April 22, 2026 · Budget Committee · 22,118 words · 6 speakers · 273 segments
. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go a little bit out of order for the moment. We'll return to our tab one with the bill drafts as soon as we have all six. But for now, we'll start, I think, with tab four and Ms. Shen.
Sounds good. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Kelly Shen, JVC staff. So I have, I think, on tab four, I'm assuming it's severance tax refinance. And so this is just a proposed adjustment. So the long bill during that whole big sub-tax refinance, refinance $2 million for the Species Conservation Trust Fund. originally funded from the operational fund and you all swapped it to the wildlife cash fund. But just the way it was done, there is, has been identified a $2 million TABOR revenue impact because basically if you appropriate directly the wildlife cash fund to the species conservation trust fund, it leaves the enterprise and then counts towards the TABOR cap. So just to mitigate that, we're proposing a long bill amendment. I've talked with the department, OSPB, our legal folks, and basically instead of appropriating the money to the Species Conservation Trust Fund, it would just be spent directly out of wildlife operations and then tacking a footnote in the long bill onto that line saying that this money, or it's the General Assembly's intent to use this money for purposes basically exactly the same as the Species Conservation Trust Fund. So it's just a slightly different way to get at the same refinance.
Vice Chair Bridges.
Thank you, Madam Chair. This is about this only in that there's no reason they couldn't do the same thing with invasive species. And I just want to note for the record for them listening that if I had read this three days ago then I would have been a very clear and hard no and would have fought vociferously against their boat bill. Next.
Okay. Well, so are you okay with it now?
Yeah, move to adopt this, which is what they should do for invasive species, but limiting my motion just to this.
Okay. Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of five to zero with Taggart excused. Okay.
And though my time may be limited, I will work on this.
EXPANDED ORAL HEALTH SCREENINGS. SO, MADAM CHAIR, I JUST SPOKE WITH MS. SHANNON, I ACTUALLY HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE RECOMMENDATION TO THIS, BUT YOU'VE GOT TO THINK ABOUT WHAT DO YOU WANT TO, WHETHER YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO RUN A BILL OR NOT, OR HOW YOU WANT TO DEAL WITH THIS. THE PROBLEM WE HAVE IS SENATOR MARCHMAN, AFTER THE LONG BILL WAS INTRODUCED, SENATOR MARCHMAN REACHED OUT TO ME AND SAID, WHAT ABOUT THAT REQUIREMENT AND THE BILL ABOUT ORAL HEALTH SCREENING IN DEPARTMENT OF ED AND I SAID I DON KNOW I REACHED OUT to the department It was in the fiscal note It a requirement in law and they didn include it in the request I didn't note that it wasn't there. What the requirement in law is is that the Department of Education is supposed to be working with the Department of Public Health to develop a plan for expanded oral health screenings in schools. The thing is, according to Ms. Shen, there's a pilot going on right now in CDPHE, which was part of this bill. That is coming to an end, and it was kind of supposed to be followed, I think, by this work with the Department of Education to come up with a plan for doing statewide broader oral health screenings. I think the problem is, will you have any money to actually implement expanded oral health screenings statewide? So I have to stick with this recommendation in terms of what should be in the long bill because there is a requirement on the Department of Education to put together a plan. I don't think it has the expertise itself. I do think it needs a contractor. It's what was in the fiscal note. But I would just flag for you that if you do not want to have this $65,000 general fund spent, there is at least an option that you could run a bill to eliminate this requirement. It's just, you know, do you want to do that?
Does anyone want to do that? I mean, I don't really want to do that. The General Assembly agreed at a time when we didn't really have money then either to do this and fund it. And good on Senator Marchman for actually following up on her bill that she passed to make sure it was being implemented because, you know, otherwise this happens. Does anybody have a different opinion?
Okay. Did you turn it with some alternative?
Yeah, to run a bill to... THE ALTERNATIVE IS TO RUN A BILL TO ELIMINATE THE REQUIREMENT. AND SO IT'S JUST A QUESTION OF DO YOU WANT CDE TO GO AHEAD AND DO THIS OR DO YOU WANT TO SAY, OH, NO, THERE'S NO WAY WE WANT TO SPEND THIS MONEY AND WHAT COMES AFTER IT? I THINK IT'S MORE OF A QUESTION HOW DO YOU WANT TO DEAL WITH YOUR CAUCUS.
SO LET'S JUST DO IT. OKAY. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. MOVE TO JUST DO THIS ACCORDING TO THE MEMO FROM THE MEANDA VICTORL ON THE 22ND. THE ADJUSTMENT TO DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION APPROPRIATION IMPLEMENT SB 24-142.
ARE THERE ANY OBJECTIONS? THAT PASSES ON A VOTE OF 6-0. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. LET'S HEAD BACK TO TAB ONE. MS. YUELE. I DON'T KNOW MS. BICKLE IF YOU WANT TO HANG OUT TOO FOR THIS.
Andrea Yule, JBC staff. I believe under tab one you have the bill draft that you asked for a while back regarding part-time enrichment funding. So the concept of this bill is that it creates a new category for quarter-time students and differentiates between half-time and quarter-time students and also directs the state board to engage in rulemaking to clarify some of the other issues that we have discussed around these part enrichment programs There have been some updates in the month since we talked about this last, and that is that the state board met and decided that they don't support this idea, even though it was CDE that initially presented this to me as something that could be solved by cutting the funding from halftime to quarter time because in simplest terms, what is happening here is that we are paying halftime funding for quarter time students. And I've talked to lots of programs, mostly the ones run by districts, but they're all saying that they can't operate on quarter time funding for their quarter time students. They have to have halftime funding, even though these are quarter time students. It turns out initially I thought that some of the district providers were maybe offering programs that were more than a quarter time but it seems like actually most of them are very much close to quarter time which is 90 hours per semester. So the state board talked about this idea and decided that that's not the direction they want to go. The State Board also briefly discussed a proposal that was submitted basically by several lobbyists that came together representing these providers. That proposal looked at inventing the concept of a comprehensive enrichment program and laid out nine criteria where they would have to meet at least five of them. However, CDE looked at this and said that of this nine bullet list, five of these things are things that they're all already doing, so it wouldn't actually accomplish anything, is basically what CDE's attorney said. And I agree with them on that. And then CDE also discussed a different approach to how we could get at this problem, and that would be by limiting in statute by saying that BOCES can only operate programs that serve students in their member districts. And the state board did vote 5-4 to support that legislative proposal. and the reasoning behind that is I've learned quite a bit more in the last month and we already knew that the explosive growth in this program isn't from the school districts that are running their own programs at facilities they have like St. Vrain's a big one Aurora has one, Jeffco that's not where the growth is coming from the growth is coming from small programs operated through subcontractors and there's one BOCES in particular that is authorizing these programs all over the state there was an article in Chalkbeat last week that summarized some of what we've talked about but they also listed a bunch of new examples that I had not seen before and some of these programs authorized through that BOCES are literally sports training academies or there's one that is like canyoneering, mountaineering, that kids can get ski passes and get ski lessons at Vail Resorts. And they're saying that... Paid for with Colorado taxpayer dollars. And they're saying that that is... That counts as attending public school for a portion of the day. And the state is paying for those programs, these programs that public school kids can't These are the, because of the loopholes in the statutes and the state board rules, like what is happening is that all of these programs are popping up that, in my opinion, don't really resemble public school.
Senator Mobley. Do the BOCES get, like what's in it for them? Why are they doing this?
Ms. Yule.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Amabile, so it seems that most of this is happening through one BOCES in particular. I did meet with them at one point, and they said that they don't take any money off the top. I don't know why, other than they want to provide these activities to homeschool students.
Vice Chair Bridges.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't care if they're not taking money off the top. This is not what our, so I have two questions. Number one, how do existing superintendents justify to the parents of full-time students that they are in support of funding that is two times as high for kids whose parents have chosen not to enroll them in public schools? and that they are fighting for those dollars to continue being taken out of our available resources to fund schools at a time when they're also saying we are dramatically underfunding those full-time students. You're not funding the students we have enough, but please don't take away this 2X funding you're providing for students that actually aren't ours, that are just sort of taking some classes on the side. How do they justify that to their parents, number one? Number two, how do they expect us to justify to the people of Colorado that we're paying for ski tickets? In Vail, no less.
Well, let's not disparage Eagle County.
No one's disparaging it. Everyone would love a ski pass to Vail. All of our, like this is, how in the world can they, with a straight face, ask us to not cut funding for this? Do you know?
I think these are not questions for you.
I think that's rhetorical. It's actually not. How do these administrators justify comments like, you don't fund us enough, don't cut this 2x per kid money that you're spending on kids that aren't public school students? How do they justify that? Have they said anything to you?
Okay.
You don't know. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Bridges, I will say, you know, I think in the beginning when CDE presented this, they did say like we know that some of the larger districts like run these programs and these aren't the ones we're concerned about. But it is true like those programs also they're getting paid. The halftime funding for quarter time students. A lot of them are saying like they have fixed costs. Some of them have I guess special like campuses where these students go and they feel that it's an important service to provide. You know that's one thing. What has really become the problem is the fact that neither statute nor the state board ever defined instructional hours. And so now we have all these small programs that have decided that ski lessons and kayaking and there a gymnastics one golf martial arts jujitsu like that counts as instructional hours So yeah there separate things at play where I believe you know there is one question of for even the district-run programs, is it appropriate for us to give them halftime funding for those quarter-time students? but also clearly there needs to be guardrails around what counts as instructional hours and what these programs are allowed to look like. Because one of the other issues I saw that was raised in the news article was that some of these providers advertise that you can start a homeschool enrichment program and it can be as small as two families coming together to start an enrichment program. And the explosive growth is in these really small subcontracted programs, and it's just since the pandemic, in the last five years, the enrollment has doubled. And the news reporter pointed out and showed that apparently this BOCES is still approving like several of these programs every month. So it is growing still. They're just adding, adding, adding. So it feels like urgent if we would want to at least start getting this under control by maybe putting a moratorium on new ones or because we know that all the new approvals are coming through a BOCES and that those programs aren't actually serving kids in the BOCES member districts. That is why the state board, the legislative proposal they approved would at least start with getting at that problem.
Senator Mobley.
So if we do what the State Board of Ed is suggesting, it got presented to me like this was just a place to start, and they didn't think that this was the full answer, but would that go back and say these programs that aren't in your district have to shut down, or what would happen to that?
Ms. Yule.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Mobley. Yeah, I think that the programs that were authorized through a BOCES and aren't serving kids in that BOCES geographic member districts, I think that they would have to shut down, and I think that is sort of the State Board's idea. I don't mind it either. I'm just wanting to clarify, like, they're not grandfathered in or they're, you know, we're actually going to make some change here. So I shared with the committee a memo with some draft language that came from CDE that looks at limitations on authority related to this BOCES question of can they, they are not, saying they are not an authorizer of programs or schools for entities that are, you know, outside of their serving district.
