Budget omits footnotes

DENVER - Gov. Bill Ritter signed his first budget Wednesday, emphasizing the help it offers higher education and reducing prison recidivism, but rejecting 81 footnotes drafted by lawmakers on how to spend money.

The $17.8 billion spending plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1 is largely the same one drawn up by former Republican Gov. Bill Owens at the beginning of this year. Ritter, a Democrat, pushed for more money in a few areas, however.

One was in efforts to reduce the inmates who return to prison — about 50 percent in Colorado are back behind bars within three years.

Ritter added $8.1 million for mental-health and substanceabuse programs and for diversion initiatives, hoping help in those areas will get to the heart of why people reoffend.

Also, Ritter pushed for an 8.5 percent increase in financial aid for higher education, a bump of $7.4 million from last year.

The “long bill,” as Senate Bill 239 is known, also caps tuition increases for low- and middle-income Coloradans at 5 percent.

“We care that this document reflects who we are as a people . . . that we are fiscally responsible but that we invest in people,” Ritter said during a signing ceremony at the Capitol.

As Owens did before him, Ritter took a knife to the majority of the footnotes instructing departments or offices how to spend revenue, saying it violated the separation of powers between branches of government or added substantive legislation to the budget, he said.

Ritter also signed a bill Wednesday that allocates $700,000 for a management study of how to make government more efficient. He hopes suggestions from the study will be applied to the fiscal year 2008-09 budget and save millions of dollars.

Before the ink was dry on the long bill, however, the Legislature was changing some allocations. Senate Bill 222, approved by the House on a 38-26 vote Wednesday, moves $30 million into capital construction from a fund that had been shared between construction and transportation needs.

A bipartisan group of legislators argued it’s foolish to take money from roads when there’s an enormous backlog.

A larger bipartisan group said that without such a capital development transfer, which had been as large as $100 million four years ago, the state’s college buildings will deteriorate to the point where they need replacement rather than maintenance.

Because of the transfer, which backers say has the governor’s approval, the COSMIX roadwork in El Paso County could lose several million dollars, but the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs will be able to undertake a $467,000 water-pipe replacement project.

KEY POINTS

Significant parts of the fiscal year 2007-08 budget signed Wednesday by Gov. Bill Ritter:

$774.2 million for capital projects, including a new Colorado State Veterans Center at Homelake and replacement of the computer system connecting many agencies with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s Colorado Crime Information System

$313 million increase in funding for kindergarten through 12th grade

$8.1 million increase for recidivism reduction

$7.4 million increase for financial aid for higher education

$1.4 million increase to provide community mental health services to about 446 children and adults with mental illness