The COVID-19 pandemic has hit our communities and our families hard. Colorado, like other states across the country, has faced new and unprecedented challenges. The coronavirus has changed life as we know it and completely transformed the workplace. It has also brought to the forefront long-term and glaring problems in our state’s public services due to decades of underfunding and understaffing.  

Many state employees like myself, found ourselves on the front line of the pandemic – facing new and unpredictable challenges every day. As a Health Care Technician at the Pueblo Regional Center for the last 17 years, I felt the impacts of these gaps firsthand. The Pueblo Regional Center is an assisted-living group home for some of Colorado’s most vulnerable residents. As a health care technician, I work one-on-one with residents and try to help them learn to live independently. Many residents have severe developmental disabilities, require round-the-clock care, or have been recently transferred from detention centers.

I love my work caring for residents, but it is incredibly demanding, and the Center has been drastically underfunded and short-staffed for years. COVID-19 has only made this worse. I work 12-hour shifts, and also have to take an additional mandatory 12-hour shift every other week. Our staff is often required to quarantine at home due to exposure concerns, further decreasing the staff available. During the pandemic we also weren’t allowed to take residents off campus for day trips, and we couldn’t even allow them to see their families, making residents more restless and agitated.    

I knew going into this job that it came with risks, but with the added threat of a highly contagious disease, we are now risking the health of our families too. We’ve seen that public service jobs like mine, that are often invisible, have helped get us through the pandemic. And while there’s no doubt that the pandemic has stretched state and local budgets, state facilities like the one I work for have been underfunded for years. This has led to severe understaffing, low wages, and environments that are unsafe for both workers and residents. 

That’s why the passage of the American Rescue Plan is such a critical step forward to reinvest back into our state employees and services.  We now have access to relief that can help our communities begin to recover. It’s heartening to see that Colorado lawmakers have announced major investments in state services, from $380 million for transportation to $30 million to fight wildfires to $15 million for housing assistance.  

But unfortunately, it’s not enough. State agencies already had a 20% vacancy rate before the pandemic, and even as the population of Colorado has grown, the number of state workers per capita has decreased. I hope that Colorado lawmakers understand that the federal money is our opportunity to invest in the public services Coloradans need and the people we rely on to deliver much-needed services. 

The difficulties of the past year have shown Coloradans just how important essential services and the working people who provide them are to our lives and well-being. Whether it’s providing day-to-day necessities like child care, helping with critical benefits like unemployment, or lifesaving health care, state employees have been helping Coloradans get through one of the most difficult times our history has seen. 

With this additional federal stimulus, we now have a chance to keep investing in creating opportunities and improving life for all working people, especially people providing essential services and the Black, Latino, Asian, Native and immigrant communities who have been hit hard by the pandemic.  Bold action now by our state leaders can help ensure that our state services and workers have the funding they need so our communities can thrive in the long-term.

Debi Macias is a Colorado WINS member and a health care technician at the Pueblo Regional Center.