Officials at the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo have been keeping a secret. So, too, have officials at the state Department of Human Services, the agency that oversees it.

Were it not for some terrific reporting and tenacity by The Chieftain’s Peter Roper, even state legislators from our area might not have learned about the secret.

Well, the secret is out, and it’s a bad one. It turns out that the CMHIP is so low on staffing that it has denied leave for employees, and also forced them to work brutal overtime shifts. And, the staffing levels are so low that the federal Medicare program has set a June 28 deadline for the institution to fix its problem or face the consequences. And that could include loss of Medicare status, aka, loss of federal funds.

Read more at The Pueblo Chieftain.