Facing pressure, Colorado lawmakers struck a deal to spend $120,000 on at the state’s mental health hospitals after rejecting an earlier request for more money.
Gov. John Hickenlooper’s administration originally requested for $253,109 to replace shower and bath fixtures at the Colorado Mental Health Institute facilities in Pueblo and Denver after an attempted suicide in October.
Republican lawmakers on the Capital Development Committee balked at the price tag for the remodel, suggesting the estimate was inflated and amounted to government waste. The committee declined to recommend the project on split along party lines a week ago, but the panel reversed course Tuesday morning and approved the lesser amount in a 5-1 vote.
The move to spend less — dubbed a compromise by Democratic lawmakers — is unlikely to resolve the issue. The Department of Human Services issued a statement just hours after the committee’s vote saying it couldn’t “do the entire project for half the money.”
And questions persisted about the calculation of the $120,000 figure.
The number apparently came from committee members, in particular Rep. Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, after consulting with outside contractors about the project. Becker declined to comment for the story.
Rep. Daneya Esgar, a Pueblo Democrat and the committee chairwoman, said her goal was to “make sure that we were able to support this project in some way” given its importance.
The process drew criticism from Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, who suggested the committee was “pulling another number out of the air” without documentation. He wants to see deeper changes to require state agencies to request bids before asking for money for construction projects.
“If I ran my business the way we are running that (project), I’d be broke,” said Sonnenberg, who voted against the project because he didn’t see evidence to support the new amount.
The two Republican committee members who agreed to support the revised amount warned the department that they wouldn’t support a dollar more for the project without better information about its cost.
Sen. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs, acknowledged that the sensitive nature of the request is the reason why the committee reversed course.
“We are not going to make a precedent,” he said. “If it hadn’t been suicide risk management, we probably would not have changed our mind. But because of the seriousness of the issue we expect them to be fiscally responsible with that money and get done what needs to be done.”