Today, Governor Polis released his 2026-27 proposed budget

First, the request is for $18.6 billion General Fund, which is a 2.3% increase over FY 2025-26. The budget includes a 13% reserve. You can find his presentation here.

Furthermore, the top policy priorities in the proposal appear to be to:

• Reduce the growth of Medicaid expenditures
• Cut expenditures in state agencies
• Respond to the impacts of changing federal policies

In the last few years, over $600M has been invested into Colorado’s Long-term Services and Support (LTSS) system. Overall LTSS has seen 49% rate increases, 39% utilization, 11% enrollment. Included is a rollback of the July 2025 1.6% ATB for HCBS. HCPF explains this still equates to ~0.4% ATB annualized and notes FY21-25 increases were 3-5x historical averages, and citing ~$38.3M general fund savings.  

Rates for Community Connector services will be reduced by 15% starting January 1, 2026, upon federal approval, to align with the Tier 3 Supported Community Connections rate, leading to a 38% reduction to that rate total. Additionally, this will also reduce annual cap by 50% (from 2,080 to 1,040 units per plan year under CES/CHRP), and will add a minimum age of 6 years old.

This also establishes group rates for IHSS, Personal Care, and Homemaker within CFC, and CNA within LTHH, and reduces the homemaker service cap for legally responsible persons from 10 to 5 hours per week. 

DD waiver eligibility changes will end the automatic transition of youth from CES and CHRP, except youth in foster care, into the adult DD waiver. Instead, individuals will enter through the existing pathways such as emergency needs, institution transfers, or child welfare, reducing churn enrollments by about 50%. HCPF will apply Post-Eligibility Treatment of Income (PETI) for Members enrolled in the DD waiver, aiming to bring it into alignment with other HCBS residential waivers.

HCPF will implement a soft cap on Personal Care, Homemaker, and Health Maintenance Activities (HMA) that will cap annual utilization at approximately 19,000 units for HMA (about 13 hours per day), 10,000 units for Personal Care (about 6.8 hours per day), and 4,500 units for Homemakers (about 3 hours per day).

Lastly, proposed is reducing movement therapy rates to align with rate methodology from MPRRAC (around rebasing to budget neutrality factor).