DENVER—Lawmakers who oversee the state budget are recommending that Colorado count on about $100 million it expects to get in extra Medicaid funding to help balance this year’s budget.
Members of the Joint Budget Committee voted Wednesday to back the move. Colorado is expected to get the money as part of the federal stimulus package being worked out in Congress.
The committee also endorsed taking $150 million from the state’s reserve account, leaving $150 million behind.
The goal is to cut a total of $600 million from this year’s budget because tax revenue is expected to drop because of the recession. The committee still has to find another $3 million in cuts to get there.
Starting next week, their recommendations will be debated in the Senate and the House, where lawmakers could make more changes.
The budget committee has also endorsed taking more than $200 million from more than two dozen funds set up to pay for specific programs, such as breast and cervical cancer treatment and water quality improvements. It’s not clear yet how those fund reductions will affect the services they support.
The committee has also backed a hiring freeze and cutting merit increases for state employees this year, but not furloughs. Next year, they’re considering wiping out cost-of-living adjustment.
Members also want to cut $5 million set aside for charter school construction.
The committee has been bombarded with requests to reconsider their countless decisions to cut here and there.
On Wednesday, Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, appealed to members to reconsider a decision to cut overtime for water commissioners responsible for enforcing water rights. She said they would likely be busy when the spring runoff starts next month. She suggested restoring the $248,000 overtime budget by reducing the amount of severance tax dollars used to help people pay their heating bills. The state received about $63 million for its heating assistance program from the federal government, about $20 million more than expected. Another $13 million was taken from severance tax proceeds.
Committee members weren’t sure if they should take heating assistance dollars to pay for water enforcement but said they would consider it.
“If we seem a little hard, it’s because we’ve become hard. We get push-back on everything we do,” said committee chairwoman Sen. Moe Keller, D-Wheat Ridge.
