Colorado Speaker of the House Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Gunbarrel, on Monday introduced a bill to remake the state’s hospital provider fee in order to free up millions of dollars for the state budget. The Speaker had threatened to introduce the proposal for months and, absent the bill itself, the merits of the proposal had been debated in theory for just as long.

Majority Republicans in the state Senate have lined up against the idea — all of them save one, that is, dependable maverick Sen. Larry Crowder, R-Alamosa, who the Speaker announced is now sponsoring her bill in the upper chamber.

“I’ve made no secret of where I stand on this issue, so my sponsorship of this bill shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” Crowder said in a news release. “Having my name on the bill helps ensure that I can advocate on behalf of my district while also giving me a stronger hand in how the bill is crafted as we move through the process. It’s a sign of Republican strength and character that we’re able to respectfully differ on such issues. I appreciate the willingness of my colleagues to understand the importance of this issue to hospitals in my district.”

House Bill 1420 will be known as the CHASE bill, an acronym for the Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise, a new entity that the bill would create.

Hullinghorst said that, if the bill were to become law, it would keep state revenues under the spending cap put in place by the Taxpayer Bill of Rights for up to eight years and make hundreds of millions of dollars available for budget priorities such as education and transportation.

“There’s also a bill that would provide for restoration of budget cuts from this budget and accountability in terms of setting priorities and parameters about how that money will be spent if in fact we end up with additional revenues by the September forecast,” Hullinghorst added.

She said the bill would immediately restore approximately $73 million in fees collected by Colorado hospitals and that those fees would bring an additional $73 million in matching funds provided by the federal government.

The Speaker said she has been talking about the bill with Senate Republican leaders but that she wasn’t optimistic that lawmakers this year could break the “stalemate” that has set in around the idea.

“We’ve been talking since the beginning of the session, and before that, about what things we might be able to do to get together on a hospital provider fee bill,” Hullinghorst said. “There didn’t seem to be any ability to identify what would be a compromise.”

Hullinghorst said she remained committed to discussing how the state should best spend any additional budget revenue the bill might generate in order to make sure Republican spending priorities were addressed.

— ramsey@coloradostatesman.com