Colorado’s lawmakers sent a $38.5 billion spending plan to Gov. Jared Polis on April 21, the culmination of months of work by a small group of legislators who ultimately succeeded in persuading their colleagues to adopt the budget.

That small group – Sens. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, and Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, and Reps. Shannon Bird, D-Westminster, Emily Sirota, D-Denver, and Rod Bockenfeld, R-Watkins, plus the chair, Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada – had hunkered down since November of last year to craft a proposal palatable to lawmakers and ultimately to the governor.

Tensions between the governor’s office and the Joint Budget Committee, as well as between legislators and the JBC are inevitable when crafting a spending plan, particularly because the state budget is the most visible expression of policymakers’ values.

And those fights often attract the media’s spotlight. 

Behind the scenes, however, legislators and the governor’s office ultimately figured out a way to cobble together a spending proposal that draws in just enough support from just enough people to pass.

To do so, JBC had to navigate through landmines big and small.  

Provider rates

One of JBC’s trickiest tasks was reconciling the governor’s requests and the legislature’s priorities against the backdrop of dwindling aid from the federal government, which meant increasing spending out of the state’s own coffers.  

For several members, increasing provider rates became one of the biggest differences between what the governor asked for and what the committee settled on. It was also the very first topic the JBC voted on when it began figure-setting for the budget.

The governor’s budget sought a 3% increase for providers in every area except those under the Department Health Care Policy and Financing. There, the governor recommended just 0.5%.

Providers are contracted by the state to offer a variety of services that the state would otherwise have to cover, such as behavioral health, family and independent living services or veterans services, as well as payments to private prisons.

“If we’re not compensating people who are willing to serve our most vulnerable, we will not have those people willing to serve the most vulnerable,” Bird said.

HCPF’s providers, however, make up more than half of what the state spends on providers. But Zenzinger and others said such a low rate was not acceptable, as provider rates have not kept pace with inflation.

“We have to be able to close that gap through the provider rate,” Zenzinger said, calling the increase “historic.”

JBC ultimately ended up pushing for a 3% across-the-board increase for providers.

Both Bird, who is considered a centrist, and Sirota, who is regarded as a progressive, pointed to the same thing – the proposed 5% across the board pay hike for state employees.

“Our state has not kept pace with offering its employees a competitive compensation package,” said Bird.

Sirota said public employees and the administration have worked hard over the last couple years to come to an agreement on how to address the pay challenges. It’s become more and more difficult to recruit and retain state employees in certain positions, she said, so that increase will help support the people who make the state run.

Small funding, big impact 

While not attracting as much media spotlight, committee members also pushed for programs or services that, in the grand scheme of things, require little funding to produce a big impact.

For Zenzinger, it’s via adult education, which received just $1 million per year, or about $2 per head. This is a program for those who do not have a high school diploma or other credential, which applies to about 450,000 Coloradans.

The JBC bumped up the funding to $3 million total.

That might not seem like much, but Zenzinger said ensuring adult Coloradans get education credentials will give them opportunities to achieve their dreams. In multiple ways, an education is a ticket out of poverty, she said, adding that, in the long run, she said, it does the state a lot of good.

A virtual reality career training equipment for inmates in the Department of Corrections – at a cost of $784,000 – met Bird’s criteria. The equipment is part of career training in fields, such as manufacturing, electrical work, and other trade skills. It’s a pilot program, but one that will prepare inmates for job opportunities after life prison, which, Bird said, would reduce recidivism rates.

Bird also pointed to JBC’s recommendation to not require Medicaid patients to pay copays.

“It will still save the state money because if people get the preventive care that they need or just the care that they need and the copay isn’t a barrier, that’s going to save us money and paying higher health cost,” Bird said. 

More support for veterans’ service centers, a boost of about $120,000, struck a chord with Bridges.

That extra money will help draw down federal dollars to the benefit of those who served the country, not to mention how it would help veterans navigate a labyrinth of services, he said.

“It’s our duty as a state” to make sure veteran centers have the staffers to help them with that process, Bridges said. “It’s a weird fight to pick, but the impact this will have on the lives of veterans is huge.”

For Sirota, putting money into “doula” services, which help pregnant women and those who have given birth and who are enrolled in Medicaid, would make a large impact with small funding.

Having a doula leads to positive birth outcomes, with the support that a mother and child needs to have healthy pregnancies and births, she said.

The Office of School Safety was Kirkmeyer’s favorite, a new program that pulls together other existing grant programs and sets up a critical response unit and threat assessment team that would lift the burden off of schools and even local governments.

“It gets back to allowing students and kids to be in a safe environment to learn. And teachers being able to teach in a safe environment,” she said. 

A glitch 

Not everything went perfectly.

Once the main spending bill went through the entire process, a small $10,000 typo was found in the budget for the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing. 

Initially, JBC members raised concerns that typo, contained in the conference committee report, would mean sending Senate Bill 214 – the main budget measure – back to the General Assembly with an elaborate unwinding of several actions in order fix the error, including reversing the final votes. 

However, in an April 19 meeting, Carolyn Kampman, the JBC director, told the committee members they had two options to fix it. The option they chose, called a correction schedule, and related to clear typographical errors, would allow the Revisor of Statutes, a representative from legal services and the Secretary of the Senate to verify a clerical error had taken place, although without actually changing the typo, and send the bill on to the governor.

The error will have to be addressed, but that doesn’t have to take place now and can be done through a budget supplemental in 2024, according to Kampman.

A second issue arose out of the governor’s signing statement on one of the “orbital” bills, which are a set of several dozen measures that accompany the Long Bill and help balance the budget.

Gov. Jared Polis on Monday notified lawmakers he would allow Senate Bill 234 to become law without his signature.

The bill would end advance payments for premiums for the state employee family and medical leave insurance (FAMLI) coverage. Once the fund that provides those payments reaches $100 million, which is expected sometime in 2023-24, the state treasurer would transfer $35 million to another cash fund, which would be used to balance the budget.

In his signing statement, Polis said he realized the bill is necessary to balance the budget.

The governor’s office surmised that, when all is said and done, the measure does not threaten the “actuarial soundness of the FAMLI Fund.”

But Polis said he believes the bill “undercuts benefit for state employees and reduces slightly the impact of the historic pay adjustments for state employees,” and, as contained in the contract between state employees and Colorado WINS, the state employee union.

In addition, Polis said, “This legislation also dictates how the state, as an employer, provides benefits to employees for the 2023-24 fiscal year, which should be within the realm of the executive.”