Since tuition increases were capped at 6 percent in 2015 by virtue of a budgetary agreement, larger increases next year could make it more challenging for families to afford college. In addition to higher education, the corrections and revenue departments will also likely experience substantial funding reductions. The proposed reduction in funding the Department of Corrections is less than 1 percent of its previous year’s budget. This follows several years of in- creased funding for correctional facilities and programs. Over $6 million in savings from the correctional budget came as a result of the state’s total prison population for the year being significantly less than projected. This substantial reduction was partially offset by proposed inflationary and other rate increases. In absolute terms, the proposed increase in health care spending is second only to K-12. The Department of Health Care Policy and Planning oversees the state’s Medicaid and children’s health insurance programs in addition to numerous other public health programs and initiatives. The proposed $135.5 million in new health care spending would be an increase of greater than 5 percent from the previous year. As usual, greater spending in this area is driven in part by greater caseload and program participation. The state’s Medicaid and children’s health insurance caseloads are each projected to grow by nearly 5 percent. Such an increase would bring the Medicaid caseload to include more than 1.3 million Coloradans. This number corresponds to about one out of every four state residents, more than half of whom are either children or senior citizens. Colorado is now several years into the legalized marijuana experiment. According to the Department of Revenue’s Marijuana Enforcement Division, plastic nursery plant pot the state has approved recreational marijuana licenses for 424 dispensaries as of March 2016 .
In addition to these retail outlets, officials have approved licenses for over 500 recreational marijuana cultivation operations and nearly 175 marijuana product-manufacturing facilities. Licenses awarded for medical marijuana sales , cultivation , and manufacturing exceed these recreational numbers, although the disparity between the two continues to shrink . The increase in the number of marijuana business licenses has correlated positively with sales. By the end of 2014, recreational and medicinal marijuana sales totaled nearly $700 million. In total, state marijuana sales in 2015 approached $1 billion. The year’s official cumulative sales totaled $996,184,788. Though tax revenues have been considerable, the actual amounts generated have fallen short of most projections. Figure 1 provides monthly sales data for recreational and medical marijuana in 2014 and 2015. Figure 2 reports monthly tax, licensing, and fee revenue data for the two markets. All data are from the Colorado Department of Revenue. As seen in Figure 1, recreational sales lagged behind medical sales for the first seven months of 2014. This is partially because retail dispensary licenses were initially limited to those with a preexisting medical marijuana business license. Over time, the number of retail outlets has grown considerably. Sales have increased as well. Recreational sales have surpassed medical sales every month since November 2014. Medical sales exhibited more stability over the course of 2014 through the first half of 2015. Sales increased over the summer months and surpassed $40 million for the first time in August before falling again through the winter. In November, the number of residents on the medical marijuana registry dipped below 110,000 for the first time in 28 months. Figure 2 reports the tax, fee, and licensing revenue from the recreational and medical marijuana markets during 2014 and 2015. As mandated by the constitutional amendment ratified by voters, the first $40 million in marijuana excise tax revenue is mandated to go toward school construction. The legislature has more control over revenues beyond that amount. The original estimate from the governor’s office was that marijuana tax revenue in the first fiscal year would exceed $130 million.
Though the projection was lowered on several subsequent occasions, combined tax revenues totaled $76 million—$63.4 million from taxes and $12.6 million from licensing and fees . Revenue from the more modest medical marijuana taxes has been relatively stable over this two-year span, ranging from $1.41 million to $1.99 million. Though it has demonstrated more variability in recent months, the growth in recreational marijuana tax revenue has been fairly linear. Over these two years, recreational tax revenue has grown by an average of $400,000 every month. Tax revenue surpassed $10 million in four of the last six months in 2015. The $11.28 million collected in December 2015 is the highest amount to date. One would expect the growth in sales and taxes to taper off at some point. The decline in sales during the fall of 2015 was perhaps a sign that the markets were reaching a plateau; however, the trend reversed with strong sales reports in the final months of the year. In sum, the state continues to receive a reliable amount of medical tax revenue coupled with increasingly larger sums from recreational taxes and fees. If sales continue to climb, the tax revenues in the current fiscal year may approach what was originally forecast for the 2014 fiscal year as the market becomes more developed. Many expected the uncertainty surrounding Colorado’s budget for the next fiscal year to come into better focus upon the resolution of the hospital provider fee controversy. House Speaker Dickey Lee Hulling horst sponsored legislation to reclassify the fee into an enterprise just one day after Attorney General Coffman issued the formal opinion supporting the proposal’s constitutionality. Though supporters of the reform had some reasons to be more optimistic about the prospects for success in 2016, chief among them the supportive opinion from the state’s Republican attorney general, the proposal to reclassify the hospital provider fee died in the Senate once again as it had the year before. In May, the Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines to defeat the measure . Substantial parThisan disagreement on the issue is emblematic of broader conflicts in the legislature on matters of policy and spending. In many respects the governor’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year is cautious, partially out of necessity given the uncertainty that exists regarding the hospital provider fee, potential income tax rebates triggered by TABOR, and slowed economic growth. Legislators are scheduled to begin work on the budget “long bill” beginning on March 28. To further complicate matters, the Legislative Council’s chief economist recently informed JBC that General Fund revenue for the next fiscal year will likely be $90 million less than previously expected. This will almost certainly result in further funding cuts to different parts of the budget, some of which have already been targeted for reductions. State officials continue to study and refine the legal and regulatory framework surrounding the medical and recreational marijuana industries in the state. In addition to those designated for school construction, legislators have used marijuana taxes to oversee the state’s marijuana industry. Tax revenue has also been allocated to youth drug prevention, public safety, and public education campaigns. Last year, legislators adopted stricter packaging rules for edible marijuana products. In March 2016, the state announced the largest recall to date of marijuana products when laboratory testing reported the presence of a non-approved pesticide. Officials have not released data on the scope of the recall in terms of number of plants or products affected. During the same week that the recall was announced, the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear a case filed by officials in Oklahoma and Nebraska challenging the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado. As the market becomes more developed, plastic planters officials in other states considering legalization will have guidance in the form of Colorado and Washington.Coffee is native to Ethiopia and was introduced to the Americas in 1723 . It was first found in Brazil in 1922 , spread to Central America and Mexico between 1971 and 1978 , and was first found in Colombia in 1988 . Like other Scolytinae, CBB females form galleries for the development of progeny . In coffee, a female CBB bores into the calyx end of a single berry and forms galleries in the seed. At maturity, new CBB adults leave the host berry to infest other berries.
