Faced with a $1 billion deficit over the next 18 months, Gov. Bill Ritter today proposed closing two prisons, slashing spending on education and furloughing state workers, who also wouldn’t get a pay increase next year.
That was the grim proposal Ritter’s office presented today for balancing the state budget in the 2009 fiscal year, which begins in July.
“These reductions, along with the latest unemployment figures released this morning, should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about the seriousness of the problems we face and of the collective effort it will take to chart a Colorado way forward,” Ritter said in a statement.
Ritter’s 2009-10 budget includes:
– a $125 million cut to K-12 education, largely through elimination of full-day kindergarten expansion and rollbacks in per-pupil funding;
– a three-year repeal of the homestead exemption, which is a property tax break for seniors, that would save an estimated $90 million per year;
– a $70 million cut for higher education;
– and savings of $60 million from the pay freeze for state employees.
Ritter’s budget also proposes state employees take five unpaid furlough days between July and June of 2010.
The governor also proposed closing the Rifle Correctional Center; a women’s correctional facility in Cañon City and a children’s therapeutic hospital in Pueblo.
