New year! New you? 

As 2025 dawns, that’s the mantra we are bombarded with throughout social media and in just about every television ad. Diet plans. Gym memberships. Easy-to-cook healthy meals.

Maybe Colorado’s government will take the hint. The state needs to go on a fiscal and regulatory diet, and stop eating away at economic growth, our quality of life, and the opportunity for average men and women to flourish.   

Like binge eaters, Colorado’s liberal lawmakers are loath to break a rising addiction to spending other people’s money, constantly raiding the policy cupboards for more programs to create, grow and fund. The current state budget sits at about $43 billion and has risen approximately $6 billion in just the last two fiscal years. 

Yet, as with many addicts, they recoil at even the suggestion of a modest cutback. Propose a little belt-tightening to restore better fiscal health, and politicians will greet such a notion with wide-eyed, sputtering panic. Recall last year’s debates over giving homeowners relief from property tax spikes of 30% or more — the equivalent of telling your tubby friend to put down the milkshake and grab a salad.

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The Capitol tax spenders’ caucus squealed like a chorus of scalded cats, claiming having to devote a slice of state revenue to help taxpayers and backfill local tax cuts would result in the closing of schools and universities, the end of public safety services — and even the shutdown of sewers. 

Like overeaters deluded even by their own image in a mirror, the continued caterwauling that a dime of tax relief is detrimental to the operation of a free society is tragically out of touch. And it’s callously indifferent to the reality families face every month — regardless of their political persuasion. Coloradans can have “more month than money” particularly as inflation eats up paychecks like an acid bath, but politicians greedily pile on spending like they are at an all-you-can-eat buffet.  

Here’s a thought experiment: A legislator should introduce a bill that would enact, line by line, the fiscal 2024 $40 billion budget bill — a spending number that would have seemed astronomically spendthrift just a few years ago. There would be better odds of opening a bordello in the Capitol basement.   

Colorado’s regulatory state needs to enroll in Weight Watchers, too. A new study shows it tipping the scale at 200,000-plus rules and regs for Colorado businesses — many of them needless, duplicative, counter productive and rife with unintended consequences. 

A deep dive into the Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s “Regulatory Impact Analysis Report” shows our state has the sixth-highest regulatory burden in the nation. The red tape ties up economic growth, and particularly stifles small and medium-sized businesses. It is costing jobs, shutting companies and stifling startups. And it’s adding onto the heavy weight of inflation, piling on points to the already sky-high cost of living — a burden that hits the pocketbooks of lower-income men and women harder. 

Despite its sterile bureaucratic title, the study is the equivalent of the doctor pulling up a chair to discuss the sclerotic effect that regulatory obesity has on Colorado’s economic vitality. It should get the attention of the state’s elected leaders. 

Finally, one of the best resolutions in any new year is to embrace humility and swear off behaviors you’re told aren’t helpful.  Let’s hope our state, which has spent years working to pound Christians into compliance, will reacquaint itself with the First Amendment. From obsessively attacking creative businesses, such as bakeries and website developers, to illegally attempting to shut faith-based schools out of the taxpayer-funded preschool program, to name just two, the state has had its hand slapped by courts and citizen activists. It’s time to turn the page. 

Chances are next week’s speeches by legislative leaders to open the new legislative session will be filled with New Year’s resolutions to listen to the voters and meaningfully work to address Colorado’s continuing decline. But like almost all January high hopes, it’s likely by mid-month they’ll be binging on the same old bad ideas that have caused our bloated state to fall behind our leaner and more disciplined competitors around the country.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.