Considerable effort has occurred to develop strategies for control of CBB, including classical and augmentative biological control using introduced parasitic wasps , nematodesand entomo-pathogens. Here we focus on the biological control of CBB using parasitic wasps. Three parasitoids species were released in the Americas:two betilids Cephalonomia stephanoderis and Prorops nasuta , and the eulophid Phymastichus coffea . In Colombia, C. stephanoderis, P. nasuta and P. coffea were released , but only P. nasuta established . In Brazil C. stephanoderis and P. nasuta were established , and P. coffea was introduced in 1999 but its establishment is unknown. A third betilid, Cephalonomia hyalinipennis was reviewed as a possible control agent, but research suggests it could have a detrimental effect on control of CBB because of its negative interaction with the other betilids , and hence has not been released in the Americas. The braconid Heterospilus coffeicola is reported from CBB in Africa , but it has not been reared successfully for field releases in South America , and it is not considered in this study.Gutierrez et al. developed a tritrophic coffee-CBB-three parasitoid demographic system model based on the distributed maturation time demographicmodel proposed byManetsch and Vansickle, . Rodríguez et al. updated the models for coffee and CBB with new laboratory data, and tested them against field data. Here, we update the parasitoid models, and add the parasitoid C. hyalinipennis to the system. All the models use the physiologically based demographic modeling approach developed by Gutierrez and Baumgärtner . We first review the biology of the parasitoids.Adult females of C. stephanoderis and P. nasuta enter one CBB gallery during their lifte time where they host-feed on CBB adults and immature stages, and oviposit in mature larvae and pupae . The sex ratio of C. stephanoderis decreases with temperature being 25 females: one male at 17 ◦C and 7.3:1 at 32 ◦C. The sex ratio of P. nasuta increases from 4.5:1 to 5.8:1 over the same range of temperature . The reproductive strategy of C. stephanoderis and P. nasuta is characterized by sibling-mating. At maturity, new adult parasitoid females leave host berries in search of CBB infested berries. SuperparasiThism by both parasitoids has been observed under laboratory conditions, but not in the field , and intraguild predation between C. stephanoderis and P. nasuta occurs . C. hyalinipennis is a facultative predator and hyperparasite of C. stephanoderis and P. nasuta immature stages, and in the laboratory super parasitizes CBB larvae and hyperparasitizes conspecifics. A female invades only one infested berry, sibling mating is the norm, and it has not been observed attacking CBB adults . Dyadic contest was defined by Pérez-Lachaud et al. as direct competition by females of different betilid species for the resources of a CBB infested berry. Triadic contest has not been observed in the field, and it is not considered in this study.Table 1 provides coordinates and climatic details of the five locations simulated in this study, but the simulation results reported in the figures are for Buenavista and Londrina . The studies were conducted using weather data for the period 1990–1995 for Colombia and 1982–1986 for Londrina, PR, Brazil. Daily maximum and minimum temperatures , relative humidity , precipitation , and hours of sunshine for Colombia were obtained from data published in the Anuario Meterológico Cafetero . Daily solar radiation was estimated from recorded hours of sunshine using the relationship developed by Prescott . Weather data for Londrina, Brazil were obtained from the Instituto Agronômico do Paraná. To assess the effects of weather on system dynamics,the six years of weather data were shuffled across the four Colombian localities to increase the number of weather scenarios.Competition between individual parasitoids of two different species occurs in coffee berries when a betilid female enters a berry previously colonized by a female of another species . This behavior is more likely to occur when CBB infested berries are scarce. In the model, dyadic contest occurs at a rate dependent on the shortfall of CBB infested berries attacked /D) > 0) .