If the state legislature does little more than it has to – passing a budget and a School Finance Act – when they’re able to reconvene, that’s still going to be a heavy lift, legislative leaders said Wednesday afternoon.

Next year’s budget will be $2 billion to $3 billion less than last year, and the pain in government services and employees could be painful, if the federal government doesn’t step in.

RELATED: Legislative leaders discuss returning to Denver on May 18

Five weeks away from the tentative resumption, May 18, there’s no telling how deep the state’s revenues will plunge or whether another federal stimulus package materializes.

“We want to see in the next month what other federal legislation gets passed, what resources the state has, how we may need to respond, how much legislation there really is,” House Speaker KC Becker, a Democrat from Boulder, told reporters on a call Wednesday afternoon. “When you’re making two to three billion dollars in cuts to a budget, that has impacts all over the state to all types of groups, and that makes it a really hard budget to pass. 

“We’re going to need some time to work through those issues.”

Senate President Leroy Garcia, a Democrat from Pueblo, said lawmakers have to have a “day-by-day, week-by-week approach on many of these issues.”

The School Finance Act annually passes a week or two after the budget, but this year they will run close to the budget timeline. Cuts in per-pupil funding could be severe, after teachers have marched on the Capitol for years seeking pay raises.

“The unknown is where the federal dollars are going to fill those gaps,” Becker said.

Depending on where federal money is available to backfill the budget elsewhere, lawmakers might be able to backfill education, she suggested.

“There’s a lot of unknowns and that’s another reason why pushing out coming back into session was the smart thing to do,” Becker said. “The world has changed in so many ways, of course, and one of those ways is the impact to state programs and services and how is the federal government filling those gaps.”

The legislative leaders from both parties agreed on savings of their own: keeping salaries flat, eliminating the travel budget, reducing job positions that are open, suspending interim committees and holding off on planned improvements.

A bill to do that is expected in the Senate, when lawmakers return, to cut the overall legislative budget.

“We want to make sure we’re keeping things flat, but also looking to find savings where we can to reduce the cost, because it’s basically the conversation we’re going to be having with everybody, and we shouldn’t be any different,” said Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, referring to all state agencies.