Tax Day carries added weight at the state Capitol this year, as the Senate prepares to take up the 2026‑27 budget on Wednesday following a day of preparations by both Republican and Democratic caucuses.

Senators are expected to raise some of the House amendments from last week’s debate, as well as their own ideas.

On Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee stripped all the amendments from House Bill 1410, the long appropriations bill. They also removed amendments from the “orbitals,” which are the bills that change state law to balance the budget.

That included what’s likely to be one of the most intense debates on Wednesday: House Bill 1411, the Cover All Coloradans bill that, as introduced, capped enrollment and spending on the program that provides health care to children and pregnant women living in the U.S. illegally.

The program, however, has spent more than four times its original estimate and is driving up health care costs in the state budget, since it is mostly funded by general fund money.

While Democrats talked strategy opening at the Capitol, Republicans held a closed-door caucus at the Independence Institute on Tuesday, with no public access or recording provided, raising concerns that the meeting may have violated the state’s open‑meetings law.

“We didn’t resolve the structural deficit, but we did address overspending,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R‑Brighton, who represents the caucus on the Joint Budget Committee.

She said she isn’t happy with the budget but that she co-sponsored the bill because it was the only way to balance it.

The general fund portion of the budget grew by about $300 million, from $18.3 million to $18.6 million, she said, and that’s driven primarily by Medicaid increases.

One issue Kirkmeyer highlighted is the proposal to reduce the state’s general fund reserve from 15% to 13%, as outlined in one of the orbitals. She linked the concern to Colorado’s historic drought and record-low snowpack, noting that the last time conditions were this severe, a recession soon followed. She said that’s exactly why the reserve exists — to help the state cover expenses during an economic downturn.

“It’s not an if but a when,” Kirkmeyer told the caucus, and it’s not going to get any easier next year, she added.

One of her passions, K-12 education, prompted concerns about the state education fund, which receives the tax money levied from Amendment 23, passed in 2000. That measure requires one-third of 1% of all taxable income to be deposited in the fund, but Kirkmeyer said the fund will likely be depleted in two years.

That pays for total program funding and categoricals, small attendance centers, services and instruction for English-language learners, special education, gifted and talented education, vocational education, and school transportation, according to the Colorado School Finance Project.

The JBC worked to protect K-12 funding, Kirkmery explained, but that meant the budget is being “balanced on the backs of the poorest among us and the medically fragile,” rather than on students’ backs, as was the case during the Great Recession of 2008.

Caucus members noted they’ve received emails from families who care for disabled relatives and whose funding for that care is being cut.

The Teacher Recruitment Education and Preparation program, which saw its final year of funding cut, may get a lifeline in Wednesday’s action, based on comments in the House last week. An amendment from Sens. Byron Pelton, R-Sterling and Janice Marchman, D-Loveland, will cover the final year for high school seniors enrolled in the program, which helps those students receive college credit in teacher education during high school with tuition paid for by the state.

The money, according to Pelton, will come from funds left over in an electric school bus grant program.

Another amendment from Sens. John Carson, R-Highlands Ranch and Marc Snyder, D-Colorado Springs, would put $3 million into the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority. An amendment in the House funded that program with $ 1.5 million each in general funds from the Department of Corrections superintendent program and from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s disease control and public health response division. 

The Snyder/Carson amendment, according to the Colorado Municipal League, will take the $3 million from a discretionary account within the Department of Corrections.

The full Senate is expected to dive into the budget debate on Wednesday.