Joint Budget Committee [Mar 18, 2026 - Upon Adjournment]

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Good morning. Good morning, Chair Sirota, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. My name is Dr. Susana Cordova, and I serve as the Commissioner of Education. I'm joined by our CFO, Wayne Peel, and I have a phone of friends in the audience as well. We recognize the incredibly challenging budget environment that you're navigating this year, and I appreciate deeply the care and discipline that you're bringing to these decisions. I'd like to just share really briefly a little bit of how CDE has really tried to embrace our role as fiscal stewards. We very early on implemented a hiring freeze before the state actually had the statewide hiring freeze. We have restricted out-of-state travel on an ongoing basis unless required. through a grant. We've put in place an enhanced expenditure review process. We have continued to maintain that level of scrutiny in anticipation of ongoing uncertainty both with the state budget and the federal budget and we have taken a very disciplined approach to identifying reductions. Early on in response to the 2.5 reduction target from the Office of State Planning and Budget, we proposed and our State Board approved reductions totaling 4.7% of our operating budget. These included administrative reductions and the full elimination of the social studies assessment. And through strong internal work, including from our procurement and school finance team, we were able to significantly reduce costs. For example, we were able to secure a $3 million contract for the new state equal system, which was significantly lower than the original estimate, which was closer to $9 million. We understand the need for difficult trade-offs and we've approached our approach to comebacks reflect that reality. So the requests that we're bringing forward today are both narrowed and prioritized. They focus on areas where we believe the impact on students is most immediate and significant. The state board supported these requests based on three factors, alignment with their legislative priorities, proximity to students during the school day and a balance of immediate need and long-term return on investment as a result of the 15 million in reductions the board is asking the committee to reconsider 4.8 million across three areas the school counselor core grant the school health professional grant program and the building excellent schools today or best grant I'll start with the school counseling core grant the proposed reduction would result in approximately 33 fewer grantees and 36 fewer school counselors statewide. These counselors play a critical role in supporting student mental health and well-being, improving attendance and engagement, expanding access to post-secondary and workforce readiness programs. And we see meaningful results from this program and I want to share that the program did show statistically significant positive impacts for students with disabilities and AND MULTILINGUAL LEARNERS ON LONG-TERM OUTCOMES LIKE SIX-YEAR GRADUATION RATES AND COMPLETION RATES. AND WE'RE SEEING STRONG IMPROVEMENTS IN SCHOOL LEVEL CAPACITY, SUCH AS REDUCING COUNSELING RATIOS FROM 806 STUDENTS TO ONE, TO CLOSER TO NATIONAL RECOMMENDED AVERAGES OF 276 TO ONE. REDUCING THIS PROGRAM WOULD MEAN FEWER STUDENTS IN HIGHER NEEDS SCHOOLS WOULD HAVE ACCESS TO THESE SUPPORTS DURING THE SCHOOL DAY. The next program I'd like to talk about is the school health professional grant. This program supports school nurses and other health professionals, roles that are essential to student safety and readiness to learn. The proposed reduction would result in approximately 25 fewer nurses in the next grant cycle. This comes at a time when schools are managing ongoing public health concerns, navigating inconsistent health guidance, and supporting students with chronic conditions that directly impact attendance and learning. Schools are often the most reliable point of access to healthcare for students, particularly high-need students. Colorado already has a very high student-to-nurse ratio, over 1,000 students per nurse. Further reductions will deepen existing gaps and limit schools ability to respond TO BOTH URGENT AND ROUTINE needs The next program I like to discuss is the best program The proposed adjustment to best indirect costs would effectively reduce cash grants by $420,540 on top of last year's cap. The best program addresses critical health, safety and security needs, primarily in our rural school districts. that have limited ability to raise local funds. The demand already far exceeds available resources. This cycle alone saw 57 applications totaling nearly $900 million in need compared to the about $107 million available. Even smaller projects such as roof repairs, fire alarms, security upgrades are essential and delaying them increases long-term costs and risk. We're also proposing a delay to the reduction of the local accountability grant program by one year, aligning with the end of the current three-year cohort. This would allow districts to complete the work that they have already begun, honoring existing commitments and avoiding the mid-cycle disruptions that could undermine the outcomes. It provides a more orderly transition while achieving savings in the near term. THE LAST PIECE THAT I'D LIKE TO TALK WITH YOU ABOUT IS THE RFI ABOUT ONLINE SCHOOLS. THIS REQUEST IS A BIT DIFFERENT. WE'RE NOT ASKING THE COMMITTEE TO RECONSIDER ISSUING THE RFI. WE BELIEVE THAT THESE ARE THE RIGHT QUESTIONS TO ASK. OUR REQUEST IS ABOUT HOW TO SUPPORT THE WORK. WE'RE NOT SEEKING NEW GENERAL FUND DOLLARS. INSTEAD, WE'RE REQUESTING AUTHORITY TO ROLL FORWARD UP TO 125,000 OF EXISTING 25, 26 FUNDS FUNDS THAT WOULD OTHERWISE REVERT. THIS WOULD ALLOW US TO CONDUCT THE ANALYSIS AND ENGAGEMENT NEEDED TO PROVIDE THOUGHTFUL, ACTIONABLE RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUPPORT THE STATE BOARD IN ANY FUTURE RULEMAKING. WE KNOW THAT THE WORK WILL REQUIRE US TO RESPOND MEANINGFULLY IN THREE KEY AREAS. THE FIRST AREA IS PROGRAMMATIC ANALYSIS. WE NEED A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF STUDENT OUTCOMES IN ONLINE in online settings, including looking at participation in assessments, the accountability results for online schools, mobility of online students, and post-secondary outcomes. This level of analysis is not currently done in a comprehensive way across our online models. The second would be the financial analysis. We do not currently collect cost data for online programs. To answer your question, we would need to issue a request for information to districts and online providers to gather, validate, and analyze the financial data against the actual costs. And it's important to note that the department does not have the statutory authority to require districts or providers to submit this information. UNLESS THE JBC WISHES TO REQUIRE DISTRICTS TO PROVIDE THIS INFORMATION, PARTICIPATION WOULD BE VOLUNTARY, WHICH MAY LIMIT OR RESULT IN LIMITED OR INCONSISTENT DATA AND REQUIRE ADDITIONAL FOLLOW-UP AND VALIDATION. THE THIRD AREA THAT WE THINK IS IMPORTANT IN THIS RFI IS THE DEVELOPMENT OF RECOMMENDATIONS THROUGH STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT. AND WE KNOW THAT MEANINGFUL STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT WILL REQUIRE US TO WORK WITH SCHOOL DISTRICTS, BOCES, ONLINE PROGRAM PROVIDERS, AND OTHER PARTNERS IN THE FIELD. AND WHILE WE HAVE EXPERTISE IN PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION, THE STATE BOARD PLAYS, THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN ESTABLISHING POLICY AND OVERSIGHT AND STAKEHOLDER INPUT WILL BE CRITICAL TO ENSURE THAT THEIR RECOMMENDATIONS ARE OPERATIONALLY FEASIBLE AND RESPONSIVE TO FIELD REALITIES THERE ARE A FEW OTHER CONSIDERATIONS their input will be critical to ensure that their recommendations are operationally feasible and responsive to field realities There are a few other considerations that you may wish to consider. You may wish to consider providing the department with statutory authority to collect the necessary financial and student level data as current authority is limited and participation would be otherwise voluntary. Additionally, neither the department nor the Colorado River BOCES currently has the authority to require student level enrollment data that would be needed for a full analysis of statewide programs. This limited participation could constrain the completeness of the findings. And finally, you may wish to consider how this work aligns with upcoming timelines, including the statutorily required redesignation process for the Colorado Empowered Learning, which begins in late 2026. FLEXIBILITY TO EXTEND THE CURRENT DESIGNATION PERIOD DEPENDING ON THE OUTCOMES OF THIS ANALYSIS MAY BE BENEFICIAL FOR ANY FUTURE POLICY CONSIDERATIONS. WE KNOW THAT YOU ARE BALANCING MANY COMPETING PRIORITIES IN A VERY CONSTRAINED ENVIRONMENT. THESE REQUESTS ARE INTENDED TO ENSURE THAT EVEN IN THIS CONTEXT WE'RE PRIORITIZING THE AREAS OF GREATEST IMPACT, THOSE THAT ARE CLOSEST TO A STUDENT'S DAILY EXPERIENCE IN SCHOOL. THANK YOU FOR YOUR consideration and for your continued partnership and we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

