The 66th General Assembly opened this morning, with Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald urging state senators to make the most of the 120-day session, to “make every drop count.”
Fitz-Gerald, D-Jefferson County, listed four priorities for the Senate:
Developing renewable energy sources;
Funding higher education, in particular preschools and CU’s school of medicine;
Lowering the cost of health care;
And attacking the pine beetle infestation in the forests, which she fears is creating a potential disaster for watersheds and forest fires.
She reminded the Senate that money is still very tight this session, despite voters passing Referendum C, which eased the spending caps imposed by the TABOR Amendment.
“We have stopped the hemorrhaging from the state budget,” she said in a prepared speech. “But we are under no illusions that we are now overflowing with money. We are still stretched very thin, and as we did last year, we must practice extreme fiscal responsibility.”
She set the goal of encouraging investments in renewable energy to the point where renewable energy sources will provide at least 20 percent of the state’s total energy use.
To that end, she said she is establishing the Senate Select Committee on Colorado’s Energy Future. “There is a moral imperative for us to do our share in reducing our contribution to global warming as well as contribute another component to Colorado’s economy,” she said.
Moving on to higher education, Fitz-Gerald said 81 faculty positions remain unfilled because of budget cutbacks, as well as one third of library materials that were cut. Funding of CU’s Health Sciences Center was cut by 40 percent the past few years. “As a result, our medical school places 73rd out of 75 public medical schools for public funding,” she said.
On health care, she said much progress was made last year by supporting community health centers and eliminating waitlists for disabled children.
“This year, we need to provide immediate relief from skyrocketing drug costs,” she said. “We are introducing legislation to give the state power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices and allow bulk purchasing by the state.”
She called the pine beetle devastation “one of the most unique challenges we face this session. This dead timber presents a potential disaster for our watersheds, which includes the water systems for the Front Range. The dead trees increase the risk for catastrophic forest fires,” she said.