But I guess then would it be appropriate then to consider that as a replacement for the sections in this bill draft that are outlining the changes to what's considered part-time AND BUT LEAVE IN THE DRAFT THE DIRECTION TO THE STATE BOARD ABOUT ADOPTING COMPREHENSIVE RULES ABOUT WHAT IS INSTRUCTIONAL TIME AND WHAT IS PUBLIC SCHOOL, ET CETERA, ET CETERA. SO THAT LIKE SECTION 4 KEEP SECTION 4 WE NEED A NEW BILL RIGHT IT DOESN MAKE THE TIME ON THIS ONE I THINK THE TIME IS PRETTY FALL BECAUSE IT PRETTY TIME AVAILABLE We would need a new bill right It does And the title is one I think well the title is pretty odd because it part management funding Well, part-time management funding, it would be safer to get a new title problem.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
We think it would probably be better to start under a new title. But, yeah, essentially you could toss out the bill in front of you. but if you want to keep directing the state board, we could add that part into what the legislative language that the state board put forward. This bill draft had directed them to look at the definition of instructional time and whether these programs meet the comparable standard requirements by July 1st, and I do think that is probably fast. I mean, I know we've been frustrated that the State Board has let this keep happening, and they had a special meeting last week to talk about this. But if we're asking them to define instructional time, we also want to make sure they do a good job. So I do now, I think, trust that they are going to deal with the rulemaking for some of these other issues. But, again, if the General Assembly wants to be sure, we could also put it in. Statute, I don't know if they would give you a lot of pushback on July 1st, though. I think their initial step of the BOCES authority would definitely help stop the growth and stop these most egregious programs immediately, so then maybe they could take more time to look at the definition of instructional time and what even is public school and what is comparable quality for these programs. But yeah, that is, and we are, you know, Ms. Scheibel and I are aware of the proposal and we've started looking at it, but, you know, officially we haven't been able to work on that without your direction so far.
Okay. Rep Taggart.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't disagree with where we're going, but I'm really troubled by where the school board is putting us in as a committee. We're going to have the very same situation here that we've had in a couple other programs. Only the numbers are staggering in comparison with, for instance, the TREP program. What I'm hearing is that there are already very close to 10,000 students that are signed up through these BOCES for next year. And the timing, and I appreciate they got together last week, but they could have gotten together a year ago on this subject. This didn't get out of control in the last eight months. It got out of control quite a long time ago. And for us to step in and take this position for this next school year puts us all in a position that we are the absolute bad guys. And I don't mind being a bad guy from time to time, but I get a little tired when another organization should have come down on this and now are saying, you guys do this by way of a bill. I am really uncomfortable with that I like the Section 4 And I don mind if we want to do this for instance I don think we give them a whole year Maybe we give them a semester, but I am really uncomfortable about doing their job.
I can appreciate that because this has not been always a pleasant experience. But I think this in particular, you know, maybe they don't necessarily need our direction to do the other things like define instructional time. They can do that. But it seems that this particular piece about defining what a BOCES is and is not probably does require some statutory change. Maybe it could be done without statute, but it seems like we probably should do that through statute.
But, Rep Taggart.
Thank you, Madam Chair. If we have to, we have to, but I can't sign off on a 26-27 fiscal year. I just, it's not the students that let this get out of control. It's the state board that let it get out of control and their non-management of BOCES. So if the dates were different and we could give students the time, I guess I'd be okay. Can I just ask though, I mean, we're not talking about students going to college in this. We're talking about students accessing jujitsu and ski passes. So if that's what we're talking about, like, they must still have time to be able to enroll in, you know, what is actually a legitimate part-time program.
But I think the purpose of this is to say those things are not that. I actually don't have any trouble saying, no, we shouldn't be continuing to spend state dollars on ski passes and canyoneering, which sounds fantastic, but also like, you know, not actually what I think taxpayers had in mind when they thought they were paying their property taxes to fund public education.
Anyone else have any different thoughts? Senator Kirkmeyer.
So, I'm thinking about your... There we go. So there's nowhere in rule or law statute that requires or says what instructional time is? Because, I mean, we're, and I just want to make sure, we're not talking about changing the hours at this point. We're just talking about defining that BOCES have to operate within their own school district that they're related to. and even though I guess apparently this program was created, you know, as a statewide program, I don't know why, but we're saying BOCES can only operate within their own area, so we're going to take away the statewide provision, and apparently that was something that started when this program started, and then we're going to make them define instructional time, and are we going to give them any additional stuff other than instructional time because you know you can be instructing someone to learn how to ski and I mean I don't think that was ever the intent of the program I mean I was told maybe that it could be a little bit different than that but you know I looked up Homeschool enrichment programs online to see what it was, because I thought it was like kids who needed additional academic help, like maybe learning calculus or physics or something. And I was told, no, that's not why it was created, which kind of surprised me. So that's why I think it should be around, because everybody doesn't know calculus or physics or chemistry or whatever, and they need that additional, you know, maybe in-school programming. And, you know, I'm okay with them doing sports at the school, but I'm not okay with them going to dance programs, mountaineering, skiing at Vell Resorts, kayaking, or whatever else they were doing. I'm not okay with all of that. That's not what I think an enrichment program should be.
So where are we at?
We're not putting the hours in. We're talking about saying that BOCES are not a statewide authorization. they can't authorize programs statewide or schools for any interested entities seeking to offer educational services anywhere in the state. We're going to rein that in. And that's changing new law. I mean, that's new law. That's changing existing law. It doesn't look like it's changing anything. It looks like it's just a blank space. Is that, I mean, so it's just maybe, it was just like a loophole, I guess.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Yeah, Senator Kirkenner, let me try to answer some of these. Yeah. So working backwards, I think, yeah, it's being added into statutes. So apparently there are a lot of loopholes in statute with BOCES. And my impression is that the BOCES basically, or at least some of them, started doing things that CDE never expected them to do. And now CDE is realizing we need tighter statutes around what is the purpose of the BOCES. Senator Kirkmeyer, I have also heard both arguments about what the original purpose of these programs are. Because CDE has always said it was for some socialization for younger kids or like art or band or for older kids like physics or advanced classes that the parents couldn't teach. Like that's how CDE frames it. But the other side will say, no, it was always for these like fun activities. But CDE definitely thinks of it as traditionally you would, the homeschool student would go to the nearest school and take their enrichment. and then some districts started creating their own facilities for the homeschool kids to go. But those, the district-run ones, at least my impression is those are actually offering a mix of, like, academic classes and the other things. And when the state board discussed the instructional time, part of the issue was, you know, they said they're going to have to be very careful with how they restrict it because, like, kids do take PE at school, right? They do take, they are able to take some fun stuff like that. but it's not the whole day. So I think they're going to have to limit how many hours of PE or sports or recreational activities or the more hobby-type stuff or field trips is allowed to count towards the 90 hours. But the concept here is you wouldn't be saying they have to take more than 90 hours and the providers would still be getting paid as if the kids are counted as halftime students. But through making the state board define instructional hours, then they could crack down on these programs that are like fully sports and hobbies.
Senator Kirkman.
Thank you. So I'm just going to assume, and maybe I'm wrong, and I know it's not always a good idea to assume, but I'm assuming that there are not any school districts out there that are offering ski passes or skiing at Vell Resort to their students. Would that be a correct statement Would that be something to assume Do we know Because I wondering why anyone would ever think an enrichment program is something that isn even offered in the school district in the first place You know, PE classes, I'm fine with PE classes. I get it. It is a socialization. They can go to PE. They can go to band. They can go to orchestra. They can go join the choir. They can go get on the football team or be a cheerleader, whatever they want to do, as long as it's being offered at the school. But, I mean, I don't recall mountaineering, skiing. You know, yeah, there was golf class, but it wasn't like year-round kind of thing, and we took them out to golf courses. Kayaking, I don't recall that being in school when I was there, and I don't recall my grandchildren even having that available to them. So I don't know why anybody thinks that's an enrichment program that we should be paying for with taxpayer dollars. That's where I'm coming from. So, you know, I don't want to worry about cutting the hours because that really got a whole bunch of people upset, and we need to work on that.
I agree.
But I'm for reining in BOCES and reining this in so it is not a statewide program kind of thing that they're running. And I don't know. I'm assuming they are making money off of it. Why else wouldn't they do it? I mean, I'm not faulting people for trying to figure out how to make more money. But at the same time, we have, everybody has a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that we're spending taxpayer dollars in an appropriate manner. And some of these things to me are not appropriate to spend taxpayer dollars on for what is supposed to be an enrichment, to me, educational programs.
Ms. Yule.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Kirkmeyer, agreed. I will say I think on the whole it's safe to assume that not many or no schools are just giving ski passes away to their students. I do know that there are some specialty schools in the state. I don't know if those are charter schools in most cases probably where they do. Like there is one in I think Eagle County that focuses on like winter sports. But it's still a public school and that means they're still meeting the state standards for the rest of their coursework. and one argument I did hear from the BOCES was that well you know some students do or some public schools do offer these really fun and special types of programs some of them, a few of them right but they again are still under the state's oversight and they're able to fulfill the rest of the duties of public schools that the state has laid out for them while finding a way to offer those unique programs but on the whole I think with the, so there's a statute that says if for anything being contracted out, the quality is supposed to be comparable for the contracted service for what you would get in a public school. And initially, I took that to mean, oh, is there a concern that the contracted academic coursework isn't as good as what you'd get in a public school? But now I think it has gone the opposite way where the comparable quality is that the homeschool enrichment programs are often very high quality sports and activities that isn't offered to public school students for the most part. So the comparable quality argument might be, you know, going in both directions where the quality is like better in many cases.
Senator Mobley.
I mean, I wonder why we're not just saying you can go to your local public school and take these classes or participate in these activities and that that should be it, period. I did go to a school where we had a lot of those things. It was a public school, but still. I bet they don't, I don't know if they still do it or not, but if you live in a place where that what the public school does then you could go and do those things But you should just be going to do what offered in that school district That seems like just period.
That's all we should be doing.
Rob Tiger. Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but we've got to allow for a transition for that to happen, not the sports side. The Vail School you're talking about is the Ski Race Academy, which is an outstanding academic school, but it's, I hate to, I don't want to use this word. It's a competitive sport program. These are kids that are being developed for the U.S. ski team. And there's one in the East Coast at Burke Mountain Academy where many of my coaches worked as well. And they're outstanding academic schools, but make no mistake, they're developing the best of our junior racers. But I don't think we're talking about that. I just come back to I agree with what everybody's saying on the sports side of things, But I come back to the fact that the fall program is signed up, and students across the state have signed up. And I don't disagree that we ought to transition, that these should be managed in their local districts, but I'm scared to death of what's going to happen if we just cut it off right now. And I agree with cutting off these activities that aren't really enrichment. But I do think we've got to give our districts time to transition this. And I don't want to leave families in the lurch.
January.
