The House Judiciary Committee this week signed off on a bill to reauthorize the state’s civil rights agency for another nine years, but chances the bill gets through the General Assembly in its current form are slim. And chances that the agency’s funding will be included the annual state budget when it is introduced on March 26 are also fading away.

The Joint Budget Committee deadlocked on a party-line 3-3 vote on Feb. 8 to fund the agency for 2018-19. The committee hasn’t taken up the matter since then, as Republicans in both chambers are waiting to see how House Democrats envision the commission’s future, as dictated in House Bill 1256.

The Colorado Division of Civil Rights, which includes the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, are up for reauthorization in the 2018 session, the result of a “sunset review,” which requires certain state agencies to be reviewed on a periodic basis to see if they are still effective and needed. The Department of Regulatory Agencies’ Office of Policy, Research and Regulatory Reform recommended the division and commission continue for another nine years, until 2027. The review had other recommendations, but the judiciary committee instead signed off on a “clean” bill, with only the reauthorization. That’s in hopes that it would have an easier time of passing the Republican-controlled Senate, where some members want to see changes in the commission’s makeup and authority.

The judiciary committee voted 10-1 on Tuesday to send the bill on to the House Appropriations Committee. The bill could be heard in that committee as soon as Friday and move on to the floor of the House for debate next week. That means the bill could hit the Senate, where changes await, right about the same time the Long Appropriations Bill is introduced in the House.

The rules require the Long Bill to be out by Monday, March 26, although those rules can be amended with permission if the JBC needs more time. So far, however, the Long Bill is on schedule, according to JBC members.

Should the budget bill come out without funding for the agency, there are a couple of options, JBC members say. One is an amendment to the Long Bill to fund the agency, but Republican Rep. Bob Rankin of Carbondale said that could require a cut somewhere else in order to keep the budget balanced.

JBC Chair Rep. Millie Hamner, a Dillon Democrat, said she’s very concerned “about moving into a budget that doesn’t have the million dollars we need” to continue the civil rights agency. The agency continuation should not be part of final budget-balancing negotiations, she explained. “It’s too important an issue to fall into that category.”

Hamner said she hopes the JBC can reach some compromise on the issue next week before the budget is introduced.

But if that doesn’t happen, Rankin and fellow JBC member and Republican Sen. Kevin Lundberg of Berthoud both suggested the JBC could put the agency’s funding into what’s known as a “set aside,” which is usually a pot of money reserved for bills working their way through the process and that require funding. Traditionally, the programs tied to those bills cannot be funded in the state budget until the bill is signed into law by by the governor.

The funding needs to be available, Rankin told Colorado Politics. “We all definitely believe there should be a civil rights commission and division,” Rankin said. “We just don’t agree on what it should look like.”

Lundberg said the agency could be put back into the budget through an amendment to the Long Bill, so long as the JBC had already voted to set aside the necessary dollars. That would prevent cutting in other areas and ensure the budget remains balanced. Lundberg said he doesn’t know of anyone who doesn’t want to see the commission funded. “I want to see the commission with proper guardrails so it can really do its jobs as its been statutorily defined for decades.”

“I do trust that both houses can come to some reasonable accommodation of the concerns we have over the commission,” Lundberg said. But “if the House wants to take a hard line view on this, now we’ll have a problem.”

This week, the JBC is wrapping up much of its work on the 2018-19 state budget. On Monday, the committee will receive quarterly revenue forecasts from the governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting and the legislature’s own economists. That’s one of the last steps before introducing the budget bill.