The House finished its work on the 2015-16 budget Thursday, returning it to the Joint Budget Committee to work out differences with the Senate version.

But last-minute drama could have sent the budget back $20 million out of balance.

The annual budget bill passed on a 45-20 vote Thursday morning. Eleven Republicans voted for the 2015-16 budget along with the House’s 34 Democrats.

The day before, the House went on a bit of spending spree, approving a dozen amendments to the $26.4 billion budget.

The amendment with the biggest price tag put $5 million in general funds to pay for long-acting reversible contraception in a program administered by the Department of Public Health and Environment. The program runs in 68 clinics across the state, providing devices such as IUDs to low-income women. Last year, Gov. John Hickenlooper noted the teen birth rate in Colorado had dropped 40 percent between 2009 and 2013, a decrease he attributed in part to the LARC program.

The LARC amendment had the bipartisan sponsorship of Reps. K.C. Becker, D-Boulder,+ and Don Coram, R-Montrose. They sponsor a separate bill on that issue that is awaiting House action.

Seven of the 12 amendments that passed Wednesday had bipartisan sponsorship. That included a $1 million boost to the Governor’s Office of Film, TV and Media, obtained by moving money out of the tourism office. Another $1 million in general funds was put toward repairs to the Southwest Chief Rail Line, which runs through Lamar, LaJunta and Trinidad.

When the House finished its work Wednesday, the budget’s $10.8 billion in general funds had grown by $6.635 million. But the budget isn’t out of balance. The Joint Budget Committee set aside $18.5 million to cover bills coming out of the House and Senate appropriations committees and for the workforce development package. Those dollars can be tapped if necessary.

But the most intense debate of the day was on taking $20 million from severance taxes to help balance the budget.

JBC Vice-chair Rep. Millie Hamner, D-Dillon, said taking the $20 million was not her favorite thing to do, but if the bill, Senate Bill 255, fails, the JBC will face tough decisions in order to balance the budget. “I know it is painful, but 20 million is a small, proportional reduction.”

As it did in the Senate, SB 255 got strong opposition from county and municipal governments as well as rural lawmakers.

These dollars pay for infrastructure and water projects in some of the poorest counties in the state, Rep. Ed Vigil, D-Alamosa, told his House colleagues. “I don’t think we need to take this from the poorest communities in Colorado to balance the state budget,” he said.

Rep. Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, said 200 communities across the state would be directly affected with the $20 million loss. “We proved with the [budget] amendments that there is money in this budget” and the JBC can find this money elsewhere, he said.

Vote counting on SB 255 went on throughout Wednesday, with indications that the vote was too close to call. Several rural Democrats indicated they would vote against SB 255, including Vigil and Rep. Diane Mitsch Bush, D-Steamboat Springs

On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Janak Joshi, R-Colorado Springs, voted in favor of the bill in appropriations. Hoping to see a united Republican caucus, leaders worked throughout the day to persuade members to hold together and vote the bill down. That led to an evening visit from Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, the JBC’s chair, to convince House Republicans to vote for SB 255.

Sources told The Colorado Statesman that higher education representatives also worked to persuade Republicans to vote for SB 255, fearing capital construction project funding was at risk. They pointed to efforts by the University of Colorado to protect one of the last projects included in the budget, $9.6 million in general funds for a visual and performing arts complex at CU-Colorado Springs.

During Thursday’s debate, Democratic leadership delayed the vote on the capital construction bill in the budget package until after the severance tax bill had been voted on.

In the end, the vote wasn’t that close. SB 255 passed 37-28, with Colorado Springs Republicans Joshi and Terri Carver voting in favor with three other Republicans. CU-Colorado Springs is in Joshi’s district.

After the vote, Rep. Jon Becker blamed CU. “We could have gotten this had [the caucus] held. CU-Colorado Springs has a construction project at the bottom of the list that they were threatened with. That’s not where this money would have come from.”

“CU did a disservice to rural Colorado today,” he said.

Marianne@coloradostatesman.com