I just, well, Vice Chair Bridges.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I think in principle, I just want to make sure that we agree. In principle, it sounds like we agree that the programs that students who are not enrolled in public school should have access to are programs that that public school is already offering, whether that's like an extracurricular sports activity, whether it's a particular class. I think where I start to get concerned is where schools start creating programs just for these kids, and traditional publics the rest of their kids can't get into, right? That seems bananas to me. And the reason that they're able to offer these special classes just to these kids is because we pay them twice as much for those kids as we do for their regular kids. They're enrolled full-time student kids. And so I think that to me is the challenge here. And so I'm willing to give schools an off-ramp on this. Like, and again, some folks up here said, like, I don't fault schools for taking advantage of the fiscal things that we allow them to take advantage of. I do fault them for that. I think there's a moral obligation in this state, given how underfunded our public schools are, to not take advantage of a loophole. But understand that they are and understand that it could be hurting kids in our state if we shut it down immediately. But I do think the place we need to get back to is that there's a single dollar amount that we pay. and if kids who are not enrolled in public schools want to participate in a public school program, they can, but to have special programs just for those kids seems wrong to me. I am comfortable with this, you know, some version of this draft language to address the BOCES loophole which seems like that is the egregious end of the problem But there are still more than 60 school districts that would be unaffected by that because they are districts. They are not the BOCES that are authorizing programs like all across the state. They're doing it where they are and kids across the state still have access to enroll in those programs. And then, you know, if the State Board needs more time than June to set these rules and wants to be mindful about how they're being set for a new school year or whatever, I think that's a reasonable conversation to have. But I think at least the BOCES is not addressing this issue of the BOCES seems somewhat separate from the other thing that you know you're expressing concern about. Like I just I don't feel bad if people had plans for ski passes for the next school year and they don't get them. I'm okay with that. And they can come complain to us and I feel confident that I can withstand that complaint and so can the rest of our
colleagues. Well, Senator Modley. I mean, could we make this effective in January? And then they would have whatever they've signed up for for this first semester and then off they go and it might take a while for it to get implemented and I don't know. I mean, I think, nope, they don't like that. No, I just have a question. I'm trying to figure
out what we're trying to make sure that we don't impact. Because if they truly are doing enrichment programs, I mean, I'm reading the bill here where we talk about specifying whether a private entity may provide instructional time. So that's not meaning a private school. That's meaning somebody other than someone at a public or private school providing the instructional time. So now we're paying for something else. I mean, to me, there just needs to be a clear definition of what enrichment means. And to me, it's if, you know, and we do have open enrollment laws in this state. So, you know, people can go to other school districts. But it has to be something that is provided at that school district and not put in place just specifically for a group of 10 or less students. Because they get paid twice as much.
Well, there's that. But that doesn't even make sense. I mean, I don't think that's what the intent.
I mean, I wasn't here when this program was created. Let me just be clear. But I can't believe that was the intent. So, you know, if we're saying, look, the program, I mean, we're not getting rid of the program. And we're not talking about changing the hours at this time. But that could happen next year if we find out that we're blowing through SEF money really fast and we keep doing it, you know, state education fund money. Just so everybody's forewarned because, you know, the loophole has cost us a bunch of money. We can't afford to keep increasing funding coming out of the state education fund for things that are not total program or categoricals, which is what that fund, in my mind, was set up for in the first place. So I think the BOCES thing is a good thing to start kind of narrowing it in and really starting to talk about what is an enrichment program and where should it be provided and by whom. I mean, I guess I just thought it was going to be provided by the school. So even your ski race thing, if it's provided by the school in some manner, shape, or form,
Well there you go Good grief But anyways I'm just saying
I think the BOCES thing is the way to go, and this definition, maybe it needs a little bit more work. I think clarifying the definition of instructional time would be good, and are we seriously leaving it up to the State Board to specify whether a private entity may provide instructional time? Because I just don't think that's what the intent of the program was for,
and I certainly don't believe that it's the intent of what the study education fund money is for. Those are general fund monies coming from taxpayers.
REP. RON. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. I JUST WANT TO SAY THAT I THINK I GENERALLY AGREE WITH WHAT EVERYBODY IS SAYING, WHICH IS THAT ESPECIALLY THE GROWTH IN PROGRAMS OUT OF DISTRICT, THE BOCES, I MEAN THIS, LOOK, I THINK I AGREE WITH THE VICE CHAIR THAT I WOULD PREFER TO GO FURTHER, BUT AT THIS POINT I'M HAPPY TO DEAL WITH THIS INITIAL PROBLEM AND PERHAPS THE MOST egregious of the challenges that this program is facing, which is that BOCES are, you know, authorizing programs well outside of their district. So I'm happy to move forward with that. But I do think that we should reexamine the pay rates to the vice chair's point at some point in the future.
Okay. Okay. So do we have a consensus of the BOCES language and the instruction to the State Board to define these things? And I think I absolutely agree with Senator Kirkmeyer that this is a good place to start, but it doesn't mean that the examination is over because we are talking about a significant amount of dollars being expended on this particular program. But perhaps that requires more examination and investigation about how we might address hours and cost. But at least these two pieces, is there some consensus about moving forward? Rep. Taggart.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I will again say in terms of narrowing the scope to truly enrichment, whatever that was supposed to have been, I am absolutely fine with that. The problem with going immediately to cutting the BOCES off for authorization outside of their district is our districts are not in the loop at this point in time to take over. These are the enrichment programs. They're not. And that's why the January 1st, to give them time to make that, I would be okay with, under the caveat that we've got to tighten it immediately. But I just, I think, I mean, with all due respect to the BOCES, yeah, I know it's one big one. but they were allowed to do this by the state board, and there are students that are involved here. And I don't want to hurt the students. Tighten it into the more academic, I'm fine. Give it six months that the BOCES have got to move out of this, and these got to be taken on by the individual school districts I fine there but we in that situation that people are signed up for this program already Well I will just say there 60 plus districts that we wouldn be impacting that students could still students homeschool kids can still access Open enrollment, they can still go to. It's just this particularly egregious loophole that has been found that, you know, whatever complaint we have for the State Board, it does appear that this explosive growth has happened in the last year.
Senator Magli.
I agree. The, I, you know, if I were king, but I will also say it's not their, this BOCES thought they could do it. They contracted with all these providers. They set up businesses to do this. And while that seems crazy, that is what happened, and they all were operating in good faith. And these kids signed up. I mean, that's what we've heard is that people have already signed up for the fall. So, I mean, maybe we could say immediately you cannot open any more of these out-of-district programs. And then in January, all the ones that are out of district have to shut down or contract with their district, I guess. I mean, I imagine that's with their BOCES area or whatever. and that might be a good compromise. Especially, Madam Chair, as you say, it isn't going to impact most of these places anyway. The BOCES Association is sharing that they support limiting BOCES to operating within their authorized districts, and they don't think they can stop it in January because they do an October count for students. Thank you, Madam Chair. That's a good point, is that all the funding is based on the October count.
I think there's several things that I think might happen with this, which is, so for the more egregious programs, some of the ones that I've looked at, like on their websites, they offer state-funded and self-pay options. So I think some of these are businesses that are going to, like, keep operating and offering these trips and these sports, maybe whether or not they're getting the homeschool nourishment kids that come with state funding. But many of these appear to be things that the parents could, you know, pay for if they want their student to do it bad enough. And I think as far as if those places close, yeah, I think the students would either, they could go back to being completely homeschooled for a little bit. they could enroll in public school or I think the parent could look for the nearest district or directly BOCES run program. I'm not sure if those programs fill up or not. That's not something I have information on, but I think there's several different outcomes that could happen if we immediately limit the BOCES operating in their own districts, which I think would immediately cut off the money for these types of programs. And I do think, yeah, perhaps you could also put a moratorium on authorizing new ones effective immediately. Professor Bridges.
Thank you, Madam Chair. My phone is saying that a lot of associations charters and districts have been working on a proposal on this I don know if that one is it is it the one that you have been talking about I'm not I'm not sure what the current state of that is.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Bridges, there was one shown to me. But I do know that that proposal also had input from the BOCES. so I don't know if the other district-run programs have come up with something new since that, but that was one that the state board had also looked at and said they wanted to create a comprehensive enrichment category with stricter criteria, and the state board and I agree that that probably wouldn't accomplish the goals, but I'm not really sure if that initial proposal was, because what we do know is that nobody wants us to do the funding cut from .5 to .25, so I thought...
I do. Okay, some of us do. But I thought that was more in a direct kind of counterproposal to the bill I was drafting, and I'm not really sure where, like I guess the BOCES Association just told us they support the state board's BOCES language, and I'm not sure where all the other district run. I haven't heard directly as much from many district run programs. It doesn't seem like this would impact them that much, if at all.
Senator Kirkman?
I think to Representative Taggart's point, it's not necessarily impacting the BOCES. It's impacting the students or the children, homeschool children, who are taking advantage of the programs that the BOCES have put together for them. Is that really the issue? I'm trying to figure out what it is. But I would just say at some point though, like now, there should be no more passes at Vail Resort. I mean, ski passes and things of that nature. That stuff just needs to stop. That is not, to me, part of an enrichment program. And I don't know how we get that stopped right now. There's a couple other things here. I mean, we're all getting text messages about moratoriums being good. So many. But there is a multi-district online program as well, which is more statewide, and we would have to address that still, I would think, right? We have the RFI that we are working through to try and get information to work through that.
Yes, Ms. Bickle?
Yes, Madam Chair, that's right. But it is, it's just seeking more information. And there's also a component that we've been working on which would ask more about this part-time homeschool enrichment. Of course, depending on what you end up deciding to do here, that might or might not be required or only parts of that might be required. The language that came from the state board included saying that this doesn't apply to the multi-district online schools. So it sounds like they're not touching that situation with the language they proposed.
MS. Thank you, Madam Chair. If we do a moratorium so they can't authorize any new programs, I think that's a start. But I think there should also be a moratorium on those programs that are offering, I don't know, fun time. I don't know what it's called. Going skiing and golfing and dancing, those are all great activities. I'm a physical education major and teaching certificates. So I'm not opposed to physical activities, but this is not something that I think we should be paying for Ms Yule Thank you Madam Chair Senator Kirkmeyer I do think that the proposal to limit the BOCES geographically
I do think that would immediately stop those programs for the most part, or if you forced the State Board to rule-make on what counts as instructional time before the upcoming school year. I believe hopefully they would come back with something that precludes those types of programs. So I think both or either of those things would immediately put a stop to those types of programs.
So I think it sounds like the committee is interested in doing something to say that a BOCES is not a statewide authorizer of programs or schools for an entity, you know, that's outside of their district. but it seems we are not landed on a consensus about when that happens, or at least how to address the kids who are already signed up for programs this year. And I don't know if there's more information that would be helpful to anyone on the committee ME IN TERMS OF LIKE, YOU KNOW, HOW MANY KIDS ARE WE TALKING ABOUT AND WHAT KINDS OF PROGRAMS ARE WE TALKING ABOUT AND WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? BECAUSE AGAIN, LIKE, IT MEANS THAT KIDS AREN'T GOING TO GET ACCESS TO THE SKI PASSES, THEN REALLY I'M JUST FINE WITH THAT. AND YEAH, THOSE SKI INSTRUCTORS CAN, THE PARENTS CAN PRIVATE PAY FOR THAT IF THEY WANT. AND THOSE SKI INSTRUCTORS WILL KEEP INSTRUCTING THE PEOPLE WHO PAY THEM.
MS.
