A Colorado Springs business that specialized in helping people with disabilities secure and keep jobs has permanently closed, the latest consequence of a prolonged dispute with the state agency that funded most of its work. Mountain Employment Training, which connected clients with disabilities to employment opportunities, went out of business months after its owner began raising concerns about operations at the Colorado Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, known as DVR.
The owner described two specific disruptions that crippled the company. The first was a severe delay in the fall of 2025 that stalled her ability to obtain the authorizations needed to begin working with clients. The second arrived on January 28, when DVR enacted what it called an "order of selection," or waitlist, which she said created a major bottleneck preventing new clients from reaching her door. Those troubles had a financial backdrop at the state level: facing a $2.5 million shortfall heading into 2026, DVR rolled out cost containment measures that included additional approval layers for case service authorizations and a preference for having services delivered by DVR staff directly rather than through outside providers.
The toll on Mountain Employment Training was severe. In the roughly five months between late January and mid-June, the business took on just three new clients — a dramatic drop from prior years, when two or three new clients would typically arrive each week. At the start of the year, the company had the capacity for 100 clients but was working with only 13 who had been authorized by DVR; by mid-year, that figure had risen to just 29, still far short of what the business needed to be sustainable. The company has since gone out of business, with its owner saying DVR policies and restrictions made it impossible to keep providing services.
The owner also said that some DVR staff members had privately advised her to seek out funding sources beyond DVR rather than relying solely on the agency, with at least a couple of staff members describing DVR as "so unstable" and recommending that business owners in her position not "put all our eggs in one basket."
DVR issued a statement addressing the strain on its provider network. The agency said it "cannot fulfill its mission" without its provider community and expressed hope that providers would "remain collaborative" as DVR works through the waitlist to support as many people as efficiently as possible. DVR explained that federal law mandates a waitlist when it cannot immediately serve all eligible applicants, and that it formally entered that waitlist on January 28, 2026, describing it as the most effective means of managing costs. As of October 19, 5,710 individuals were actively receiving services through an approved employment plan.
The owner said her concern extends well past the fate of her own business, and she worries about people with disabilities who may spend extended periods waiting for help. She noted that months on a waitlist translate directly into gaps in a person's employment record. She added that the hardest consequences to measure may also be the most serious — those affecting people who are simply sitting at home waiting for support that has not arrived.
Whether DVR's waitlist will shorten enough to stabilize remaining local providers, and what options displaced clients have in the meantime, remains to be seen.