if we did run a bill to um say that you do have the authority to require the information from multi-district online schools um per comeback number five here if we did run that legislation um would there be a fiscal note driven by that or is that sort of you already have processes to TO COLLECT INFORMATION AND THIS WOULD JUST SORT OF FIT INTO THAT DEPENDING ON TIMELINES AND THINGS LIKE THAT OBVIOUSLY. COMMISSIONER CORNOVA.

MR. PEELE. I mean, field department of education. Obviously, we'd have to look at any fiscal, any legislative proposal on a space value in terms of what it bring. But I think the general proposal that we're putting here, we should be able to manage with this role for authority. Great. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Andrea Ewell, JBC staff. So this is on page 7, the categorical program funding for R2BA2 and the entire subdivision line item detail was tabled because all of those lines are exactly these eight categories. The primary reason it was tabled is because we did not have the official special ed counts at the time, and we now have those. So I have a revised recommendation for you. On page 12 is the table, and the column with the box around it is my revised recommendation. So after receiving the December special ed counts, The accounts came in lower than what CDE had originally estimated. So the cost of meeting the inflationary requirements specific to special ed has gone down quite a bit. So the $11.5 million in the top row is the cost of the inflationary requirements specific to special ed. So that's down by over $4 million than what we estimated. That cost is now slightly lower than the total required increase for amended 23, which is $12.9 million. My original proposal had looked at all the other categories and suggested funding ELL programs and public school transportation because those have large gaps in their expenditures compared to the state funds they receive. And then also special ed for gifted and talented children because there is required legislation from 23-287, which was the School Finance Act, that created new universal screening requirements, and statute does say that the General Assembly shall appropriate the cost of paying for that. So in order to not do that $1 million increase, I do think you would need legislation. So you have a lot of choices here. My revised recommendation does still exceed the minimum Amendment 23 requirement, and that is because of providing some funding for those other lines. However, if you did not want to go over the Amendment 23 increase, then you could do all of special ed and the talented and gifted increase, and you would have $318,000 to put towards any other line that you want to fund. And then an additional consideration for you in the farthest right column is that you have authorized a bill draft related to the inflation calculations that were used for TABOR and also the inflation calculations that will be used for Amendment 23. That was a letter from the governor's office, and you approved drafting of that a few weeks ago. If that bill includes a change to the inflation used for school finance, then the cost of categorical programs does increase slightly by about $560,000, and then $350,000 of that would have to go to special ed if that inflation rate changes from 2.3% to 2.4%. But if you are exceeding the Amendment 23 increase anyway, it doesn't really make a difference other than specifically we have to adjust special ed. So you could preemptively account for that bill in the long bill, and you'd be meeting the requirements anyway, or we can adjust these further in an appropriation clause in that bill. So there are some options here. So just to be clear, on page 12, the staff, the far right column, staff rec for inflation bill,

So this would reflect the 2.4% inflation. That is correct. and you would need that by lowering the public school transportation increase and to increase the special ed line?

You could also just increase special ed and leave transportation the same. Since my recommendation had transportation getting a pretty big increase, I kind of swapped it out of there to keep the total at $15.35 million the same. If the bill changes inflation to 2.4%, the total Amendment 23 increase is $13.4 million. So it goes up by about $560,000. And then in any of these cases you would still be over million short of the statutory intent to fully fund special education and the Tier B funding amount would be prorated down from to I think I had it in here somewhere. It would be prorated to $5,650 per student under the first recommendation and pretty similar under the second recommendation. Okay.

Rep Taggart. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just, I'm sorry I don't have much of a voice. I just think we need to be consistent with whatever inflation factor we use. We use it across the board, so I agree with you.

I'm happy to do this.

I move the second recommendation for staff rec, Department of Education. R2BA2. R2BA2, Categorical Program Funding, including light in detail for school district operations subdivision B.

Okay. But we didn't change between categoricals and that, didn't we?

Hi, Madam Chair. This is Kelly Shen, JBC staff. So I'll be talking about the first two items in your comeback packet. So this is for public health and environment and then tobacco revenue. So if we go to the beginning of the packet, The first is the department's R9 request to reduce LPHA distributions. The request is to reduce it by 3.3 million general fund, and it's comprised of reduction to local planning support dollars, so about 2.9 million, and then environmental health services for 330,000. During figure setting, the committee made a motion to approve staff rec, the department's request, which failed. The committee expressed an intent in revisiting this sort of when you had all six members present. And this decision will sort of affect line item detail for one of the offices in CDPHE, which has not yet been set. I can go into the detail just like high level considerations for you all. The proposed reductions would decrease local planning and support dollars by about 14 and similar for environmental health services that are distributed to local public health agencies Both distributions are also supported by a small amount of marijuana tax cash fund that proposed to remain unchanged. As a reminder, these are the same fund sources that received an additional 11 million in 2425 and ongoing after the expiration of COVID-19 funds from Senate Bill 21 to 43. This significantly increased the LPHA distribution from these two specific sources, and this is shown in the graph below. So if you look at sort of the lower levels in fiscal year 1920 and 2021, that was before Senate Bill 21-243. And then for the three years after that, about like 19 million was the funding from that bill, and then the subsequent funding in 24-25 is when the budget action was taken, and then 25-26, you all took a supplemental action to reduce that amount, and then 26-27, that's proposed amount with this reduction.

She already said to.

Rep. Brown. Yeah, thank you, Rep. Serota. I know that no one wants to make these cuts at all. I certainly don't want to make any of these cuts. I think that, for me, the urgent need around the measles outbreak, which is in Broomfield, which is just across the line from where, you know, from my district, It has among some of the policies that quite frankly this administration has been pushing that put public health not only at risk but strain local public health agencies and their ability to respond. I just can't get to the full $3 million and I would prefer not to make any of these cuts. but I am so I'm trying to also recognize the need here and make sure that we can continue to protect folks when these outbreaks quite frankly occur because they will and they have been and so that's why I'm trying to protect at least a little bit of funding here. I also would just say that I feel like the cuts that they are proposing are disproportionate and that public health in particular has been asked to take on a disproportionate share of the cuts. So I appreciate that, but I think I can do $1.5 million in cuts.