EULA. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. One of the problems is the data on these programs is so poor that all we have is that even for the BOCES-run programs, they submit the counts through the district. So all we can see is which districts submitted counts for those students. And what we can see is that there's about 18,000 students statewide, and half of those were submitted through District 49, which is the district that authorizes the ER BOCES. So that means about half of the statewide enrollment in these programs are coming through them. But beyond that, there isn't like a breakdown between what these programs are. Yes.
Can't we just shut that down? That's what this is. That's what this does. Amen.
Are we okay instructing some drafting of this with a determination in another few days upon rumination about how we want to address timing? Can we at least give our staff that guidance?
Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to begin drafting on something.
Well.
My recommendation would actually be to retain the direction to the section here for about direction to the state board and scrap the, you know, the other parts of the bill, but add in some version of this recommended BOCES language. To maintain section four and to wrap in the draft language on the statewide BOCES from the State Board of Education. We'll keep talking about... Perhaps more, perhaps not. Timing.
All right, are there any objections to going to draft on that?
Would we put a moratorium on new programs right now?
I think this would, this draft language would.
Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think what most of us on this committee have been talking about, and maybe I think all of us have been talking about, as far as what we think this program is for, it is for ensuring that kids are homeschooled or at a private school can have access to things like sports and enrichment programs that are already occurring at our LEPs, our local education providers, not that our local education providers would be creating special programs for these students that their full-time students don't have access to. I think that is broadly something that I'm hearing agreement on this committee. I think the timeline on when it is that we would shut those down I think is up for debate. But is that, am I hearing the committee accurately on that? And I can see heads exploding across the education world. But am I hearing that accurately? I'm seeing lots of nods. We have a motion on the table. Well, there was whispering, and I wanted to make sure that was an appropriate motion. That sounds fine? I'd like to add that piece then in, and I'm sure that we'll all get contacted by folks about why it's terrible. But I'd like to add that in. That would be programs that are provided at local education programs. Yeah, local education provided. Existing programs at LEPs that are available to all full-time students. Well, maybe not existing because maybe. Just available to all full-time students. Yeah, yeah. All right. In other words, if I'm a full-time student and there's a special thing happening for a part-time student, I can't do it because the state doesn't pay enough for me. That's a real problem.
MS. RIP TAGGERT. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm fine going to draft, but like you folks, I've got a phone of friends too. And on the western slope, we're using one of this big districts that started this whole ball rolling. And there are fixed costs that have been put into this program by way of leases and buildings and contracting with teachers to implement this enrichment program are in place. So I'm fine going to draft, but I think we're all going to get additional input, and I hope we can.
And I have no disagreement. I don't want anybody, no disagreement, even though I grew up in the ski industry. I have no disagreement that some of these programs are absolutely not, should not be part of an enrichment program. MS. All right. So motion on the table is the BOCES language the direction to the State Board and something related to what is actually accessible for these enrichment programs So motion to go to draft Are there any objections That passes on a vote of six to zero. So we'll start there. Thank you.
All right. Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. And, you know, the usual caveats like work with partners. I know folks out there think they have the solution for this. lots of different folks out there think that. So, I don't know, gather input and then do what we ask you to do.
Okay. Okay. All right, so the Joint Budget Committee will stand in recess until sometime after 1.30 when our members finish their bills in other committees. So hopefully that won't be very long.
We'll find out. Mine is action only. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you.
The Joint Budget Committee will come back to order. We are going to move to the end of our calendar. We have a presentation from the Department of Human Services regarding BA8, resources to comply with the consent decree. So whoever is here to present, come on up. Okay.
Director Chief Joseph, Queen Joseph. Princess. to share a small PowerPoint. We're on it. Only because we love.
We'll allow. Does it have music? Does it have cats? No.
I'm more of a dog person too.
That's right.
What's your dog's name?
Harry or something?
Oh, Walt.
I knew it was like plain.
Oh, that's cool.
My dogs are blonding Daisy, and they're mean.
My dogs are blonding Daisy. Yep, and they're mean. My dogs are blonding Daisy, and they're mean.
Look at that.
Yours says pond.
My dog will love him to death.
My God will love him to death. My God will love him to death? My God. I don't want to do this. What's happening? We're just having a little tech issue. Oh, exactly. I'll go ahead and get started. Sure. Good afternoon, members of the committee. Again, my name is Leora Joseph. I'm the Deputy Executive Director at the Colorado Department of Human Services. And in that capacity I oversee all of the civil and forensic mental health direct service care that we provide at the state It is an honor to be here today and I note that while it truly is an honor for me to have an opportunity to address you, I suspect the last person you want to hear from is me right now with a request given the state's fiscal situation. So I want to level set and make sure the department understands the difficult situations that the state is facing. And yet, I do need to give a somber update on the consent decree. There's been a lot of discussion at the Capitol and around about funding for important mental health resources. I know Senator Immobile is actively involved with us on a bill involving permanent incompetency or unrestorability. This is something different. And I want to address this budget amendment in that context. I'm happy to discuss, if there are questions, the interplay between the two different priorities. This priority, though, you have heard me address in the past few years. As you all are aware, we are subject to a consent decree that was entered into in 2019. In 2019, we signed this consent decree with the Disability Law Colorado, DLC, the plaintiffs in this case, over the Department's failure to move people from the jail into treatment. And this is not the first time I've had to address this body requesting funds to address this very serious issue. Underlying the consent decree is an important constitutional issue. And I want to make sure that we understand that this is the basis of the lawsuit. Part of a person's right to counsel, part of a person's ability to participate in the criminal justice system is a constitutional right, U.S. Constitution, to be able to understand the charges and participate in their trial. And if someone is deemed incompetent to proceed, the state must restore that individual to competency. Those are the words we use, restore to competency. and not doing so marks a violation of the constitutional rights. Next slide, please. This, we, in December, were notified. We've been in this consent decree since 2019, and the court had appointed federally appointed special masters who work with the department and the plaintiff overseeing the different initiatives. They file reports regularly with the court assessing our progress. And this has been going on since 2019, this consent decree and the working together with the Disability Lock Colorado under the auspices of the special masters. We pay $12 million in fines. You've heard me speak about the fines committee. I've described that as making lemonade. That is part of our budget. those $12 million allocated to community resources. In December of 2025, we received information from the plaintiff in the lawsuit that they are seeking to take us to court They are seeking to push the litigation for the consent decree The consent decree ends in December of 2027 and they felt that we were not making enough progress and we are now in active litigation with the plaintiff. The budget request before you, $30 million is exactly needed to address this current litigation. So we're not at a threat of future litigation. We are inactive litigation. At its highest level, next slide, please, the request is for inpatient beds. That is a term of art, which I'm happy to explain today. Most of you know it as a refresher. It means beds inside of a hospital. That is how I will use the term inpatient beds. This slide is an important one before you. It illustrates the number of psychiatric beds per 100,000 people. the green lines refer to the states who don't have massive wait lists for the beds. Colorado here is in the red line. We do not have adequate inpatient beds across the state, and we are therefore in this litigation currently, as I sit here before you today, we have 370 people waiting in jail, all with serious mental illness, all who need, a judge has decided need to remain in custody because of criminal justice issues, and they are all awaiting a bed at the state hospital. As I sit here before you today, our hospitals are full. Both the Fort Logan Hospital is full, our hospital in Pueblo is full, and we have contracted private beds, and those are full. We're at 98% capacity across all of our inpatient programs. We are asking for $30 million to increase our ability to serve the people off the wait list and get them out of jail and into treatment. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, the special masters report regularly to the federal appointed judge about the progress we make towards the consent decree. And the one thing they have been consistent, well, they've been consistent about two things. One, the department is doing everything it can. They've been pretty consistent about that. They've also been consistent that the evidence shows that when inpatient beds are increased, the wait list goes down. The focus of the consent decree, it is a legal document. It sets up metrics, actual metrics and times that we must be able to comply with, times of admission how quickly must a person be able to access a bed that's ultimately what the consent decree is asking of us and our data indicates that when the wait list is lower than 100 people we are able to meet the important time frames so that the sickest of our people are getting access to care in a timely fashion What the special masters continue to conclude, continue to indicate, is that it is the increasing of inpatient beds that are going to do the work of moving those people out of jail and into treatment. Next slide, please. This shows some historical data here in Colorado that I'd like to go over with all of you. You all may remember that a couple years ago we did ask for a significant investment in our inpatient beds, and we are incredibly grateful that we've been able to achieve those beds and filling those beds. Our newest wing, the G-Wing over at Fort Logan, now has 13 out of 16 patients in it, and we're expecting a few more this week. So we are very, very grateful and appreciative of the increase in bed capacity across the state. This has allowed us to serve more and more patients, and we've seen the wait list decrease when new beds are open. Next slide, please. What this shows is what would have happened had that investment not occurred. Our wait list, as I stated at the beginning, today, 371, we'd be over 1,000 people on our wait list if we didn't receive those beds. 1,000 people who are very, very sick sitting in jails, putting, I should also mention, a pressure on our jails to serve a population. And so today we're asking for the $30 million to continue to be able to increase our beds. What we believe is that this number will help us reduce the wait list in a timely fashion so we can meet compliance with the timelines that are set forth in the consent decree. Exactly what the consent decree is demanding of us, we are asking to comply with. Next slide. There is a litigated case on this exact issue out of another state, and I feel the need to reference it here today. The True Blood case out of Washington State, in that case, the judge, the state, was not able to get into compliance. They, too, were under a consent decree for exactly the same issues we are facing today, and the judge handed out punitive fines in the amount of $400 million. The judge also ordered immediate release of any civil patient in order to accommodate the forensic patients because they are the ones that have a constitutional right. And at the core, this is the basis of the lawsuit, the constitutional right that people have to be restored. We are mindful of this case and We know that the parties, the court, everyone knows about this case. $400 million in fines. We began our mediation a couple months ago. I feel like it was a couple months ago. And the judge was very clear that we don't figure this out. She will. and we heard her loud and clear. We heard her loud and clear. Next slide. These are our new competency beds and we are also asking for new civil beds. The bulk of the request, and I'm being very forthright here, is for competency beds, the forensic beds. That's what we need to get out of this. We are also asking for 24 beds that are civil for us to be able to continue to move patients out of our highly secure hospital and into other hospitals. And I'm happy to go through, if it's helpful, the details of this very specific request, where we plan to get the beds from, how we plan to do it. I'm not sure if this body wants that level of detail. I'm more than happy to go through each line. IF THAT WOULD BE HELPFUL.
DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS? DO YOU WANT DIRECTOR JOSEPH TO DO THAT? WE'LL GO THROUGH OUR REQUEST WITH MS. POPE TOMORROW, BUT IF YOU WANT DIRECTOR JOSEPH TO POINT ANYTHING OUT IN THE REQUEST, NOW WOULD BE THE TIME TO DO IT. OTHERWISE, WE PROBABLY ALL HAVE QUESTIONS. SENATOR KERGMIRER.
THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. I LOOK THROUGH THE BED ISSUE. I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, IF I CAN ASK A QUESTION NOW. now. What happens when they're incompetent and they're not restorable? I mean, it's not necessarily a mental health issue. They're just never going to get there. What happens then? Do they stay in our facilities for the rest of their life?
