Colorado state budget lands with a $30.5 billion price tag | Premium | coloradopolitics.com

Colorado state budget lands with a $30.5 billion price tag

Colorado state budget lands with a $30.5 billion price tag

• Marianne Goodland, Colorado Politics
• Mar 25, 2019 Updated 2 hrs ago

Colorado's 2019-20 budget -- all 626 pages of it -- was introduced in the state Senate Monday.

The budget legislation -- Senate Bill 207, from the legislature's Joint Budget Committee -- adds up to $30.5 billion. Notable within the 2019-20 spending plan:

• $185 million for free full-day kindergarten, a top priority for Gov. Jared Polis, but that's about $42 million less than he had requested.
• $77 million for the budget stabilization factor, a debt owed to K-12 education dating back to 2010 that at its highest point in 2012-13 was $1 billion. With the $77 million, the debt drops down to just around $595 million.
• $10 million to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for continued implementation of the state water plan.
• A pay bump of $66,640 for Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera for her dual role as Lt. Gov. and as director of the Office of Saving People Money on Health Care. Her pay bump makes her better paid than the governor, who will be paid $123,193 in 2019. The lieutenant governor's base salary is $93,360.
• The statutory reserve increases from $813.7 million to $874.7 million but stays the same at 7.25 percent of the state's general fund budget. Many economists believe Colorado's statutory reserve, a kind of rainy-day fund that would cover budget shortfalls during a recession, is inadequate. Last year, the Pew Charitable Trust said Colorado's reserve would cover only about 21 days of state operations. To weather an especially bad recession like the one in 2008, the state should have about $2 billion in its rainy day fund, according to a study four years ago from George Mason University. 

RELATED: Colorado reserves would last just three weeks in a recession, says report

The 2019-20 general fund grew by $437 million over the 2018-19 budget. The state's total budget grew by just over $1 billion, or about 3.7 percent. 

As has been the case for years, the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which covers Medicaid, would receive the largest chunk of the budget, at $10.6 billion. That includes $6.038 billion in federal funds.

Education is next, at $5.8 billion, with $4.1 billion coming from the state's general fund, which is made up primarily of corporate and individual income tax and sales tax. 

Higher education is next on the list, with $4.867 billion, although more than half of that is cash funds, which mostly come from tuition paid by Colorado students. 

The Department of Transportation is slated to receive $2.1 billion, with $621 million coming from federal funds. But transportation projects are expected to get only $30 million from the general fund, far short of CDOT's $9 billion wishlist for road and bridge repairs over the next decade. 

On Tuesday, the Senate is expected to break into caucuses to discuss amendments. Wednesday, the Senate is expected to debate the budget bill with a final vote possibly by Thursday. The bill would then head over to the House for its portion of the process.

The budget excludes some double-counting that lawmakers insist on doing every year that relates to what's known as re-appropriated funds -- money that one state agency pays to another, for example.