So in terms of the split, the original proposal was 90-10, so it would be 90% to the local planning support dollars and 10% to environmental health services. Okay.

Sorry, I blocked out for a minute. What did you say?

And I guess, Ms. Shen, is that something that you think is correct or reasonable, or is it just a cut that they would be taking and they could decide? Madam Chair, so when the sort of budget request was made in 2425 for that ongoing amount of funding, IT WAS ADDED IN A 90-10 RATIO. SO I THINK IT MAKES SENSE IF YOU'RE TO REDUCE IT IN A 90-10 RATIO. THAT'S FINE WITH ME.

It's been useful, this information, in the past, so I just recommend continuing it. Thank you.

PAGE.

Are there any objections?

Making that motion.

Yeah.

Just an update to the RFI to add the Department of Law. I don't know why they weren't included previously ever, but I think we should add them, and that's some of the tobacco defense settlement account money.

Madam Chair, so the number, it's like this kind of split entity. It sounds like the Department of Law uses the money, but the money actually sits at Treasury, and they have all the account detail. So we're just going back and forth there.

I move to add the Department of Law to the update to tobacco RFI per Ms. Shen's staff recommendation.

All right.

Do you have your... Yes, you do. Okay. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Oh, wait, Craig, I lost it already. Just kidding.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. For the record, Mark Ferrandino, Director of the Office of State Planning and Budgeting. Appreciate the opportunity to be in front of the committee with comebacks. It is, as you see, a very long document, but actually I think we have less comebacks actually than last year. And a lot of the ones in here are informational, trying to make sure that you have the answers to the questions as you have asked and so as you make decisions. AS WE MOVE INTO THIS CONVERSATION, I REALLY WANT TO THANK BOTH YOUR STAFF FOR THE HARD WORK THEY'VE HAD OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF, FOR A LONG TIME, BUT ESPECIALLY OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF MONTHS, TO PUT THEIR RECOMMENDATIONS IN FRONT OF YOU. THEY'VE BEEN VERY THOUGHTFUL AND APPRECIATE THE COLLABORATION. AND ALSO WANT TO THANK MY STAFF WHO HAS BEEN WORKING NONSTOP TO GET THIS DOCUMENT TOGETHER AND DEPARTMENTS AND THEIR BUDGET STAFFS FOR THE WORK THEY DONE WE ARE WE HAVE ROUGHLY JUST UNDER 60 COMEBACKS TO GO THROUGH TODAY and departments and their budget staffs for the work they done We have roughly just under 60 comebacks to go through today I will say and note that we didn highlight all but there are a lot of things that you decided that weren't in our budget that we have not come back on, highlighting a few on the first page, including the IIJ Interest Sweep, the IT Revolving Fund, UPTF and others that gets us to over $50 million of things that weren't in our budget that we are not coming back on. There are a lot more, but these are just some of the big ones I wanted to highlight. And then in addition, this package doesn't have as minimal changes with MTCF, but once the forecast comes tomorrow, when we're in front of you, we will then present if there is need for balancing options and which forecast you pick, we will provide more options on MTCF as well. So with that, I will move to, and for those who, unfortunately, we are moving quickly and we have not printed copies for the public yet. We are still working on those. Those will come over. But for anyone following, this will be posted on the OSPB website. should be already posted on the site or soon if people want to follow 150 pages. So first is Department of Higher Education come back number one for additional staff support. Really appreciate the committee's support for two FTE. The original ask was for a total of five FTE once it was annualized. We are coming back for one additional FTE. That FTE is for compliance staff. There are significant amount of reporting requirements. And as you know, with the department, there have been mistakes made by the department over the years that have caused me to come in front of this committee and ask for different changes. given all the complexity as well as the financial audit that happened and the new requirements around reporting by the IHE's to CDHE to comply with the state auditor's requirements. We believe it's really important to get this one compliance officer in. We can move without the other two, but this one position we do think is really important to be able to comply with what the audit said. Next is the rural teacher recruitment retention reduction. The committee had not voted to take that reduction. While none of these are easy items to reduce, we do feel like this is one where the reduction would have minimal impact, especially as we've looked at increases in the new finance formula that does go to rural and small schools and how we've done the formula allocation, which would help with pay and others to help with retention. And so that's why we think that is a reduction that is a reasonable reduction. I would ask to reconsider that. Next, moving on to the department, and I'll just keep going. If you have questions, stop me anytime, of course. Next one is CDE social studies assessment. And I know the committee has voted to draft two bills, one to eliminate the social studies and another to continue it with the changes. we would recommend the change We would get savings out of the SEF We do think it is important to continue to assess social studies main reason being as we look at both conversations about

what's the savings? In other words, what's the delta between the two bills? Madam Chair, Mr. Vice Chair, it's about $500,000 that would be left to be able to fund it. So it's on the page 9, $533, $727 is what is remaining after you take the basically $200,000 reduction. So it is a minimal amount. We think it's important to signal the importance of civics and social studies as we move forward with this.

Do you don't think that our standards are a strong signal of our interest in ensuring that students are getting quality civics instruction? Madam Chair, I think that is an important component of it. But also we know that as we have measurements and others, there is a focus by schools on what we measure. AND WE WORRY THAT GETTING RID OF ANY ASSESSMENT IN THE SOCIAL STUDIES AREAS WOULD REDUCE THE FOCUS OF SCHOOLS ON THAT COMPARED TO OTHER SUBJECTS, AND WE THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO CONTINUE THAT. THIS ISN'T REALLY PROVIDING THAT KIND OF A, YOU KNOW, AN ASSESSMENT. IT'S JUST SORT OF THIS POINT IN TIME THAT WOULD HAPPEN

That's the bigger problem.

And so it seems, you know, an expenditure that's not actually meeting its intended outcome. Madam Chair, I appreciate that. It's a small investment, but we think it's a wise investment to signal the importance of the topic. but yes, you're right. This is not the same as whether it's CMASS or PSATs and SATs that have a much bigger impact on driving behaviors at the school level and by the individual students. But we do think given the half a million dollars, this is a worthwhile investment and look forward

