I have to say Mason County Commissioner Bobby Daniel joining me now. She had a little idea that I feel like has opened up a can of worms and I'm so pleased for joining me now. Bobby, it's good to talk to you again.
Thank you Mandy for having me, Thanks for having me on the show. It's exciting to talk about it.
So tell me what started you down the rabbit hole of looking into unfunded mandates from the state.
Yeah, so, I'm just I was a new commissioner and we had our department head meeting that we do every week, and more and more our department heads for sharing this frustration over the unfunded mandates. And it didn't matter if it was the landfilled the sheriff, the clerk. Everyone had a story about how underfunded mandates were affecting their budget and this was frustrating for them because it's something they can't really control. They couldn't see for coming, and it
really took deep impacts to their budget. Just for example, there was the landfilled liner bill that came out. It affected our budget at the county. It was going to be a two million dollar landfill liner that we didn't want. We didn't need that we had no say, and so it was very frustrating that kind of a cost that comes out of nowhere really does impact budgets. And so we're just basically compiling all that information when we were
as we were getting it. Each legislative session comes out with new unfunded mandates, and so we started a tracker. This tracker tool was able to calculate from each department the impacts of unfunded mandates and it really grew substantially. The first year was interesting department heads. You know, if you're in a silo, you're just kind of in your own world and you're focusing on your budget, but then when you put it together as a county, they started
getting really excited. They're like, wow, this is this is a lot of money. And so we're in our second year of tracking that we're up to almost ten million dollars in unfunded mandates that we've been able to track. That's just annually, and that's just in MafA counting.
So the most interesting part of this whole thing is that when did you become aware of CRS twenty nine dash one dash three oh four point five.
Yes, So we took our unfunded mandates to a tracker. We went to all the counties, we shared that with them, we started tracking them. We're like, wow, this is a really big problem that's affecting us. How can we push back. Well, it's great, Actually, the Constitution is fabulous in this arena where if it's not fully funded, if it's not funded, then it's optional. And so we really wanted to convey
that to the legislature. There are some unfunded mandates that are so costly and it's really hurting what we're able to provide. Our core services are suffering, and so we commune unicated in a letter we're not going to be combined with these unfunded mandates. Here are a few unfunded mandates that we won't be combined with. The Constitution's clear
if you don't fund it is now optional. So we were able to send a letter in July, and then we have almost forty counties that have also sent their individual letters to the governor and also House and Senate leadership. So we're making a lot of headway. We have the majority of our counties are with us on this. And what's exciting is you have Boulder County, of Stommit County,
you have Mesa county. There are so many folks that are coming to this issue in a very nonpartisan fashion and really talking about numbers and budgets and how it suspects they're constituents at home.
Now, let me ask you this, if this unfunded mandate is now optional, the first thing I thought of, Bobby, was this, all these new gun laws about concealed carry, they are a huge burden to the individual county sheriff's department. There's got to be a huge price tag attached, and as far as I know, there's no money coming specifically
to enforce those new rules. So does that mean that if a county like Mesa or like Douglas Sorel Paso said, you know what, we're going to opt out of those new requirements, is that is that argument valid?
Well, so far, you know, each county is taking a look at what liability would be for their constituents, and that's there's nuances to that, and we don't want to give a green light to something that could be very serious when it comes to some legal ramifications, especially with
like the military. And so what we've done is we've tried to stay out of more of those polarizing conversations when it comes to those things, I think there's legal action that probably take place when it comes to Senate Built three, and I think there's already some lawsuits that
are taking place right now. But as far as unfunded mandates, we're really trying to focus on more non partisan issues where we can really talk about what's being funded and what's being not funded and when the legislature is not really taking into account accurate fiscal notes. Sometimes in these bills, it's really interesting it'll say minimal impact to local governments and they just need to do a better job. Minimal impact can mean a lot of different things, and it's
just not fair and it's not accurate. And so we really are pushing back in a very non partisan way that this has to be fixed right as being the state legislature to fund it or fix it. And I think this is great because we're moving into the next legislative session and hopefully we will have even more counties joining us in this coalition and to really work towards the solution.
I have a couple of people on the text lines asking for an example, and when Texter said, what is an unfunded mandate? And that is simply when the state says, here's a new law that outlines something that you must do, and the counties are in charge of it, but we're not giving you any money that you might need to take care of the mandate that we're now giving you. So that's the sort of overall explanation of an unfunded mandate.
But do you have specific examples in masse accounting of unfunded mandates that you could give us.
Yeah. So one of the more pressing issues is we're dealing with a Rule thirty one. This is a regulatory rule that came out of rule making, and so this isn't necessarily a bill that got passed, but it is an agency mistate that is working through some of this role making that could have some major effects. And again it doesn't come with funding. And so this is in regards to methane in a landfilled and so these are rules that the federal government already has. Rules are established
messane in landfills. The State of Colorado just kind of wanted to take the extra mile, but that extra mile
is going to cross mesa county landfilled. Nine million dollars to implement in the first year and a million dollars after that for each year, right, So these are sort of if it's just an agency and it's just one bill and it's one legislature, they're like, well, this has good intentions, but really the unintended consequence of some of these are just astronomical and what's going to end up happening is smaller landfills are not going to be able to come by. I mean, nine million dollars is our
entire landfill budget. That's what they'll end up having to just shut down. And I think that's a real disservice for our constituents and you know, and for the environment quite frankly. And so it's just things like that. There's we've been again, we're tracking all of this on our funded or fixed campaign on Mesa County dot us, and we really go into high level detail from our department head.
They just are automatically doing a lot of this in their budget every year, so it doesn't cost us more money to keep track of but it's all in on the website. We have very detailed account of where our taxpayer dollars are going, and I think that's a good resource for anybody to go look out.
Basic County Commissioner Bobby Daniel I appreciate your time, and of course you're trying to keep it nonpartisan, but I'm already like, wow, this is kind of.
A big deal.
So I'll just take that. I'll keep that to myself and let you keep working on the nine Protistan side of it, and hopefully you guys can get some financial relief. I appreciate you making time for me today. Absolutely all right, Thanks Bobby,