With the Senate’s traditional Budget Day barbecue setting a lighter tone, lawmakers worked through the $46.8 billion state budget Wednesday, navigating a long list of amendments but avoiding the partisan clashes that defined the House debate last week.

The Senate first moved through 44 of the 64 “orbitals,” which are bills that adjust state law to help balance the budget. Senators approved them through the consent calendar, a process that skips debate for measures deemed noncontroversial. That determination was made by the Senate Appropriations Committee, which reviewed the orbital bills on Tuesday.

The remaining 20 orbitals sparked more debate and were kept off the consent calendar.

A state program that supports teacher recruitment, education, and preparation, which pays high schools to cover postsecondary coursework for students planning to become teachers, received a lifeline through an amendment sponsored by Sens. Byron Pelton, R‑Sterling, and Janice Marchman, D‑Loveland.

The program is slated for elimination in the 2026-27 budget, but the funding approved Wednesday would allow currently enrolled seniors to finish their final year. 

One of the big issues for the Senate on Wednesday was proposed cuts to caretaker hours for those who care for family members with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The proposed budget, known as the long bill, intended to cut the hours to 56 per week. Currently, there is no cap on those hours, according to JBC member Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village.

There’s also a waitlist for caregiver services. That waitlist, according to Sen. Lisa Frizell, R-Castle Rock, is seven years. 

Through House Bill 1357, Frizell won approval to take $7.1 million from the cash fund for the governor’s Office of Information Technology, to fully fund family caregiver hours at the current level and eliminate the wait list. It would also require an accompanying change in the budget bill, also approved by the Senate on Wednesday.

Fritzell noted that the Office of Information Technology cash fund had a balance of nearly $62 million and, even after other transfers, is projected to retain more than $45 million in 2027–28.

“I don’t believe these large fund balances should sit idle” when critical care services are needed, Frizell told the Senate. 

The Cover all Coloradans bill, HB 1411, which faced a lengthy debate in the House last week, wasn’t changed by the Senate. Cover all Coloradans is a program providing healthcare to children and pregnant women living in the U.S. illegally.

Progressive Democrats in the House backed an amendment to remove an enrollment cap on the program that serves undocumented children and pregnant women. But that amendment was stripped by the Senate Appropriations Committee, and an effort to restore that funding, as well as restore dental services, failed.

Moving on to the full long bill, the Senate approved four House amendments, including a separate line item in the Department of Corrections budget for special needs parole and a new line item for contracts with private nursing homes.

Both line items had a $1 placeholder on the bill. 

The amendment would address one of the problems plaguing the corrections department, which wants to contract with private nursing homes to house aging inmates approved for parole with complex medical issues.

Another House amendment, from Sen. Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, would reduce the governor’s mansion maintenance fund by $74,654 in cash funds and move that money to the Colorado State Veterans Fund. It also succeeded.

The governor’s budget was also tapped for $400,000 to increase the funding for the Tony Grampsas Youth Services Program in the Department of Human Services. This program is a perennial favorite of lawmakers and was named after the former Golden lawmaker who served on the Joint Budget Committee, including three times as its chair, in the 1980s and 1990s. 

A House amendment, from Sen. Matt Ball, D-Denver, to allocate $300,000 in general funds to the Veterans Treatment Courts within the judicial department, was added to the bill.

The amendment achieved the same goal as a similar House amendment but relied on a different funding source: unspent money from a grant program that helps school districts buy electric buses.

Sen. Iman Jodeh, D-Aurora, won support for $680,000 in Medicaid premium assistance. That amendment deals with the estimated increase Denver Health would need to implement federal budget cuts. 

“Women over wolves,” said Sen. Larry Liston, R-Colorado Springs, as he introduced an amendment to take $2.1 million in general funds from wildlife operations in the Department of Natural Resources. 

The amendment would direct those funds to obstetrical care within the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to address the growing problem of dwindling obstetrical service availability throughout rural Colorado.

The amendment also took out an earlier footnote put into the long bill restricting Colorado Parks and Wildlife from using anything other than cash funds, including gifts, grants and donations, to pay for wolf acquisition.

Previous amendments to the long bill, as well as a bill in the August 2025 special session, restricted a far smaller amount of general funds, around $264,000, which is what CPW said they spent to acquire wolves from British Columbia in January 2025. 

The $2.1 million taken from DNR is the entire general funds appropriation for 2026-27 for the wolf reintroduction program; in addition to acquisition, those dollars also pay for conflict-minimization efforts. 

An amendment to allocate $500,000 in general funds to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to accelerate its backlog of DNA samples by contracting with outside labs also won support. The amendment, from Sen. Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, takes the money from the governor’s Office of Economic Incentives and Marketing. 

Sens. John Carson, R-Highlands Ranch, and Marc Snyder, D-Colorado Springs, teamed up on an amendment to put $3 million into the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority, using general funds from a superintendent’s program in the Department of Corrections. The amendment is similar to one added to the long bill by the House.

Republicans also tried, but failed, to cut funding for the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and to halt the state from paying for abortions.

Then came an amendment from Sen. Byron Pelton proposing to remove the Department of Public Health and Environment from the state budget entirely.

Pelton told the Senate his amendment would save the state $856 million, including $132 million in general fund spending, and cut 1,866 full‑time equivalent positions. Local health departments should handle public health in their own counties, he argued.

“I love, er, loathe this amendment,” said JBC member Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village. “I’m sure there’s things that CDPHE does that’s important for your districts.” 

A second amendment from Pelton regarding CDPHE would restore the agency’s funding to its level prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, stripping $69.4 million in general funds.

Both amendments failed. 

Pelton also introduced an amendment to stop all funding for Front Range Passenger Rail until Colorado’s Rural Pavement Condition ranking improves to 45th in the nation. According to the Reason Foundation, Colorado’s rural roads currently rank 47th, while its urban roads rank 45th.

Pelton pointed out that in 2022, the Colorado Department of Transportation announced it would spend $940 million on rural road repaving over a 10-year period, funded by Senate Bill 21-260, which set up several enterprises to pay for transportation projects, primarily multimodal.

The CDOT press release in 2022 said the agency would spend $382 million to improve rural roads in 55 counties in the program’s first four years.

On Thursday, the Senate is expected to vote on the long bill and its 64 orbitals. After that, the bills go back to the Joint Budget Committee, which will serve as the conference committee to resolve differences between the versions passed in the House and Senate.