Ritter’s office says proposed GOP cuts bad timing
DENVER - A bipartisan attempt to stash millions of dollars as a hedge against a looming recession collapsed Wednesday, leaving Republicans crying foul and Democrats pointing to a new bipartisan bill they say will set aside far more money.
The bickering erupted before the Senate began debate on the 2008-09 budget and dominated the floor fight over changes to the proposed $17.6 billion budget.
Sen. Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, said lawmakers had worked out a deal Tuesday afternoon to set aside about $30 million to create a rainy day fund. He called it an attempt "to save for what we know is an inevitable recession and not spend every red cent we collect this year." Penry blamed Gov. Bill Ritter for nixing the deal.
The Governor's Office denies those charges. Spokesman Evan Dreyer said the start of a recession is exactly the wrong time to make the proposed Republican cuts to public safety, prisons, education and health care.
Democrats think the rainy day fund should be superseded by a bipartisan bill to be unveiled this morning that would tap into revenue earned from leasing mineral rights. The bill's Democratic sponsors say it could set aside upward of $671 million over 10 years, making the state much more financially secure than the Republican proposal could. Penry is among its Republican sponsors.
Republicans were unconvinced and spent the day trying to add amendments to the budget that would create an improvised rainy day fund from dozens of cuts.
It didn't work. Neither did a proposal for an across-the-board cut to set aside $118 million.
Sen. Andy McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, offered the measure so the state would have the money if it lost the pending lawsuit over whether the government can keep that amount after pushing through a mill levy freeze last session, which Senate Republicans think is illegal.
The changes that did pass were minor, and the Joint Budget Committee likely will reject them when it meets to approve the amendments added by the House and Senate.
The Republicans scored a token victory when they stripped $150,000 allocated to the Governor's Office to hire attorneys to defend the state in the property tax rate freeze lawsuit. The money is needed because Attorney General John Suthers has sided with fellow Republicans and can't represent the state. The money will instead be directed to paying for air response to wildfires.
A measure to give school lunch programs $850,000 to provide free lunches to more children narrowly passed.
Whether community colleges will be a winner or loser is yet to be determined. The Senate killed a House amendment to allocate $1.5 million to the schools. Instead, it passed a measure asking the Governor's Office to consider granting them $1.5 million.
BUDGET BUBBLES BURST
Approval of the state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, a process the Senate took up this week, means many programs will have extra funding assured. But because the Joint Budget Committee allocated only $2 million for bills that have yet to pass out of the Legislature this year, several hundred measures are competing for a relatively small pot of cash. Many sponsors are resigned, in fact, to see bills that passed out of other committees die at the hands of the House or Senate appropriations committees, the purse keepers of the General Assembly.
A look at three of the bills likely to die from lack of funding:
• House Bill 1219, Rep. Bob Gardner's plan to tag sexual predators on probation or parole with monitoring bracelets. Though the bill received unanimous approval from the House Judiciary Committee, the Colorado Springs Republican accepts its pending demise and said he will bring the proposal back next year.
• Senate Bill 125, co-sponsored by Monument GOP Rep. Amy Stephens, which would ban the sale of pornography to minors and make it a felony to use porn to lure minors before molesting them.
• Senate Bill 195, the effort to make people convicted of sexually assaulting a child under the age of 12 eligible for the death penalty.
- Ed Sealover The Gazette