Given that this is an orbital, this is the kind of, usually if there's spending the governor doesn't like there's line item veto authority in the budget, but this would be a cut to spending that he doesn't like, but it wouldn't just be in the budget. It would be in an orbital because this requires a bill. So if the governor very much doesn't like it, the governor has options. Yes, Madam Chair, Vice, Mr. Vice Chairman. Yes, I mean, our hope is that we can work together as we work on this final package on the budget that we are not having to be in that at that spot but um that is always a governor's prerogative to use his pen for either signature or veto um but we're not there yet um and I hope not to get there just want to make sure we get one THANK YOU NEXT ON CDE WE HAVE THE STAFF INITIATED ACADEMIC ACCELERATOR GRANT PROGRAM AND I KNOW YOU CAME BACK TO YOU YESTERDAY AND YOU VOTED ON THE MILLION REMAINING IN THE FUND program And I know you came back to you yesterday and you voted on the I think it was million remaining in the fund I really appreciate both your staff and your conversations around all the grant programs within CDE. We did not come back on the afterschool program or the transition. I have no understanding. Sorry. Always listening. Several of the grant programs you cut, we did not come back. We did feel that this one, given the impact and the results that we've seen from this, on page 11, it outlines some of the impacts that this has had on increasing both test scores for math as well as reducing chronic absenteeism in schools. We think there's only one more year of this grant for this and that it has shown productive and impactful and would like to see it continue at some level, at least even if it's not the full $8 million that it was allocated for. We would like to see some to be able to continue to support what we're seeing as good data-driven improvements in outcomes for students. Next, moving on to the Department of Early Childhood. This first one is an informational comeback on family resources and mental health services. We worked on pulling together some of the information based on the question that the committee had, and we outlined the departments that have some of these programs, but to be able to pull it, and there is a report, but to be able to pull it all together in this short timeline is not something we're able to do right now. We are happy, whether it's through an RFI or just working to answer the question to be able to provide the additional information, but we at least try to outline the departments. We know that this has this type of work that overlaps and happy to continue to work with the committee on that work. Next, on number six, which is the local leads FTE, the committee had reduced the FTE by four FTE for the Department of Early Childhood. As we combine both the ECCs and the LCOs, one of the things we're doing is we're combining those AND REDUCING THE WORKFORCE OR NOT WORKFORCE, THE WORKLOAD OF THOSE ORGANIZATIONS IS TO BE ABLE TO MOVE SOME OF THAT WORK INTO THE DEPARTMENT AND SO THE DEPARTMENT LOSING THOSE FTEs WOULD MAKE IT HARD FOR THEM TO BE ABLE TO MEET THE STATUTORY REQUIREMENTS THAT THE LCOs AND ECCS WERE DOING. PAGE 14 AND 15 WALK THROUGH EACH INDIVIDUAL FTE AND WHAT THEY'RE WHAT THEY'RE WE'RE ASKING FOR WHETHER IT'S, YOU KNOW, THE FIRST ONE IS ON RESOURCE BANK AND MAKING SURE THAT WE HAVE A RESOURCE BANK TO SUPPORT ALL OF THE DIFFERENT PROVIDERS, BOTH SCHOOLS AND THE ALTERNATIVE PATHWAYS. THE NEXT ONE WILL WORK ON THE ALTERNATIVE PATHWAYS FOR PRESCHOOL PROGRAMS. AND THEN THE THIRD IS ON THE FAMILY CHILD CARE PROVIDER OFFERINGS IN PRESCHOOL. AND THE LAST ONE IS IN THE CHILD CARE CENTER IS PROVIDING. SO REALLY TRYING TO SUPPORT EACH OF THE DIFFERENT MODELS AND HOW WE SUPPORT THOSE. AND SO WE WOULD ASK THAT WE RESTORE THOSE CUTS OF THE 4-F-TE. THE NEXT ONE IS ANOTHER INFORMATIONAL COMEBACK. THE COMMITTEE HAD ASKED FOR INFORMATION about the LCOs and the early childhood councils and the appropriations and how that was kind of breaking out the cost of the difference, how it happened last year versus where it's going to be this year and what those fundings are. So you'll see those on table one and table two on pages 16 and 17. Next is on R1, which is the CCAP. There are two asks within this comeback. JUST SORRY ON PAGE 17 I'M JUST MAKING SURE I'M OKAY YES THIS IS JUST AN INFORMATION YOU ADDED QUESTIONS THIS IS INFORMATION ABOUT THE WAITLISTS THE PDIS IS WHICH ARE THE NOT GOING TO REMEMBER THE ACRONYM IN FRONT OF ME RIGHT NOW THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND THE FREEZES SO THIS WALKS THROUGH KIND OF WE ARE WORKING WITH COUNTIES TO MOVE COUNTIES OFF OF FREEZES AND ONTO WAITLISTS AND WORKING THROUGH THAT AND THEN HOW ARE WE LOOKING LONG TERM ON THE FUND AND WHERE WE'RE GOING SO ALL OF THAT IS THERE AS WELL AS AN APPENDIX TO LOOK AT WHERE WHAT WE'RE DOING THERE AND WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO YOU KNOW ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS THE NEXT ONE WHICH IS THE ONE THAT HAS TWO PART I'M SORRY JUST TO BE CLEAR YOU'RE FINE WITH THAT CUT TO PDIS the department is or not since this is informational yeah we are we we are not coming back on the request for those those cuts we're just trying to answer your questions on this one so we accepted the decisions you made or didn't come back on them I think regardless we accept your decisions as you make them um glad to hear that do you doesn't mean I like them it doesn't

