Colorado’s gathering storm isn’t about partisan grandstanding anymore. It’s about real people being hurt by the political stalemate in the state Legislature.

Colorado has perilous problems with deteriorating and inadequate roads, operating public schools and colleges and keeping the state safe. If anyone tells you differently, they’re either deluded, in denial or lying. The proof is right under the wheels of your car and in the school down the street.

The immediate problem isn’t exactly that the state is critically short of money. Colorado has some cash, but a minority of Republican state officials won’t let the state spend it. It’s tied up in a inane argument over how to classify Colorado’s Hospital Provider Fees and the state’s notoriously cumbersome so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR. It’s a complex problem not easily explained, prompting most of the public to look the other way.

Read more at The Aurora Sentinel.