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator Kirkmeyer. That topic, that crucial topic, which raises issues of public safety as well as placement and treatment, is exactly the focus of Senate Bill 149 that I know this committee is familiar with that is dealing with that exact topic senator on restore ability the budget request associated with that bill is to help the state increase the safety net make plans for placement as well as a clinic an outpatient clinic so that people who do step down from care are able to continue to receive psychiatric care in the community this is a novel approach which we do not currently have to help people be able to live more independently less restrictive when they're ready but also be able to have that lifeline to needed psychiatric care so we're not simply releasing people with no follow-up. So the other bill, which is the focus of the unrestorable, the permanent incompetency, that is to provide much-needed placements for that group. And the way the bill is currently written will also involve some hospital capacity. Right now we not able to accommodate many of those patients We don have the right staff for example for some of the neurocognitive or neurodevelopmental We do plan to renovate a building on our Pueblo campus which will be secure, but also appropriately for behavioral treatment that's needed for that group.
Senator Mobley. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you. Is it Director Joseph, or? You can just call Leora. Madam Joseph. I don't know, but I think maybe Senator Kirkmeyer was asking a slightly different question because the Senate Bill 149 really deals with people who have committed the most serious crimes, but we have a lot of people in this system who, you know, have maybe even committed a misdemeanor crime and are in jail, and then they go to the hospital. to have their competency restored and then they are deemed to be unrestorable. And they're not, I believe those people are just released. And so I will just say that I agree we need a lot more beds in our state where we lag way behind sort of the benchmark of what is the right amount of beds for, hospital beds for per 100,000 people. I think it's 50 and we have 10. So we're fivefold below what is, you know, sort of the minimum that we should have. And, but here is my frustration and I'm just going to share that because when this happened a few years ago, it was before my time on the joint Budget Committee, but I think it was the year before. So we did put a lot of money into competency beds, and we went from a wait list of 450, 480, down to 220. And then we are still spending all that money, and then the wait list went back up and is now, I think you said, 370. And so my feeling, because I don't have data, is that part of the reason it didn't work before is because we're not actually treating people. Competency restoration is not treatment. It is a very different thing. It's a workbook. I could get you a copy of this workbook. Once you can pare it back what's in the workbook, you're deemed to be competent, and then you get tried or you get a plea deal or whatever it is, and then you're done. But in that whole expanse of sitting in jail for a year and a half and going to the state hospital and then having your case adjudicated, no one has actually helped you to get better. And so we have a lot of people in Colorado who are cycling in and out of these various settings, jail, hospital, short-term hospital, homelessness, and they're not ever getting treated. And at this point, we're proposing to give actual treatment and care only to the most dangerous criminals. And so I am very appreciative of the fact that there are some civil beds in this proposal because if in fact we were treating people before they had any crimes, then we wouldn't have the problem that we have. And that comes back to this woefully inadequate number of beds and also not appropriate step downs and a full continuum of care including outpatient We don have it And so I worry a little bit that we put this more money into more beds and they're mostly forensic beds, and the wait list will go down, and then it will go back up again, because literally the same people are cycling through these systems and never actually accessing care. There, I said it.
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator Amabile. Senator, a few things. One, I want to address the fact that we did receive two years ago or so that ability to increase our capacity. We didn't make a bonfire with the money. We built beds, and we treated people. And we continue to be able to serve our most acute, and Senator, you're correct. we need to continue to build out the spectrum so that when someone is less acute criminally, they still are able to get treatment. And our outpatient clinic, which is part of the unrestorable bill, is exactly that community-based services so that when people step down, they still have a connection and a link. And while competency restoration services, it is true, are a civics lesson, an important civics lesson, the ability to go to a hospital is about stabilization, psychiatric stabilization. They receive medicines. They receive long-acting injectables. They are part of therapy. That is the bulk of the work that is done at the hospital. It is medical care and treatment. And I understand that we don't yet have that full spectrum. But when we increase bed capacity, we increase our ability to serve people, it isn't a Band-Aid. it's a bridge to get to that next level. And I think that first slide illustrating that we don't have enough beds, that's the goal. We must get to the beds. In order to begin to start talking about a step-down process, we have to start with our most acute, our sickest people. We have currently on the wait list, the tragedies are enormous. Two pregnant women. Imagine being in jail. pregnant and incompetent, not understanding what's going on, two men with dementia. These are the people that need our bets, and we've got to make a headway here while we continue to work and advocate for all kinds of step downs, like the incredible success of the mental health transition living homes, that incredible work we're doing there. But what the special master's data has shown is that under the black letter law of the wait list, it is only inpatient beds that are going to make that difference, that ability to comply with the letter of the law in the consent decree. And that is the key purpose of this litigation, and it is the key purpose of our request before you today to reduce the wait times so people can enter into treatment and it it is it might not be holistic mental health treatment and i agree with that senator but it is treatment in a hospital with doctors and nurses and psychologists and staff and it's work that we are committed to growing at the state because we have so much capacity one thing that happened when the wait list went down I going to butcher this word the special masters commented, we almost had an irogenic effect, meaning we created all these competency courts. We created judicial learning about the competency system. We were able to fund a robust system. And then it started to work. And we were meeting those timelines because of the generous gift of increasing our bed capacity. And then what happened is that more and more people said, oh, this system is working now. And the orders skyrocketed. And our court orders have increased 40% over the last two years. We don't control the levers of who comes into the system. These are judicial decisions. And we've seen across the country, this is not a Colorado problem, an increase in serious mental illness, diagnoses across the country, and an increase, just read the newspaper, all the states are dealing with these very, very complicated issues that intermingling between people with serious mental illness and some very high-profile criminal activity. And I do feel the need to state, and I know all of you know this, that most people with serious mental illness do not commit crimes. That's just a fact. Even in our population, our highest charges only forms about 30 to 40 percent of our population. Most of the other population that we have at the hospital are not committing those very, very serious crimes. But they are caught up in a system. They never got the right treatment. We don't have enough beds. And this allows us to get where we need to be from a legal perspective, focusing on the consent decree. Next slide.
I think Rep Taggart had a question.
Oh. I did. I do. And, Director Joseph, I think you know my question that is coming at you. When I look at these details of these beds, I think you know I have a new mental health hospital sitting idle in Grand Junction, Colorado with 48 beds that was built in 2019, 2020. And I, in full disclosure, Director Barnes and I have talked about it now a couple of times. But I hope before we go building and or converting, so to speak, that we pay attention to, we've got capacity sitting in Western Colorado idle with a very good firm that's more than willing to work with the state on leasing those beds. So I just hope that's being looked at.
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Representative Taggart. We are incredibly supportive of the Grand Junction Hospital. IT'S AN INCREDIBLE ADDITION TO OUR STATE. I KNOW I SIT ON THE FINES COMMITTEE, AND I THINK YOU'RE AWARE THAT THE FONT WE GAVE, I THINK, APPROXIMATELY $5 MILLION TO HELP KICK START AND GROW THAT HOSPITAL. SO WE'RE VERY EXCITED. For that hospital to be full and serve that community, and I'm confident we're going to get there. I'm confident we're going to get there. I have some questions, but if you... Well, I'm just trying to wrap my head around there's a judge. You're in active litigation. You are also meeting with the special masters and with, and then there's Disability Law Colorado, and it feels like everyone is saying something different. You are in active litigation with an entity that doesn't like this proposal because they don't think that, from what I can read, they don't believe that it's actually inpatient beds that we need, but we need community placements, whatever that is, many different things. But you are telling us that the special masters are saying that it is the inpatient beds that is necessary to be compliant, but the person who is suing us disagrees. So is it the same suit? Is it the new suit? I'm just trying to wrap my head around what are all the factors here that we ultimately have to weigh to decide what is the right way to spend money, both to address the problems of Coloradans, but also to prevent a $400 million fine.
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Madam Chair. It is confusing indeed, and welcome to the wild world of litigation. And this is a very common thing that can happen where the parties are looking at a legal document and the underpinnings feel different between the parties. As you know, the special masters, well, I would say, first of all, that I know many of you may have received communication from the plaintiff stating a lot of things that in my heart I agree with, things like we need housing and more community treatment, and all of that is an amazing thing that we agree we need. But it's clear from the data and from the special master's communication that what solves the details of the consent decree are the inpatient beds. Again, the consent decree focused on such a narrow constitutional issue and an issue where the black-letter law talks about these timeframes, that we've got to admit people. The consent decree doesn't say that the department needs to build housing or give us a metric to build up community mental health. It doesn't have a metric for that. It does have a metric about wait times. And what the special masters who are not a party to the litigation, they're the overseers. They're the objective overseers. They've been appointed by the court. One of them doesn't even live in the state. They come in to meet with us and consult throughout the country are clear that to meet the metric that we are under the litigation hold for is clear It is about inpatient beds And the communication from disability law there were some things that you know we unfortunately, because we're in litigation, we can't have direct conversations anymore without a million lawyers. And there are some facts that are incorrect there. For example, we are not asking for $10 million to renovate anything. We're moving adolescents, yes, from one place to the best. It's actually to the other, better for our adolescent population for a variety of reasons. We're asking for $300,000 to just renovate that, not $10 million. We, they seem to suggest that we should be buying housing. Well, some of these patients in the jails, they can't just be released into housing. They need treatment, and we can't get them into the hospitals fast enough because we don't have bed capacity. The consent decree doesn't say anywhere you need to find housing for people with serious mental illness. Maybe it should have, but that's not the litigation that we're under.
Senator Amable.
Thanks. And, you know, I also, I read the communication from disability law, and I thought, well, okay, there are some things in here that I think are right. But I do think that a big part of the problem is this inpatient or residential treatment. And there's, you know, different, like, inpatient does mean in a hospital. Residential treatment could be in a 2765 facility. It could be, I mean, it's, there are different kinds of placements. that people can go to, but what I am hung up on is two years ago, or whenever it was, three years ago, $60 million went into surging the beds. And they did go down, but then they went back up again, and there were a number of people who were, and I think I talked to you about it even, and said, well, I don't think that's going to work because all we're doing is this competency. And competency, and yes, you do get treated if you get to the state hospital, but so many people don't get to the state hospital. They time out or they do outpatient restoration services. People who do outpatient restoration services do not get treatment. They can, but they don't have to, and a lot of them don't. And a lot of people, you know, just end up getting their cases dismissed, and they don't ever see, they don't ever get to care. And so I don't believe, I believe we might get the, this now we're getting half as much money, and we have still 370 people in the jail. last time we had 450 and we got 60 million dollars and so I just I feel like this is a little bit of insanity to think that if we just keep doing the same thing we will have a different outcome but I don't think the problem is that we're putting the money into beds I think the problem is we're not putting the money into the right kinds of beds and into the right kind of care. And so that the part that gives me pause And like believe me I want us to approve the budget request because I fully believe we need it But I think if we actually want to solve this competency problem we have to do more than just that. And I think we should buy the hospital in Grand Junction. I understand there's a hospital in Kyle's in my district that might be coming up for sale. I think we should buy that. I think we should open up twice as many mental health transitional living homes. Instead, we're shutting them down. We heard in this budget that we were going to dial back on the number of transitional living homes. I think that's a terrible decision. So I'm all in on the beds. I just want us to focus on making sure people are getting actual care and treatment. And I don't think this proposal does that. And I understand, you know, the parameters of the consent decree. But I will also just say if it weren't for this lawsuit, we wouldn't be doing anything for these people. We would just be letting them rot in jail. And so I'm relieved, actually, that we're doing what we're doing. and I think we're doing the right thing to try to solve the problem.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator. We are not putting our foot off the pedal. We're asking for this to build capacity for treatment in hospitals for our most sick individuals, and we believe that that is a good thing. And I think, Senator, you agree. And we recognize the need to continue to work on legislation, legislation we've been sponsored and been part of, to continue to build out the safety net. Again, the clinic is going to be a key piece of ability for people to live in community with care that is monitored and appropriate. So that already is going to be a huge piece in the safety net, And we anticipate the clinic being able to serve 40 people a day, 40 people a day. That's how we're building that out. We continue to look for legislative solutions that will support more people receiving treatment in different places. Senate Bill 149 is an example, again, of closing that gap in the safety net and looking at placements for those people who do have challenges and they're unrestorable
and so that their cases aren't just dismissed and they're let out with no plan. So between this and Senate Bill 149 and the budget request that's part of that, we are building out a safety net. We're getting back to that chart that you saw at the beginning. We're building capacity now. This is what is going to make a difference because it's going to help more people. These beds are going to help over 200 people a year, more. And that's going to not only bring the wait list down, but help 200 people more a year. That's significant. The goal has to be to help the people. and we have to begin with our sickest and our most serious and from there we build out the safety net All of this can be done in one legislative session I understand that and I really do understand the constraints that all of you are under. But the lawsuit is real. It's not a threat of a lawsuit. We're in court. Senator Kirkmaier.