On page 20, comeback number nine, there are two pieces on this. One is informational. One is a request. We are asking, as we have asked before, is that the inflationary increase happens out of the general fund. We know this is a tight general fund year. We appreciate the $1.9 million approved by the committee. We do think that continuing living up to the intent of where the voters were on that the general fund would continue to grow at inflation and continue to meet that requirement is our ask. Senator Kirkmeyer. That wasn't in the vote. That was in statute. That wasn't in the ballot. Yes, Director Parentino. Madam Chair, thank you for being clear on that, Senator Kirkmeyer, and correcting that. Yes. In statutory requirements or statutory guidance of how we did that. So thank you, Senator Kirkmeyer. The other piece is, and I know this will matter as you look at the forecasts that come out tomorrow, which you pick, that we are asking that we continue to maintain at least a 10% reserve. Your staff came in and said, depending on the forecast and where you are, you're either between a 13% or an 8% roughly, I remember. And so we just want to say we'd like to keep that 10 reserve We think that is reasonable We don need to be higher than that but that is what we would like to try and do there The next one on CDEC is around the audit requirement and early intervention, or not requirement, the audit ask. Your staff came in front of you asking around, could we pay for an audit? I think the committee was reluctant to do that given the financial situation. And as we look at the spend right now, we think there's an additional half a million dollars of underspend in the EI program this year. And we would recommend that you reduce, instead of reducing a million dollars, you reduce $1.5 million. And then you repurpose that $500,000 to pay for the audit. Last year, and that might be more than you need for the audit. last year as you did the DOC audit I think it was about four hundred thousand dollars we allocated and I'm not sure even if we spent all of that last year we think that is as your staff pointed out there is a lot of work to be done to make sure we're projecting right we're doing things we're learning from other states on how they're doing this and we kind of outlined some of the things we'd like to see in the the audit so we're supportive of it and wanted to work to try and find a way to pay for it. And you feel confident that with that additional $500,000 reduction, we're not going to find ourselves back here in some emergency crisis situation where families are being told by their providers that their benefits are going to be cut in like three or four weeks because we don't have enough money for EI? Madam Chair, you can never say with certainty because things change, but we feel like we have enough of a, like where we are from where projections are, that we have enough kind of forecast error room to be able to deal with if we see something that's a little higher or a little lower, we can deal with it. If it's like, if it doubles in a month for some reason, that would not, then we would be in a problem. But I think without this half a million, we'd be in a problem regardless of that. But given current trend where we are, we feel very confident that we can do this and not have to have impacts on any providers or clients as well.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I hate to take you back. Could we go back to page 21 again, I'm sorry. Move quickly. Under the analysis, could I just point out that it would be really nice, and said this earlier today that we use the same inflationary factor on everything. Here we've gone to 2.6. We're using 2.4 per your request. In other areas, it would just be nice to be consistent and not have it at different levels. Director Ferrandino. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Representative Taggart, completely agree on that. The reason it's 2.6 in here is because when we submitted the budget at that time it was 2.6. We do note that we would want and it might not be in this line but it's later in the request of working with staff to true it up to whatever which is 2.4 is what the right number is but we will need to deal with that all together with everything but we agree it should be consistent across. okay moving on to the department of labor this is a as you know not just it's a complicated this is on the seadoo special purpose authority this is a complicated issue Appreciate the amount of time the committee has worked on this Also appreciate the staff's pushing on the fee. And I think we are in agreement with the staff. We tried to break out kind of where our original request was, the recommendation or the action that JBC took, and then what we are recommending now. And you see it really well in chart 29. We think, given our recommendation, we'll actually have more resources in 27, a little less than we would have under your actions in 28, but we would be still well above where we were from our original request. A few things in the request that we are asking for. One is that the committee approved $4.1 million for the community living area. There is concern about the community independent living for two reasons. One, they do get grant funds from this fund, and there's concern of going around the board that is making those grant approvals of it. there is a preference to continue to go through that process as well as the base funding we're setting up a cliff that if we're just funding it for a few years and then what is going to happen when that money goes away so we have concerns we would recommend instead of funding those that we actually we we move the money and transfer to the control maintenance to pay for the not control made the capital to pay for the West Hall renovation at the school of deaf and blind making sure continuing to tie trying to conti tie the the funding that's for disability to services for people with disability the community investment is also as well so not going to argue like those are not so we wanted to make sure we're not just sweeping it to the general fund we thought it was a better approved like but for the politics of this fund all the history of this fund, we thought it would better to be able to put it there and then be able to offset the general fund that we had put into controlled in the capital fund to fund the school of the deaf and blind. And I know as we go to balancing that entire project is, and a lot of the capital projects are up in the air on as we go to final balancing. We are also asking- Senator Kirkmeyer. How much money is in the capital project for the deaf and blind school? Madam Chair, Senator Kirkmeyer, I believe it's $13.8 million is what is in the budget for that project. And then there's additional best, the assumption that they would get best grants to be able to pay for the remainder. And that's a, it's a two year project. I think the total project is somewhere in the $30 million for the renovation of the West Hall. And I know you guys, I think you believe you guys talked about it yesterday on that cost. I know I've seen documents recently of you talking about it. The other piece is giving one-time spending authority for the division of voc rehab. There is ability to pull down more federal funds, and we feel like this is a legitimate use of the fund, and giving the spending authority would allow them to put the money, use the money from the disability support fund to be able to pull those federal dollars down and provide more services for the voc rehab program We had you know the wait list has grown to about 7 people by the end of this year, we expect. And so this would allow us to be able to draw down those funds or 174. It would reduce the wait list by about a thousand if we're able to use the funds for those individuals. NEXT IS CDLE STAFF. SENATOR KUKMAYER. AND WHAT IS THE IMPACT IN THE FUTURE IF WE WERE TO REDUCE THE WAITLIST WITH ONE-TIME FUNDS? DIRECTOR FARENDINO. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. THIS PROGRAM IS ONE WHERE IT'S PROVIDING CAREER SERVICES FOR THOSE. SO IF WE DON'T HAVE THE FUNDS, WE HELP THOSE INDIVIDUALS. THEY ARE, IT'S NOT LIKE A LONG TERM, THESE ARE PEOPLE ON THE SUPPORT OF THIS. support of this. This is we they come in, they get the services, they get the support, and then they move into career. And, and so we if we don't have it, the in the future, waitlist will continue to grow likely, but we think we can make a dent with some of this money on a one time basis to be able to support, especially given the federal dollars are out there. Senator Mabley. So this idea of funding the West Hall project, did the disability community, have you talked to them? I mean, I'm just wondering where they're at, and I'm sure we will hear, but maybe you've already heard. Madam Chair, Senator Mabley, as we, I will say, I have not had the conversations, but I know that both individuals who work with the disability community in the governor's office have had some of those conversations. Mr. Winkler, who works very closely on some of these issues, feels like this, and he's been around on this issue for a long time, feels like this is something that is probably more acceptable from the community's perspective. But I don't think we've done extensive stakeholder-ing on it as well.

