Gov. Bill Ritter on Friday proposed filling a $600 million hole in the current year’s budget by cutting spending across a wide range of programs, draining cash funds and borrowing against the state’s savings account.
The cuts, which still must be hammered out with lawmakers, would mean more delayed construction projects on college campuses, reduced spending for public schools and at least a temporary abandonment of plans to expand health care for poor children.
In a written statement, Ritter said his proposals reflected efforts to preserve “safety-net obligations, and that we try to preserve much of the progress we’ve made in areas such as higher education the past two years.”
“Colorado’s budget has always been frugal and tight, and our options are much more limited than during the last recession,” Ritter said. “But we must work together in a bipartisan fashion as we ask everyone to make sacrifices in order to protect vital services and core functions.”
Economic forecasters predicted in December that the state would fall $604 million short of the budget lawmakers approved last session for the current fiscal year, which ends in June. They also predicted the state would see a $385 million hole in the next fiscal year.
Ritter’s budget staff unveiled its plan to balance the current year’s budget before a meeting Friday of thelegislature’s Joint Budget Committee.
In the last recession earlier in the decade, lawmakers used some shrewd accounting maneuvers and more than $1 billion from cash funds to balance the budget. With many of those cash funds having never been fully replenished, the governor’s office is calling for using just $207 million from cash funds.
The plan calls for $201.1 million in spending and program cuts, $289.7 million in transfers from cash funds and changes to existing laws that would save the state money, and using $134.1 million from the state’s reserve fund.
Todd Saliman, Ritter’s budget director, told the panel the plan tried to fairly distribute the pain.
Ritter’s proposal calls for cutting $30 million from the amount appropriated to colleges and universities last year. That decrease, however, still will leave higher education with a $30 million increase in the current year’s budget.
And Ritter’s office, which had already frozen 12 campus construction projects worth $51.2 million, said it would delay another 64 projects for a savings of $43.4 million.
The cuts also include $48.3 million from K-12 schools, an amount that still allows the state to comply with Amendment 23 requirements that education spending increase every year. The proposed cuts would take $34.5 million from capital construction projects for full-day kindergarten, $4.9 million from charter-school construction projects, $1.8 million from teacher-recruitment programs and $973,000 from summer- school programs.
Ritter also proposed reducing a benefit to businesses that lets them keep a portion of the sales taxes their customers pay as compensation for the costs of collecting the tax and remitting it to the state. Ritter proposes capping the amount businesses can keep from sales taxes at no more than $5,000, a move that would bring the state $12.8 million.
The governor’s plan also proposes shifting $11.9 million in casino revenues to the general fund. The plan would cut in half the funding for tourism, to $10.4 million, and leave $1.6 million for new-job incentives, $823,647 for arts funding and $329,459 for film incentives.