Thank you, Madam Chair. So how do we, how do you, with us, reconcile the act of litigation versus the consent decree? Is that what this plan is attempting to do?
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator Kirkmaier. We believe that this will get us out of the consent decree, that this will yield to compliance with the consent decree, focusing in on those wait times, which is at the core of the consent decree. The metric that is in there is about wait times, and that's what we're aiming to hit with increasing capacity.
Senator Berkman.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And so when you say get us out from under the consent decree, does that mean we're finished? We don't keep paying the $12 million in penalties? or that we should anticipate that that is something that goes on forever, that we can't use to facilitate other, you know, capacities for behavior health and restoration.
Director Chosen.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Senator. Our goal is to be out of litigation. A trial doesn't help anybody. A judge handing out punitive fines doesn't help anybody. and that is our goal. I obviously cannot predict. We believe the data we've seen following the guidance of the special masters that this is the path, and that's all we can do right now. I will say right here and right now, we have another pandemic. All bets are off. All bets are off. But the plan today, as I look out over the next 18 months until we must be in compliance, this gets us there. And the act of litigation is with regard to our compliance or not with the consent decree, not this new idea that we should be doing more for community-based services. But it is specific to the consent decree, which, as you are suggesting, is specifically about wait times to get inpatient. restoration services. Is that correct?
Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes.
The basic, in order to sue, there needs to be a constitutional premise to the lawsuit. And that focuses on the idea of competency and restoration because that's a constitutional right. A person can't sue another state agency for not giving housing, for example. There's not a constitutional right to housing. We might think that there should be. We might wish that there should be. But there isn't a constitutional right to housing. There is, though, a constitutional right to restoration. And so the focus of the consent decree really gets you down in the weeds. They tell us how many days a person is allowed to wait at jail before we incur fines. That's the language of the consent decree. How many days until I have to get one of my evaluators to meet with somebody? Those are the...
metrics that we're focused on.
Senator Mobley. And I understand that, and I'm just, I want us to think about why didn't this work when we did it before, when we put $60 million in and surged the competency beds and then saw them go right back up. And I hear you saying, oh, well, then all of a sudden judges were saying more people should go get competency restoration. But I find that a little bit baffling because there was still always a wait list. So it's not like all of a sudden somebody could just go right to the state hospital. We've never been in that situation since the original lawsuit. So there's always been a wait list. I can't imagine it would matter to the judge if the wait list had 300 people or 350 people or 280 people. I'm not sure that that would change their behavior. And I think we have evaluators who are professionals who are finding that people are not competent and they have to have restoration services. So I want to at least examine the possibility that the reason why there's so many more people all the time is because the people that are in this churn are not getting care and will continue to not get care if we just keep doing what we've been doing. And so, you know, my hope for all of this is that we would be putting more money into the civil system and helping people before they are in this system or even after they've been in it two or three times, maybe the fourth time somebody might notice that they've been in the churn for the last three years and actually try to get them help without them having to commit a new crime. So, and you know that I get these letters every week at least, and I forward them to the agencies and say, well, how can I help this person? And there isn't help. So I have to tell them, sorry. And so if we don't fix that, like we have a certain number of people in the state of Colorado who have schizophrenia. And they're being made sicker over time because they're not getting care. And I don't know how many new cases. I have heard that we've doubled the number of people with schizophrenia in our state in the last 10 years or so. But again, I wonder why this time will be different than last time.
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator. First of all, we, in our request, we are contemplating seeing an increase. So our request is contemplative of seeing the court orders continue at the pace of increase that they are, which was different than the last time. I do need to really drill down, though, that the request last time helped more people. It's just a fact. and the waitlist dropped dramatically until we then saw those court orders as soon as we started showing progress the court orders really lifted up And we still were able to help people Had we not done that, there's that earlier slide that showed over 1,000 people would be on the wait list today, we'd be in a whole different situation. We'd be in a whole different, much worse situation. I think that what's important is that first slide. Do you mind just the one that shows all the states? Thanks, Abby. I mean, this is a reality. And without investment, until we move up to the green, California was in a massive consent decree problem, massive. Now, they put something like $60 billion, I'm not joking. It was some crazy number into, it's a whole different population, and I understand that, into their competency system. and now they're green. We're not. But let's get up there a little bit. And the more we're able to build capacity, the higher we're going to be able to go on this exact chart so that we won't have those wait times.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't want to dispute with you the bed capacity, but playing off what Senator Mobley was talking about, and CHERN in particular, do we have, and I hate to use the word data, with people that are incompetent or mentally ill,
because I don't want them to come across as a statistic, but are we measuring a bit about this churn and why it's happening and what we could be doing about it so that it doesn't continue? It can't be perfect. I'm not unrealistic, but there's usually a core set of problems that are causing that churn to continue, are we evaluating that and taking action on that to reduce that churn significantly? Because I would agree that if that's one of the underlying issues, it's hard to get on top of this bigger issue, if that makes sense.
Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Representative Taggart.
Well, we don't have data on the following. What would have happened if we put more money into community resources instead of inpatient bed and what that effect would have had on the wait list? That we don't have. We can't track that. So we're tracking the data that the special masters are guiding us through, which is data that shows that the inpatient beds are what stops the churn, essentially, because it lowers that wait list and more people are getting care. I'll tell you an interesting statistic. One of our requests located in the request slide, it looks like this, the table, sorry, is for 16 jail-based restoration beds. I want to talk a little bit.
I think before you do that, Rep Taggart maybe has a clarifying question.
Before you do that I more focused on data that would help from a treatment standpoint That individual that has churned two or three what could have been done differently from a treatment standpoint Which, again, I know is not perfect, but that could slow that and bring that down significantly. I'm not trying to compare one bed to another. I'm more trying to figure out what are we analyzing from a data standpoint to determine what on the treatment side could be improved so it doesn't reoccur. Does that make sense?
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Representative. We are tracking now some of what we call the churn, that how many times people are entering in and out of the competency system. And we're learning all kinds of interesting things. It depends, for example, are they starting an outpatient restoration? Are they arrested earlier and no one raised competency? These are some complex questions. when the hospital was not even available, for example, as a treatment because you were waiting in jail for so long and then your case just got dismissed. And so you never made it through and you never received treatment. So we're looking at all of these factors to see what will help provide stability. I think that's really the core of what you're asking for. Two points on that. Once again, I do need to shout from the rooftops, the clinic is going to be able to provide some of that stability, this brand-new clinic that we're planning to open. So that will help us stop the churn. I do want to highlight here, you'll see 16 beds at the top for jail-based restoration. So this is an interesting program, and Senator Amabile and I have had a lot of conversations about this program. It is not her favorite. So I'm aware of that, and I'm aware that there are elements of this program that Senator Mabley has spoken with me about repeatedly, and I understand the issues. However, this is a unique program that we have here in the state where we work with the sheriffs to have beds in the jails that are turned into essentially hospital beds. The population that we've been able to serve here is our highest level charges who are the most stable mentally. So it's an interesting population. They're not our most acute mentally. They're acute criminally. Judges need them to be in a closed setting. And we've been working very successfully with the sheriff's office to create these beds. First of all, what we've learned from a data point of view about this population is that they are the first to transition to outpatient restoration. They're the ones, because they're low acute mentally, and once they get stabilized, judges have been willing to get them out of jail. And that population we're seeing trend at a highest rate in safety, safely out of the jails and back into community and into outpatient restoration. It's been a very interesting data dive in that population. Again, high charges, low acuity.
So how do we make sure we don do the repeat as Senator Mobley is asking I mean we put 60 million in wait list went down judges started creating more orders wait list goes back up
and here we are again. So what's going to be different this time?
Director Chosen.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator Kirkmeyer. What's going to be different is as we continue to increase our inpatient capacity, our state will move up on that chart, and we will be green. and the first one. Yeah, thank you. Abby's amazing. She's like reading my mind. And this is a chart specifically focused on inpatient beds. That's the only data point here. And as we move up, the people in the states in the green don't have this problem. They're in the green. Sure, but what if the judges start writing all those orders, right?
Senator Mowgli?
Yeah. So it's, I don't, I think what's, what happened when we surged the beds before is we got a lot more people through the system. So we really increased the speed at which somebody moved through the system. But because they didn't receive any kind of follow-up care or anything like that, they just re-entered. And so we had a surge of competency beds, and then we had a surge of people coming back into the system. like maybe, I don't know, a year later or maybe even less. And so I don't think it's, again, I don't think, I think whatever the determination is about why you need to be on the wait list hasn't changed. And I just think more people are getting, we're just throughputting people more quickly now, but we're not actually getting enough people to never come back or to not come back so fast.
Ray Brown.
Thank you. I mean, I appreciate what Senator Momolei is saying. That should be a knowable thing, right? We should be able to know whether these are, I mean, these are all public records. These are all public cases. we should know whether someone who was restored to competency served trial and then released and then came back into the system and to what frequency that happens. And I wonder if either judiciary or you all or the judicial department has that sort of information. I mean, as far as I can tell, right, like if we added a bunch of beds and we had a finite number of people and we throughput them faster and got them out, then it seems to me like if it were just the same number of people recirculating, then our wait list would stay the same. So it does seem, it suggests to me that there are more people, and I think that's what you were saying, Director Joseph, is that other states are seeing increases in the diagnoses of mental illness and particularly in this population. I don't know why that is. I don't know if we have a greater awareness about these particular diseases now. But it seems to me that, anyway, I don't know what the answer is here, but we ought to be able to get some data to shine some light on whether or not the recirculating or the churn problem is part of what's driving the increased caseload, even despite our expansion in beds.
