A mostly inexperienced group of lawmakers gathered Wednesday to start considering Gov. Bill Ritter’s proposed $19.1 billion budget, and the exiting Democratic governor urged the evenly split Joint Budget Committee to not be guided by partisanship.
“There was a lot of rhetoric during the recent campaigns, but when it comes to budgeting, everything must be on the table and the political posturing must come to an end,” Ritter told members of the Joint Budget Committee.
“This is about finding common ground, forging bipartisan solutions and doing what’s best for Colorado,” he said. “If ever there was a place where Mario Cuomo’s famous line about campaigning in poetry and governing in prose was true, it is here, with you, with this budget.”
Four of the six members of the Joint Budget Committee were just appointed to the panel to write the budget for the toughest year of the worst state budget crisis since the Great Depression. The state faces up to a $1.1 billion budget shortfall in the 2011-12 fiscal year that begins next July.
Meanwhile, because Republicans have retaken the state House, there is now a 3-3 partisan split on the panel. GOP lawmakers have vowed to restore more than $100 million in tax breaks and incentives that the legislature, fully controlled by Democrats in the 2010 session, eliminated or suspended.
Ritter’s plan proposes a relatively meager net increase for public schools of $43 million, not enough to make up for a net $260 million cut the previous year or to catch up with increased enrollment. And it would result in a net reduction of $89 million for colleges and universities.
The governor’s proposed budget also hits state employees again, denying them raises, cutting their take home pay by 2.5 percent and leaving many positions unfilled.
The proposed budget also would rely on a number of cash fund transfers to help balance the budget, and Ritter urged new Joint Budget Committee members to not immediately dismiss the idea.
Rep. Cheri Gerou, R-Evergreen, a new member of the panel, said she was disappointed Ritter’s budget didn’t call for more cuts. Still, she admitted Republicans did not yet have a plan to trim the budget.
“I don’t know where we’re going to cut yet,” Gerou said, “but we know we have a problem.”
Incoming House Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch, has said Republicans might consider “throwing out” Ritter’s proposed spending plan and not using it “as a baseline” for writing a budget. McNulty didn’t offer specifics, instead saying only that Republicans were looking for new approaches to the budgeting process.
“The premise that we’re working under is that it’s not business-as-usual,” he said.
Another premise, McNulty said, is Gov.-elect John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, will consider GOP proposals to balance the budget, including their goal to kill what they call “the dirty dozen,” the package of Democratic bills last year that eliminated the tax breaks.
But Hickenlooper recently has not sounded enthusiastic about restoring the tax exemptions and incentives cut last year.
“If they want to repeal the dirty dozen, my door is always open,” Hickenlooper said last week, adding, though, that Republicans would have to tell him where they want to cut to offset the loss in revenue.
“Are they going to cut Medicaid for kids? Are they going to cut K-12? I’m not sure how that happens yet,” Hickenlooper said.
“On the surface it seems, based on revenue projections, that it’s going to be hard to immediately rescind those. Maybe a couple of them (could be rescinded).
“But you have to find out where that money is going to come from.”
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
