Colorado’s budget is delayed by one week and won’t be introduced in the Senate on Monday as expected, giving the Joint Budget Committee more time to go through proposals to balance the state’s estimated $1.2 billion dollar shortfall.
The state constitution requires the legislature to pass a balanced budget. This year, the budget committee decided to go with the rosier economic forecast from the Governor’s office of state planning and budgeting, rather than the non-partisan legislative council’s projection.
But the bipartisan committee still needs to make final decisions on big items such as spending for higher education and Medicaid. Spending for K-12 schools will be decided as part of the school finance act, after lawmakers pass the budget.
One K-12 item the budget committee does have to address is the voter approved healthy meals for all program which will cost $50 million. Meanwhile, a separate bill is moving through the legislature to send a question to the ballot to ask voters for more money for the program, which provides free breakfast and lunch to K-12 students regardless of income.
“What's way off is the demand and that particularly among the students who don't qualify for free and reduced lunch, that's just gone up astronomically,” said Amanda Bickel, a Chief Legislative Analyst who was briefing the budget committee on the issue.
The budget committee also needs to determine how to handle the voter-approved measure that requires the state to put $350 million in a fund to recruit, train and retain law enforcement officers. Governor Polis had proposed setting aside that money this year, which the budget committee was reluctant to do.
The committee has made some final decisions, though. They agreed not to sell Pinnacol Assurance, the quasi-governmental workers compensation insurer of last resort. As part of his budget proposal, Polis recommended privatizing it to help fill the budget shortfall. Committee members said more details would need to be worked out, but seemed open to considering it in the future.
“I know that a lot of my colleagues think that the longer we hold onto this, the more valuable it will become,” said budget committee member, Democratic Sen. Judy Amabile of Boulder, who doesn’t think the asset will appreciate over time.
“And in fact the longer we wait, the less it might be worth to the state and to our general fund.”
Even though the state has a budget shortfall, the economy is growing, just not fast enough to keep up with expenses in areas like Medicaid, which make up a large part of the state budget. Costs and demand for services like in-home care have increased. Colorado also faces budget constraints under TABOR, limiting growth to inflation plus population growth.
The budget process is the culmination of months of work from non-partisan staff and the six members of the budget committee, three members from each chamber, and 4 Democrats and 2 Republicans. Once the bill is introduced, the committee will field dozens of amendments from lawmakers as they defend their proposal.
“We have gone through and really top to bottom soup to nuts, looked at everything that we can see in these departments, identified programs where we can give a haircut and not dramatically impact services,” said the JBC Chair, Sen. Jeff Bridges of Greenwood Village.
And despite the tough budget year, he said some cuts were easier to make than others. He noted the state’s $500,000 investment to improve energy efficiency for marijuana grows.
“Cool, great way to decarbonize, but not what we're going to spend half a million a year on, in this kind of budget situation. Unfortunately, there's not 1,999 other examples just like this.”
