More than $160 million in federal stimulus money has flowed into Larimer County this year, paying for everything from extra food-stamp benefits to road reconstruction, police radios and research at CSU.
Colorado State University has been the single largest recipient of money, as Gov. Bill Ritter used stimulus dollars to largely protect the university from ongoing state budget cuts. Ritter has cut tens of millions of dollars from the budgets of CSU, the University of Colorado and other public colleges and universities, but then “backfilled” those cuts with stimulus funds, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.