Okay, moving on to comeback number 12. CDLE, this was a reduction of the qualified apprentice intermediary grant program. We are asking to reduce the reduction from just under a million to just under 400,000. ON PAGE 32, YOU'LL SEE THAT THERE ARE AWARDS ALREADY IN PROCESS THAT HAVE BEEN, HAVE NOT BEEN SENT OUT, BUT HAVE BEEN AWARDED FOR THE TUNE OF 398 OR $400,000. THAT IS WHAT WE'RE ASKING. THIS IS, YOU KNOW, I THINK BECAUSE THEY'VE BEEN AWARDED, WE'D ASK TO DO THIS. IF THE COMMITTEE DOESN'T THINK THAT'S THE RIGHT THING, WE TOTALLY UNDERSTAND THAT. BUT WANTED TO BE CLEAR OF WE'VE AWARDED THESE. we'd like to be able to actually send the money out. But as with every agreement, it's subject to appropriation. So if there's no appropriation, that will not happen. Okay. Moving on to Department of Corrections. We have three comebacks within the Department of Corrections, I believe. Yes. THE FIRST ONE IS ON PRISON CASELOAD. SO BA1, 4, AND R1 FOR OUR REQUESTS. WE'RE ASKING FOR THE FUNDING FOR THOSE POSITIONS TO BE ABLE open up the remainder of the facilities that we currently have within the within the state to be able to deal with the increased caseload last year as not last year it feels like last year uh during supplementals we had many conversations with the committee as well as other members about a plan on how we move forward with the prison forecast and caseload within there We have been working with both members, members of the Judiciary Committee especially, to try to work through where we are. What we know for now is that we have over, our vacancy rate is roughly 2.5%. We have over 700 offenders within the jail backlog. And without the approval of opening up the current beds, that will continue to grow. we think it'll get up to north of 1300 and that is a it's not it's not a never-ending source of relief to the system eventually it gets to a breaking point where there's not capacity or not a willingness to house the offenders at the county levels and so we we know that's going to be an issue as we do this in that we've also had lots of conversations as I said and we are working ON LEGISLATION WITH I KNOW SENATOR WEISMAN AROUND ACHIEVED EARN TIME EARN TIMED OTHER POLICIES AROUND PRO-ELIGIBILITY COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS REFERRAL PROCESSES TO WORK ON HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THE BREAK UP SOME OF THE LOGJAMS AND MAKE SURE THAT PEOPLE WHO ARE ABLE TO BE RELEASED WITHOUT increasing risk to public safety can move through that. And so we are, you know, really working through that. And I think we will see bills, at least two bills moving forward this session and appreciate both members on this committee, as well as members in the general assembly on those conversations. I think they've been really fruitful as we've moved forward. The other thing is, as we know given the forecast and where we are we are going to be at a place where there is not enough capacity whether starting in 26 20 the end of 26 27 or 27 28 given all of the capacity currently within the system and so with that we do you know we have a proposal here on page 38 that outlines and it's very high level because this is we are working quickly I think I will just be very honest of in September when we were working on the budget, we knew that given projections that it was likely that a prison would be needed at some point in the near future, but did not, given the projections at that time, see that they would be needed in this administration. And so we did not have the conversation and put it in the budget at that time. Then the DCJA and other OLCs forecast, or less, sorry, forecast came out and had a significant increase and ramp up of when beds and offenders were going to be in. And that had an impact on the need and speeding up the need for increased capacity. We outlined that at a high level in the September, in the January 9th letter. And that was only a few, you know, a few working days after the forecast came out when you factor in the holidays And so we been working and DOC has been working to identify options I think there are two options we have in terms of dealing with the capacity One is the purchase and renovation of a facility We identified as where for no as one of the better options given the size given location that we could do. We think both cost to purchase and renovation is in the $150 to $200 million. We are proposing, if that is the route the committee and the legislature deems to go, to basically swap $100 million of the MTCF cash that is in the emergency reserve for the actual prison, which would then have an asset, and we have other buildings in the emergency reserve, we would do that, and then we would use the ADLE payments, which we have another comeback a little later on, which are use a portion of the ADL payments to pay for COP for the renovation and costs of that as well to get us to the costs and cover that. We do think it's somewhere of 12 months or more before it can be fully up and operational. We may be able to get some people in earlier than that, But that's why, you know, typically when we make these decisions, it's 12 to 18 months before actually people can get in. And so that's why while we are saying we don't necessarily need it till 27, 28, we are bringing this conversation here. The other option, which is also viable, is to contract with a private provider. There are no private prisons right now that have capacity that are functioning right now. So there are private prisons within the state, but none of them are. They have all been shuttered and mothballed and would need time to ramp up, get ready to take in offenders. We do know that likely the per day per offender cost, which is set in the long bill through a footnote, is likely from at least initial conversations too low for a facility for them to be able to take individuals in given the cost of construction, all the things that they would need to do. We would also need to contract for at least five years for a certain number of beds, or most of our contracts on existing facilities are 10 years. And so somewhere in that range, we'd have to look at contracting, which we, I think, we are trying to currently look at what would be needed in this current budget to facilitate and give DOC, if that is the route the committee and the legislature would want to go. The authority, they have the authority to contract, we know, but I want to make sure that if they're entering a contract, that we're all, as a governing body, are agreeing so that we're not in a place where we say we're going to sign this contract and then are in a place where we're not being able to fulfill that contract in the future. So that is, I think, this was never on my, I really am excited to come in front. I don't think anyone would be excited to come in front of the committee and say we need to open up a new prison. I do think the projection, so we may even need two prisons. That is why also, that's where the projections are. That's why we're also coming to the conversation on the management side and how can we lower those caseload numbers as well so that that is not the reality we are sitting with just if we do nothing that what the capacity forecast would do um so this is not an easy conversation for any of us i appreciate the committee just consideration as we try and figure out a problem that we this is we're in a a tough situation and i think we want to try and find solutions both on the how do we get people out where we can and how do we make sure that we both for the offenders as well as the staff, we have the right capacity levels to make sure that they are safe and can continue to be in a safe position. Senator Korkmeyer. Thank you, Madam Chair. So a couple of questions. First one is, so you're suggesting that we put, that we would use 100 million of marijuana tax cash fund offset with hard assets, Is that what you're talking about? Oh, to make the reserve. So we would put $100 million of marijuana tax cash fund into the state's emergency reserve. Is that what you're saying here? Director, if I'm reading that incorrectly. Thank you, Madam Chair. Senator Kirkmeyer, we currently have $100 million of the marijuana tax cash fund sitting in the emergency reserve. So what we're saying is we would switch, pull that out, use that to purchase, but then we would fulfill the obligation of the emergency reserve by putting the asset into the emergency reserve. So it's still, we're just moving a liquid reserve to a hard reserve. And that $100 million is the reserve of the MTCF? That is the reserve that is allocated to the, it's not the, because I believe there's also a 15% reserve that we have outside of that, but it's the $100 million that was put down a long time ago that just sits there to meet the obligation of the Tabor Emergency Reserve. Senator Krookmeyer. So, yeah, that's where I was going. SO IT'S NOT THE ACTUAL RESERVE THAT'S OVER IN THE MTCF. THAT'S A DIFFERENT RESERVE THAN WHAT'S IN THIS EMERGENCY. SO IT'S $100 MILLION. OKAY, I GET THAT. THE ADLE, IS THAT THAT PARA THING AGAIN? DIRECTOR FANDINO. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. THIS IS NOT PARA. THE ADLE IS THE DEPRECIATION PAYMENTS THAT HAPPEN FOR ALL OF THE BUILDINGS IN THE CAPITAL COMPLEX that we then allocate and we have been able to do some of the renovation. This was the money when you had the conversations. I'll say it because I know it was not a fun conversation for anyone on the Centennial Building and proposals on that, which you have said no to. We're not coming back on that. We are coming back on the ADLE, and I'll bring it up now because it does tie to this. Our recommendation on the ADLE is not to just end it and stop doing it. what we would say is let's continue to do the ADL because it's been an effective method and then allocate the transfer the ADL into the controlled maintenance trust fund to be able to help fund controlled maintenance and from a budget perspective for this year because we allocated money to controlled maintenance you can offset the general fund and get the same savings but at least it's putting money in and you could always sweep it in a year but it has been an effective way to have some money for capital. And we, I think, yeah, CDC, whenever I'm in front of them, and I know you, when you talk to them, it is one of those areas, it's hard to put money into capital and being able to have this mechanism can help to make sure that we have some at least minimum funding for capital. So, you know, we think that keeping that program, but we also are saying of the 25 million now, that is what we're getting in depreciation, we would use somewhere in the five to $10 million annually for the COP if we went down the route of renovation for a prison purchase Thank you Rep Taggart Thank you Madam Chair If we could go back to the original request of basically million in that range Where I'm confused is of the 941 beds, 288 of those beds were for the Delta facility. And for it to utilize those 288, we come back to that issue is that it needed to be fenced. That was the initial proposal to us, was it needed to be fenced to be a level two prison. And then it didn't show up as the number one request by corrections to the CDC. And I don't know whether it was what happened, but I'm still puzzled by this whole thing, because to get to the 941, you needed that 288, yet it wasn't the number one request. And I don't know if that's corrections or CDC or whatever, but I don't know how you get to 941 without that modification. Director Farandino. Madam Chair, Representative Taggart, thank you for the question. We do have a comeback in two more on the fence for funding for the fence. I know you haven't made a decision on it, or at least I don't think you've made a decision yet on the capital allocation. the governor's request was for the Delta fence being the number one priority for DOC. The Capital Development Committee flipped that with the Arkansas Valley facility. We were clear with the CDC we did not agree with that, and we would make it clear to both them and this committee that we think the Delta is a higher priority given the capacity needs, And we'll talk about the Delta fence and why we think that in a few. Rep. Brown. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Director Ferrandina, for this. Obviously, I think I've been surprised that we're now talking about buying a prison or increasing it. I know that we had been talking before that this might be a need in the future. I just didn't know that this was going to be a need this budget cycle for sure. I think that your proposal on page 38 highlights a problem that our staff has indicated, which is the inability to efficiently or sufficiently staff our prisons. And in particular, our prisons that currently exist in places like Buena Vista are particularly challenging to staff. and yet the department is, or the administration is proposing to, you know, this Werfenau County Correctional Center. What is your plan to sort of adequately staff a prison like this, and how do we know that it will be staffed at safe levels? Director Farandino. Thank you, Madam Chair. President Brown, I appreciate that question. I do think as we looked at the facilities, one of the things the department looked at was proximity to locations, to population centers. We know that if you look at both the facilities in the Canyon City and Pueblo area, they have higher staffing ratios and staffing locations. lower vacancy rates than some of our other more remote facilities. That is why from, you know, when we were looking in Huerfano, where it's closer to Canyon City and Pueblo, was higher on our list of options as we looked at it because of that. One of the reasons was that exact issue is we felt that that would be able to hire the staff to be able to do that. So we know we have staffing concerns. That is not anything new. We do think that this allows us to be able to be in a best position. I will say if we are doing the contracting, we will need to work with what providers who are out there and where we will want. There are several facilities across THE STATE INCLUDING CARSON. WE WOULD WANT TO WORK WITH THE PROVIDERS WHO THEN THEY WOULD LOOK AT THEIR STAFFING MODELS, THEIR ABILITY TO HIRE, THEIR COST OF RENOVATION TO HELP WORK WITH THEM TO FIGURE OUT HOW AND WHAT WE WOULD, WHICH OF THOSE FACILITIES WE WOULD WANT TO OPEN AND UTILIZE. AND SO IT MIGHT NOT BE WHERE FOR NO AS THE OPTION BECAUSE THEY MIGHT HAVE DIFFERENT MODELS OR or other things of like hiring, staffing across states and other things that they would do that we would not necessarily do. And that's why I think we'll need some flexibility if we go down the contracting route. But in all these, I will say all these numbers are very preliminary and which I know is not, no one loves to be in this place of where, you know, these are preliminary, but we are getting to a place where, and I agree with you, no one wanted to be in this conversation. And we had talked, I think the last couple of years, that this is a reality likely to come at some point, but I think the graph on where we were in September to where we were in December on the DCJ forecast is really what's driving this conversation and accelerated it probably by a year or two than where we were before. Senator Mobley. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for this. I just, I think you know where I am that I feel like it would be an obscene misuse of public funds to build out, to buy and build out a prison when we have hundreds of people waiting in our jails to get to a hospital, people who are criminally, criminal justice involved. when we have families that are relying on Medicaid who were cutting their services. We have in DOC right now, we have hundreds of people who are tabled, meaning they've been approved by parole to be released, but because we haven't been able to find them a place to go or because we haven't delivered the treatment that they need, they're just sitting in prison even though the parole board has said they can go. We have capacity in community corrections. We have 750 people on a wait list for treatment who cannot be released until they receive this treatment. We have 250 people who haven't received treatment who are past their parole eligibility date. We have, with regard to Delta, where we want to spend $15 million on a fence, but we are in control of how we categorize people and what we have complete control over that So we could actually change the way we do that and allow more people to be at Delta than we currently allow We could say that we have control over that And so I feel like we haven't been forward-looking in the way that we're dealing with our prison population, and I'm really excited about the bills that are being proposed, but I don't think they go far enough. And what I think would be a better use of state resources would be to buy a nursing home so that the hundreds of people who are old and not dangerous and sick who are costing us a lot of money on the medical caseload side, both internal and external, could go to nursing home care where they would be able to get a Medicare and a Medicaid match. and I think we need to build or contract with more supportive housing services so that people who are on the table list would have a place to go and there are private organizations that provide that. There are non-profits that do that and we haven't done what we need to do to move people into those kinds of facilities and I think we need to do something about the ComCorps capacity that we have to push to get more communities to take more people and I think we need to do all of those things first before we decide to spend $150 million on a prison. That's just my thoughts on that And I also know that we have at the same time a competing situation with competency. So we have all the people waiting in jail. We have the people who are at this current state hospital. We have a fine that we're paying right now that's $12 million, but my understanding from a memo I just got is that that's about to go potentially up to over $100 million a year in fines because we haven't been able to move people off of this competency wait list. So I would like to see us build a hospital, a hospital, transitional living homes, and housing, step-down housing, supportive housing, and nursing home facilities. And I think we could do that for the same amount of money you're proposing here in the same exact way with putting more buildings into the emergency reserve and taking the cash and then leveraging that with the COPs and all the things you described to do this. And I think that would be a much better use. And I just wanted to say that out loud while somebody was listening. So 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. . .