But maybe you want to react to that, Director Joseph.
I'M SORRY.
DIRECTOR CHOSECK.
THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR, AND THANK YOU, REPRESENTATIVE BROWN. I WANT TO ADDRESS A FEW THINGS. If I could, I want to talk about the churn that Senator Kirkmeyer has mentioned that all of you have mentioned. I think it's an important topic. What is different? What's going to be different with these beds? A few things. I'm going to say it again, the clinic. New, again, it's an opportunity for step down. What else is different? The civil beds that we're requesting, 24 new civil beds, a big investment in our civil system. This is our first request asking for an investment in the civil system. That alone is going to start helping us have step down, helping us prevent churn. And the third thing, and the most important thing, and I should have mentioned it sooner, as we get into compliance, the beds can convert to civil. As we get people out of jail, let's make sure then that we're now going to dip the other way and make sure we have these civil beds to get people to help. That is something we're absolutely committed to doing. Once our constitutional rights are taken care of, we now have a safety net. And that is exactly the investment that we're excited about. Get us out of this lawsuit, and then let's do that and build our civil capacity and see what happens next when people are able to get access to care without being arrested. But first we have to take care of people's constitutional rights. and that's why this request is written the way it is with the 94 beds, 24 civil and the rest forensic. I hope that those end up just flipping and that would be a great day for Colorado. That would be a great day for Colorado. On the issue of the churn, we've begun tracking that data. Over a five-year period, we've seen approximately a 30% reentry into the system. So that's so far what our data has shown.
Senator Kirkware.
Okay, thanks. What's the relationship between, is there one, maybe I just assume there is, between when pot became legal in the state and all of a sudden this started happening. And then have we seen anything with regard to the mushroom dill, you know, a couple years ago, adding to the situation? Is it the legalization of cannabis or maybe the proliferation of new products like concentrates that maybe weren't available? Maybe all of it. I think there's a relationship between that and the onset of when all of a sudden we started with all the pot, with all the marijuana. Maybe it's not called that anymore. I don't know.
Director Joseph.
Is it? Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Senator Kirkmaier. Like all of you, I'm familiar with a lot of the articles in scientific journals talking about the effects of certain kinds of cannabinoids as well as other psychotropic drugs. We are not tracking that specifically at CFMH, but what I can say is that I haven't looked at this data in over a year, but about a year ago, 80% of our population POPULATION HAD SOME TYPE OF A MIXED SUBSTANCE USE OVERLAY WITH SERIOUS MENTAL ILLNESS. SO WE'RE SEEING THAT MIXED IN THAT POPULATION. WHAT COMES FIRST WHAT CAUSED WHAT I NOT A CLINICIAN I DON EVEN THINK A CLINICIAN IT SEEMS THERE A CAUSAL RELATIONSHIP TO ME What caused what I not a clinician and I don even think a clinician It seems there a causal relationship to me Senator Mobley I just want to say something about the data because it seems like it is knowable but I have asked over and over and over again, and what we don't have is communication between the judicial branch and HICPF and then the jails and the OCFMH. So somebody might be in and out of jail three or four times and never hit the competency system. They might have been in the competency system and then come back to jail and go three or four times. And no one would know that. No one is tracking that. The only way that OCFMH can track it is if somebody comes to their hospital. If you go to a hospital in Lewisville, Centennial Peaks, and then you go to West Pines, and then you go to Highlands Behavioral, they don't know that. They're not talking to each other. They literally don't know that you were in three different hospitals in a month, unless they ask you and then unless you can actually self-report that that happened, and a lot of people can't or won't or don't. and also we don't really have data about who ends up being homeless and for how long. And then, you know, we just don't, it is actually really hard to track the data. So I, that's something we should try to address and, you know, I keep putting it in bills and then having to take it out because it costs money and we don't have any money and so we really don't have good data. And I understand that HICPF is reluctant to be involved because HICPF, everybody's on Medicaid, at least some of the time. Not everybody, but most people. And so you'd think that they would know where you've been and how often you've been there. But my understanding is it's hard to get that data. I know this is a much bigger problem that we're talking about than our wait list, but that is the particular that we're supposed to be dealing with now. And that should actually be a knowable thing, how many times, because if the contention is that the growth of the list is because of the churn of people in and out of contact, I MEAN, WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THE LIST. SO THAT SHOULDN'T THAT BE A KNOWABLE THING IF THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE GONE THROUGH THIS PROCESS AND THEN ARE BACK IN IT OR WE'RE TALKING IT SOUNDS LIKE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT OTHER CHURNING. BUT IF WE'RE REALLY JUST FOCUSED ON THIS WAIT LIST, IF IT IS IN FACT PEOPLE CYCLING BACK ONTO IT, THAT SHOULD ACTUALLY BE A VERY KNOWABLE THING.
DIRECTOR JOSEPH.
Thank you, Madam Chair. And it is. If we are talking simply and narrowly about our population that we seek frequently, as I mentioned earlier, in a five-year time frame, we've seen a 30% repeat. I don't know if that's more than most people who get rearrested who are not in the competency system. That's a whole different issue, what recidivism rates are in other systems. But I think what Senator Immobile was talking about are things that for example if someone was before they got arrested they were in a hospital in Louisville or if they get arrested and their case is dismissed the next day or they never come back to court or whatnot we have no way of knowing if that person in fact was in the competency system or not on those low level misdemeanor charges and this happens every day I hear you saying that you want to give me another 10 million dollars for a data team I fine with it if that is a request. But these are complicated data points. As the senator
highlighted herself, how do we start day one?
How do we count that person? How do we track that person?
Okay.
Maybe you can go on to the next slide now. Okay. I think we were at... I've mentioned the civil diversion, which we're very excited to do, and the fact that we continue to hope that our forensic beds will convert to civil. It's something that we feel very strongly about in agreement with Senator Amabile that this is how we continue to prevent a future wait list and a future consent decree. Next slide. I think that was it.
And I see Vice-Chevber just has his hand up.
Oh, I do. Thank you. Back on this data collection piece, don't people have rap sheets? I mean, don't we track when people are arrested and how many times they've been arrested? And isn't that just part of what DAs and defenders know about people? I'm just floored that we can't do a search. Anybody who's been involved in the competency restoration system and gets arrested again. do we really not have that data?
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Representative Sirota, and thank you, Senator Bridges. It's been a while since I've looked at a rap sheet, but what I can say about them is they don't indicate when someone has been arrested if they are incompetent or not. They will say things like case dismissed or case pled or sent to prison. it's not they don't go into psychiatric conditions in order to track that we would need to look at the specific minute orders of the different dockets where these cases are being discussed where a judge says I'm ordering you to competency then we find out if the person's on the wait list then we find out if the case is dismissed or not then we find out if they sent to the hospital so it's it's It truly would be a lot of a manual pull. Maybe AI could help in this situation. I have literally no idea. But just looking at someone's board of probation record isn't going to tell anybody whether or not someone has been in and out of a competency system. And part of the issue, which we don't, state judicial has some records and we have others and we don't communicate because ours are all HIPAA protected. so we aren't in a big sharing community. All right.
Well, thank you very much. Any last questions?
None for now.
Yeah, Madam Chair, a follow-up.
Hi, Chair Bridges. Thank you. You certainly keep records yourselves, and so you would be able to know if someone is coming into your system for a second time. So maybe comparing it to the records that are kept by law enforcement and judicial is not possible But certainly if people are cycling back into care being provided by your folks in your office we would know that they have come back into that care. So it seems to me that even if we can't answer the question, how often do folks that leave your care, get arrested again, and become criminally involved again. Even if we can't answer that question, certainly we can answer the question if they come back into competency, right?
Director Joseph. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator Bridges, for the question. Yes,
and we estimate the data that we've begun looking at shows about a 30 percent over five years of people who are in our competency system and come back within five years. We're looking at about a 30% repeat group.
Do you have follow-up or your hand is just... Yeah, well, yeah, so I'll lower it too. So then it seems to me then that it's not simply that we're not providing care
and people are churning back in. Because we're simply not providing care and people are churning back in, and that's why our system is overloaded, then we would see much higher than 30 percent. Right. Like that's not the reason it is. It is new, fresh people, 70 percent of them at least that are coming in. So there may be churn with folks going back through criminal justice system, but it's not churn coming back into your beds, receiving your care again. That is the reason that we have this this shortage of beds. It sounds to me like it's more along the lines of what you said earlier, which is that the courts and the awareness of this have increased such that people who probably should have been being assigned or sent your way before are now actually receiving those assignments. And now we have that backlog because we've done such a great job on the front end saying that you actually need to send these folks over to you and not just send them to jail. Is that right?
No.
Senator Mali says no. Dr. Joseph?
Well, it seems like the data indicates if it's only 30%, then it's not just people cycling back, or it would be higher than 30%, right? Thank you, Madam Chair and Senator. I agree. The growth in the wait list is not about this churn concept. The growth in the wait list is about, I think, and it's also not ever going to be one thing. It's going to be multifactored. It is an explosion of serious mental illness that we've seen across the country. It is related to increased criminogenic behaviors that we see cycling through the court systems, again, around the country. It is an increase in our lack of resources around the country dealing with housing and treatment and all of those upstream issues. All of this together, I'm going to agree with the part that says we were doing such a good job so more people got referred. I like that. So I will agree with Senator Bridges about that. But I think that all of these things together, it is not one thing. We cannot look at one thing and say, oh, if you just fix for this, it's all going to be better. These are really complicated medical issues with really, really, really complicated treatment pieces. Like any serious medical diagnosis, they're lifetime diagnoses. And they need constant care. And that is the goal here, is to make sure that we are providing that care.
Senator Motley.
Yeah, I mean, with regard to the return, I believe that we're just talking about who ends up going back to the state hospital. But you could be on the competency wait list again and never get to the state hospital because you time out or because there's a variety of things that could happen to you while you're waiting in jail on the wait list. And that's not an uncommon thing. And also you might end up getting referred to outpatient restoration services, and that wouldn't be part of this 30% either, but it would clog up the wait list for a time while you're waiting to see if you can get outpatient restoration services. And I'll also say, you know, we hear that, oh, the public defenders are raising competency because they think it's a way to get their people's charges dismissed. And I don't believe that's happening because it's actually, if you have low-level charges, it is a nightmare to be on the competency wait list because then you're just stuck. And they could just say, okay, look, this guy's got fairly low-level charges. Let's pretend they're competent, and then we can just plead them out and get them right out of jail. And they would do that if that was an ethical and right thing for them to do, but it isn't. If you're incompetent, you're incompetent, and it doesn't really matter why or what your charges are or whether that's a good situation for you, the person who they're trying to help. If you're incompetent, they have to raise that, and everybody gets assessed. And a medical professional makes that determination. It isn't a made-up thing. It isn't like, oh, let's get everybody into jail so that they can get on the competency list and then get to the state hospital for treatment. That isn't a thing.
Okay. Vice Chair Bridges.
