State Sen. Jeff Bridges, the chair of the highly effective Joint Finances Committee, will run for Colorado treasurer in 2026, he mentioned forward of a Tuesday marketing campaign launch.
The state treasurer’s workplace manages the state’s funds. Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat, mentioned he additionally sees the place as a possibility to speculate instantly in Colorado as a substitute of parking state cash in issues like federal treasury payments.
“There’s a method to run the workplace that creates a direct and significant influence within the state of Colorado,” Bridges mentioned in an interview. “It’s a new and thrilling toolbox to do loads of the work I’ve been doing on housing affordability, renewable vitality and all the issues which are necessary to the folks of Colorado.”
He envisions utilizing state cash to put money into reasonably priced housing, inexperienced vitality manufacturing and infrastructure, whereas protecting cash obtainable for when it’s wanted.
“We have to put money into our future,” Bridges mentioned. “Typically investing in our future means you want it actually liquid. Typically it means you actually need a extremely excessive greenback return. Typically it means you want housing that Coloradans can afford, clear vitality to allow them to effectively warmth their houses, and infrastructure that will get them that high-paying job they should afford to dwell right here.”
Bridges is the fourth entrant within the race. Thus far, state Rep. Brianna Titone, Jerry DiTullio and John Mikos, all Democrats, have introduced their candidacies for the workplace. No Republicans have but filed for it.
Bridges has served in elected workplace since 2017 and has helped write the state funds since 2022. He was reelected to his second and ultimate four-year time period in 2024. Apart from the funds committee, he’s chaired the Senate finance and training committees.
Previous to elected workplace, he labored for then-U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar and an funding administration agency shortly after he graduated from Harvard Divinity Faculty.
As chair of the funds committee this 12 months, he has helped shut a $1.2 billion funds shortfall that was pushed by spiking Medicaid prices. The committee was in a position to protect core spending on well being care and training by discovering cuts elsewhere. It referred to as for combing via all the funds’s nooks and crannies and creating the “most complex funds the state has ever had,” he mentioned.
Bridges referred to as it “among the hardest work I’ve ever carried out and among the most rewarding.”
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