But this program has had a big impact and very positive. I know the committee had some questions. We've seen a 35% decrease in auto thefts in the last year, while the nation on average has seen a 23% decline. We also, while we've made progress in the sense of we've moved from being number one in auto theft in the country to number five in the nation on auto theft. So that is great progress. Maybe our decline is actually a natural decline that is mirroring what's happening elsewhere. I can understand that, but I would say that the national, for example, declined at 23%, we declined at 35%. I'm just saying if we were higher before, then we had, you know, sorry, keep going. Yeah but if everyone declining we would stay number one If everyone declining at the same rate we declining at a faster rate and that how we move from being number one to being number five in the nation We would like to get much lower on those numbers of where we are We acknowledge it's a tough budget time, but we do think this is important. There was some concern about how the structure was. None of the money, capital is not part of CSP. It's within the department. It is awarded. Some of the money is awarded to CSP. CSP then doesn't subgrant it. They do MOUs in multi-jury jurisdictions to be able to address both oversight and bring down administrative costs. So I know there were some questions around that. So I think we've seen success in this program. It has really helped bring down this. We know that auto theft is a, like if we can stop this earlier, if we catch people earlier, it helps long-term on crime rates in just general. So the nexus between auto theft and crime is important or a higher level crimes. So we would ask for funding at a lower level than what we, and this is a line when the bill passed, there was $5 million a year. So that's why we went to $5 million as an option. Senator Kirkmire.