Do we not track churn on the wait list? What I think, what I'm hearing, what I believe I'm hearing is that we have 30 percent that are people that are coming back. But if we doubled our capacity, then that would drop to 15. It's not that the number of beds determine the churn. It's that the churn is sort of this fixed number, not a fixed percentage, and that we would be able to address this in a significant way if we increase the number of beds. Is that accurate? Or would we think that if we doubled the number of beds, we'd still have 30 percent in that churn space? And then do we track the competency wait list? Like, are we seeing that people are just timing out on this?
Director Joseph.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator. When I reference the churn, I'm referencing not just people on the wait list, but people who enter into the competency system, including our outpatient restoration services, and come back again, maybe on the wait list the next time. Because the first time, maybe they're on bond, and then the next time, the judge is putting them in the wait list. I don know if that 30 is going to change even with increased capacity That may be a factor that 30 of the people just increasing capacity won help I do believe I do believe that I going to say it again the clinic will help with reducing that because that is going to be our treatment in the community. So hopefully that is a piece that will stop that churn. And I do believe that when we are able to convert these beds to civil, which is the goal, that will allow people to step up without needing to be arrested. And that's obviously the goal, for people to be able to access the help they need, including inpatient beds. That's the greatness of the Grand Junction Hospital without needing to be arrested. And that is the goal once we get through this constitutional issue. Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Director Joseph and teams. Appreciate everyone today.
Thank you.
All right.
You only had to tell us five times. I got it the second time.
Okay, we, I don't think can finish everything that we had on the agenda today, but, so I don't think we necessarily have time for the RFIs, but if everybody could just make sure you take a look at that so that we're ready to take it up tomorrow, that would be great. And then hopefully we can take care of the staff recommended long bill conference committee amendments and the revenue sales and use tax system funding. Hopefully those are fast.
Tomorrow?
No, now.
Oh, now.
Okay, great.
Sorry. What did you count? Three and then six. unless you want us to do that in a different order.
Director Harper.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Craig Harper, JBC staff. I think Mr. Kurtz will be on his way in just a second, but I'll take advantage of the dead air to ask for permission for a technical adjustment to a decision that you made yesterday. You approved an additional $10 million transfer from the OIT revolving fund to the general fund. House Bill 1405 has that fiscal year 2627 transfer happening on July 1, 2026. and our understanding from OIT is that it would be significantly better for their cash flow situation if we moved the transfer for 26-27 to the end of the fiscal year. It won't affect your balancing at all. But as it stands right now, the bill is making that transfer on July 1, and I'm recommending that you move it to June 30th of 2027.
Okay. So if we could get a motion for that technical while Eric gets set up, then we'll be done.
I move that the committee accept the technical correction.
Any objections That passes on a vote of 5 I vote yes
6 to 0.
All right, Mr. Kurtz.
Thank you, Madam Chair. In this memo, there's a list of changes that have been identified by the JVC staff. They're correcting errors in the long bill. All of these are changes that would put the bill back in the form that the JBC originally intended with your actions. I hesitate to call them technical amendments because that's subjective, but they're all pretty technical in nature. There are things like correcting spelling errors, correcting fund sources. The biggest dollar impact is a change in health care policy and financing. There was a policy the committee approved during the supplemental to reduce pediatric behavioral therapy rates. And when we took that 25-26 action and moved it into fiscal year 26-27 and tried to show the full year impact, we accidentally counted the 25-26 savings twice. So that's a $2.7 million general fund increase. Overall, it's a net increase in general fund obligations of $1.6 million.
Darn it.
Any questions for Mr. Kurtz?
Senator Kirkbray.
The exam chair.
The NICU maternity codes, people are still concerned that we didn't get the codes right. Do you feel confident we got the codes right?
Mr. Kurtz.
We had the IC codes, the maternal codes, the neonatal.
Codes?
Probably always more codes, Sabrina. No, I just keep getting asked, and I'm like, I think we did, but I don't know.
I mean, I'm assuming you did.
It's hard to say whether we got them right or not.
I think there is.
I have clarity, and the department has clarity on what codes were changing. I know that advocates want more codes included, and I don't know what the intent of all the committee members was with that motion. So I can't say if we got it right or not, but we know what codes are changing. IF ANY OF YOU NEED THE LIST OF THE CODES, I CAN PROVIDE THAT.
THAT WOULD BE GREAT. I'LL COMPARE IT WITH THE LIST THEY GAVE ME A MONTH AGO, THREE WEEKS AGO, TWO WEEKS AGO, FIVE DAYS AGO, AND TODAY.
THAT WOULD BE WONDERFUL.
THANK YOU.
OKAY. All right. Any other questions about this list of error corrections and alignments Yes I just want to know what did we miss Bill in the Office of Adults Aging and Disability Services
It was, the official name is Adults, and it was Adult.
Okay. The world is going to stop if we don't correct that one.
I was like, I didn't catch it, so I was curious.
Thank you.
All right. I have a question.
Oh, sorry.
Vice Chair Bridges.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Along Senator Kerkmeyer's line of questioning, I believe there were some codes that relate to family planning that were adjusted by the department in a way that they had planned not to adjust them. They applied the cuts sort of like in addition to applying the cuts. And I think advocates just can't get a clear read on what happened there. And so if you could check with my understanding is that this should not have a budget impact because the way that they were directed to manage those codes is, I think, not how they're managing it. And if they manage it the way they're supposed to, then it shouldn't cause any impact on the budget. So if you could just check with ICPUF on how that's being handled, that'd be great. Thank you.
All right. Anything else on this list?
Senator Motley. I move that we accept the technical corrections identified by Mr. Kurtz in his memorandum.
All right. Any objections?
I vote yes.
That passes on a vote of 6-0. Thank you, Mr. Kurtz. Mr. Catlett. Tab 6. 6.
Thank you, Madam Chair. John Catlett, JBC staff. So I am here with a request that came about two weeks ago regarding a shortfall in funding for the sales and use tax simplification system implemented in House Bill 231017. The Department of Revenue has stated that they are having a funding shortfall due to overutilization of this system relative to the fiscal note. The fiscal note anticipated about 75 million annual lookups. Actual utilization is closer to about $150 million lookups, which they project is going to lead to about a $1.3 million funding shortfall in the current fiscal year. So they have requested kind of a multi-tier approach to resolving this. So the first part is they need $925,000 general fund. They also have proposed shifting $250,000 from the personal service line in the taxation service division to the operating line that funds SUTs. And then they can absorb about $100,000 of that. So on page two, you can see staff recommendation is an appropriation of $925,000 in the current fiscal year, a reallocation of $250,000 from the Taxation Service Division personal service line to the operating expense line. And then finally,
um... Going back to your conversation yesterday and the fund balance and the electrifying school buses grant. You're backing up the bus. Backing the bus. Backing the bus up. Right on over it. Correct. These are buses to keep on giving.
So the department brought forth the problem and they proposed about 25% of a solution. I reached out to OSPB and said I wasn't extremely comfortable bringing forth one-fourth of a solution. the balance of this can be swept or transferred to the general fund and that will be a relatively budget neutral action.
Oh, beep, beep. I think this system is really important and we absolutely need to make sure that we are maintaining it. I am concerned on two levels. One, I don't understand why the late notice of this, like this can't have been a sudden trend. This must have been trending this way, at least to have been brought up before now. But also, this is only to fulfill the end of the current fiscal year. Is that correct? that the long-term funding solution for fiscal year 27 will come later. Am I reading that correctly?
Thank you, Madam Chair. That is 100% correct. This is a band-aid. This is to get through the current fiscal year. And then during the interim, they've said they're going to explore options for long-term sustainable funding. And if you'd like, we could include an RFI on this issue to see what proposals they're putting forward. But, yeah, they don't have a long-term plan beyond getting through this year.
So it just seems clear that this is going to cost us another million dollars next year or two at least, unless somebody else pays for it, like the local governments. But how we make that happen in time to pay for it next year is a mystery to me. So I guess this is an anticipated supplemental that we will see again in January.
Thank you, Madam Chair. It's possible, again, this is a very short-term solution. They have said that during the interim they are going to consult with OSPB about a sustainable funding model, which would require legislation if you'd like to have... The current bill as it stands, businesses are prohibited from funding the model, so it has to come from general fund as it currently is structured.
Senator Kirkmayer. Well, in my conversations with people over at OSPB, they said they needed it to be able to comply with Wayfair because apparently it went up at Christmas time and people must have been ordering a bunch. But they talked about municipalities and special districts. They were the main driver of the need. So that will make them happy after we take away that 3.5% of the marijuana. Let's not talk about that.
Okay. Rep Taggart.
I'm concerned about the request because of the fact that I find the data inconclusive. It up and down like a seesaw And it seems to me they picking the high point And that worries me because you can never fund something at least from my experience at the high point Whether you want to fund it in the top quartile, that's a different matter. But I'm not, this graph does not support the statement that they're making that this is projected to hit, to reach 150 million hookups as compared to the 75 million. I'm, if you pick the high point in January, you probably could get to that. But I, I have to tell you, I'm not buying their data. You don't think that that many million more people will, since we're not at year's end yet, keep doing this? You can't fund any project to the high point. And that, to me, is what they're doing here. Because if you take the January, they hit $20 million. Well, if I take $20 million and multiply it times 12, I'm at $240 million. But if I take, you know, there's only two points on this that it hit over $150 million annualized. And that just troubles me. I'm not saying that they don't deserve some additional dollars, but I just don't buy the $150 million. Sorry. I apologize.
Mr. Catlett.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Taggart. So I agree there's a lot of, I don't even know if you would call it seasonality. This doesn't seem to align with any specific month. But through March, they're at essentially $115 million, which vastly exceeds the $75 million they received funding for. So with three months to go in the year, they're already at $115 million. So they are well past what they initially were appropriated in the fiscal note. So my purview, I don't think it's unrealistic. I think they are going to hit 150, but I do see your point that there is a lot of volatility in the monthly utilization of the system.
Well, if they ended up not needing it, what happens if we appropriate them the, what is it, $1.3 million? And it turns out no more lookups the rest of the year, then that money would revert? Thank you, Madam Chair.
Yes, it's general fund. And if they didn't use it out of the operating expense line, it would revert.
Madam Chair.
Madam Chair Bridges, you sound like you're underwater.
Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, it's because I'm driving in suburban Colorado, so I have terrible coverage. That's right. And you're a kid in the back saying Colorado. I'm going to go to the bumpy roads. I'm not in Morgan County, though. So my question, though, is having been the former chair of the Sales and Use Tax Simplification Task Force, which was responsible for overseeing SUTs and the development and all that, DOR chose to pursue SUTs in a different way from how the original legislation had envisioned it And rather than developing our own CIS system we essentially hired someone else and they rent it back to us So we returned, we, the Department of Revenue returned about $10 million to the general fund that they didn't need because of how it was developed. And this is the developers of that software getting those dollars back, back, which was always going to happen when lookups became high enough.
Senator Mobley. Can I move the...
Do we have you or can you?
May I?
You may.
There goes that bus again. Okay. Yeah, I clearly did not get my grammar right. I move staff recommendation for the sales and use tax simplification funding.
Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of six to zero. Thank you, Mr. Kallett.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Is Ms. Frizzle driving this bus?
That's really what I keep thinking of on this. Great. I think that will conclude our business for the day, and we have a full calendar for tomorrow as well.
So the Joint Budget Committee will now stand in recess.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you.