The Joint Budget Committee on Tuesday voted to dramatically scale back a request from the Governor for a state scholarship program that he mentioned in the 2015 State of the State address.

The JBC is in figure-setting this week for the 2015-16 budget. On Tuesday, the committee took up the budget for the Department of Higher Education. Gov. John Hickenlooper had asked for $30 million for the Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Initiative (COSI) for its second year of funding.

The scholarship fund was authorized through legislation passed in 2014. It is intended to launch a network of state-matched scholarship funds across Colorado. In the 2014 bill, House Bill 14-1384, the General Assembly okayed $34 million for the program, but with strong expectations that the program would generate matching funds. The scholarship is intended to help students counter the debt load they bear as they seek college degrees, especially low-income students.

According to a JBC staff analyst, while they believe the program has great value in the types of student success programs the scholarship would support, they were skeptical that the state would be able to generate the kind of money required. The staff analysis was based in part on the problems the state has had in generating money for other projects, such as the refurbishment of the Capitol dome, and other programs that were expected to be funded with “gift, grants and donations.”

Hickenlooper included the $30 million request for COSI in his budget request and mentioned it as a priority in his January State of the State address.

During their morning session Tuesday, the JBC voted to reject a staff request for $5 million for the program, far short of the $30 million sought by the governor. Tuesday afternoon, they revisited the program, and voted for $4 million for COSI. That’s on top of a $1 million base the program carries in to 2015-16.

“We do want to continue the program with some level of funding,” said JBC member Rep. Millie Hamner, D-Frisco. But the “jury is still out” on whether this program will draw money from the private sector, added JBC member Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver. “Let it attempt to prove itself.”

The funding supported for 2015-16 would allow the program to continue its first round of grants awarded last October, about $3.4 million. The grants are intended to be two year grants.

To date, according to the JBC, the program has gotten only a $1 million donation, to be funded over 10 years, from the Colorado Quarterly Forum. As a result, the JBC staff said it was too early to determine COSI’s likelihood of success or long-term sustainability, an issue that also troubled the JBC members. One million dollars is “not sustainable by itself,” according to JBC Chair Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs.

Tuesday afternoon, a Hickenlooper spokesperson said, “We still have a long way to go in the budget process and there is a lot more work to be done.”

— marianne@coloradostatesman.com