Ballentine
The staff of CCCC are watching as the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, and other fires ravage Southern California. Our hearts and thoughts are with all affected. Here are a few tangible ways you can help, even at this early stage.
Donate to:
As always, in the early stages of a disaster, cash donations are more helpful than supplies or efforts to volunteer. That said, Pasadena Humane is asking for both donations (give at pasadenahumane.org/wildfirerelief) and specific supplies to help shelter animals displaced by the fire: pet food and water bowls, extra large crates, and blankets. Drop off supplies at 361 S. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena.
For information and updates, here are some helpful links, courtesy of the California Department of Aging:
Editor's note: Thank you, Coalition for Compassionate Care of California for equipping so many with this crucial information! Readers of our newsletter, please distribute and encourage your networks to support these relief efforts. Ongoing, our newsletter will be posting ways you can specifically help hospice and palliative care in these tragically impacted service areas. Please email relevant stories with URL links to [email protected]. We send support to all persons affected! |
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