MOVING ON TO NUMBER 18, AND THIS ONE IS GOTTEN, YOU AS A COMMITTEE TOOK SOME ACTION YESTERDAY OR MONDAY AROUND THE MOTOR CARRIER SUPPORT, IT'S NOT SUPPORT, SAFETY FUND. YOU WOULD MOVE TO TRY AND INCREASE THE FEES AND THEN BE ABLE TO OFFSET SOME OF THE MONEY WITHIN HUTF. we have kind of this comeback and the next comeback are kind of A little bit of a line together of how we want to address the conversation on right now we're asking for about 2.3 million dollars roughly in general fund to support several things within CSP that were above the HUTF 6% cap. YOUR STAFF PROPOSAL WAS TO DO A FEW DIFFERENT CHANGES AND OTHERS. WE'RE COMING BACK AND IT KIND OF INTERLAYS WITH BOTH OF THESE. OF OUR REGINAL REQUEST, AND I THINK THE BEST WAY TO LOOK AT THIS IS PAGE 47. THERE'S A CHART THAT SHOWS WE WERE ASKING FOR $3 MILLION GENERAL FUND. YOUR ACTION DID THE CAT PAW REDUCTION. IT DID THE OPERATING REDUCTIONS AND THEN REFINANCE INTO THE MOTOR CARRIER SAFETY. THAT'S WHERE WE HAVE SOME CONCERNS ABOUT HOW THAT WILL WORK. WHAT WE ARE PROPOSING IS THAT WE REFINANCE THE RECORDS UTILIZATION IT CAPITAL PROJECT INTO TWO FUNDS. THAT WOULD BE PAID OUT OF THE MOTORCYCLE OPERATING SAFETY TRAINING FUND, WHICH HAS ALMOST $2 MILLION OF AVAILABLE OF BALANCE, and then sweep money out of the motor carrier safety fund for about $600,000. Those are outlined on page 48. That will fund the record utilization IT capital and then bring down the expenses so that we don't need the general fund. So same similar outcome, just different ways of allocating the cash funds TO MAKE SURE, ONE, WE'RE COMPLYING WITH REQUIREMENTS OF HOW VEHICLE FEES AND OTHER THINGS ARE USED, AND ALSO RELIEVING THE GENERAL FUND WHILE DOING THIS. AND SO THIS IS OUR APPROACH TO TRY AND DO IT. IT GETS, THIS ONE'S PRETTY COMPLICATED. THANK YOU. NEXT, MOVING ON TO NUMBER 20 ON DHSEM. We really appreciate the committee's support for the $4.5 million roughly of 30 FTE. We are coming back for less than what the original ask was, but more than what was approved. There are two main areas I would say that we are asking for. One is when staff came in front of you and when we did our submission, we did have some vacancies. Those vacancies were part of the hiring freeze, and that's why they weren't filled at the time we were submitting the budget. They have thus been filled. It's a field manager position, a planning position, and a watch center analyst position, who is the one who works at the 24-7 monitoring. So we would ask, one, is those three positions be funded? And then the other piece of it is the eight positions that are for kind of the regional supports. And I know there was lots of conversations on the committee about this being a county and local. The emergency management staffing is a local responsibility. And while we understand that with the reduction in the federal funds and they are like we're talking about a total of roughly twenty three million dollars. OF LOST FEDERAL FUNDS, $24 MILLION OF LOST FEDERAL FUNDS FROM WHAT WE HAD BEEN GETTING. THAT STRAINS THEIR BUDGETS, WE THINK THERE IS ECONOMIES OF SCALE WHERE IF YOU HAVE SOME OF THE SMALLER COUNTIES, THEY DON NECESSARILY NEED SOMEONE FULL TIME IF WE CAN PUT THE RESOURCES IN PUT A FEW OF THEM TOGETHER AND BE ABLE TO SUPPORT THEM A LOT OF THESE INCIDENCES MOVE FROM A LOCAL ISSUE TO A If we can put the resources and put a few of them together and be able to support them A lot of these incidences move from a local issue to a state issue pretty quickly And to be able to have and be responsive on those is important. And that's why we kind of as we looked at, we weren't asking for the full $24 million. We were asking for a shorter and smaller amount because we wanted to find efficiencies on how we manage these, both at the state and with our local partners. I will say also, and we've put in here an update on where we are, this is still an active litigation with the federal government, both for this current year funding, as well as what we are trying to figure, we still haven't figured out next year. If for some reason we do get the money for the federal government for this, we would then not, we would have a negative supplemental and give the money back. We wouldn't spend it until, unless we needed to spend it. But we, right now, given where we are, we've used, if you remember last, during the special session, we allocated about $15 million of the ARPA, of the ARPA discretionary funds to this area. We have been using that to backfill in the current year. This will help us get through next year, assuming we don't get the federal funds. So appreciate the support already in this tough budget time. But just these want to explain why we think these other basically 11 FTE are important and would ask for consideration of that. Senator Kirkmeyer, sorry. That's right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Could you tell us how much you staffed up since the COVID? Like I was trying to figure out what the numbers were like in 2019 versus 2026 as far as staff. It seemed like there was a fairly big jump in there. And with regard to emergency managers at the local level, most of them, especially in smaller counties, rural counties, are located in the Sheriff's Department, and they fund them. So just saying. Director Brandino. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think Director Klein may be able to answer on the FTE side because I DO YOU WANT TO SEND IT TO US? WE CAN SEND IT BACK TO YOU. OKAY. I CAN SEND IT BACK TO YOU AFTER BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW. I DO KNOW THERE, I BELIEVE THERE HAS BEEN SOME CHANGES AND SOME OF IT MAY LOOK LIKE THERE HAS BEEN INCREASES AND SOME OF THAT MAY BE HIDDEN BY THE WHAT ARE FEDERAL FUNDING STAFF VERSUS STATE AND CHANGING DO THEY SHOW OR NOT. BUT WE CAN GET THAT BREAKDOWN OF WHAT IS ACTUAL BODIES AND WHAT IS APPROPRIATE FTE. SO WE'RE MAKING CLEAR OF ARE WE COMPARING APPLES TO APPLES ON THAT. we can get that back to you. Sure. The next question, the next comeback is on 21, which is the Threat Intelligence Prevention Liaison. This is, and in the previous one, you did fund some of the ongoing continuation of projects that the federal government is not doing in the emergency management. This is to help what we know to expand capacity at the state level. What we know is that the federal government not only isn't funding us, they're pulling back on the threat intelligence resources at the federal level. That is why, given where we are and the increase of threats, especially now, we felt and we asked for two FTE. We moved that down to one FTE. We think this is important to make sure that we can be responsive. if this is in our mind something that unfortunately the federal government should be doing but we think it is really important that we have the ability to do it when they are not stepping up because the impact is significant if we can get ahead What we know is that when someone is creating a threat, it is very likely, I think there's statistics in here that I'm trying to look, significant portion, it's well over a majority of times, someone has said something publicly, posted it in social media or other things before something happens. And having the ability to be able to monitor and able to respond to that is important. And so that's why we're asking for this one FTE. Next is the 22, which is the JBCU took action to reduce the EDO line by $1 million of general fund. No FTE, though. Bummer. Well, we could have a conversation. What? That's what I tried. I know, but you don't appropriate FTE, Senator Kirkmeyer. You're right. As we always have that. Some of us know that. I know, we've had those conversations, and I used to be on the other side of that conversation. It would reduce staff, actually. The department would have to reduce somewhere in the order of 10 to 15 or 10 to 16 FTE with this $1 million reduction. we do believe that some of what you can see on page 54 and 55, these reductions, when looking at we had extra spending or extra ability to put dollars into the cash funds, the reversions that you're seeing for the most part are empty spending authority, which means that there is not actually revenue under it. They're not being spent. There's just BEEN AN ALLOCATION OF SPANNING AUTHORITY THAT ISN'T ACTUALLY THERE, AND SO YOU'RE REVERTING FAKE MONEY THAT'S NOT EXISTENT. SO THIS IS REAL DOLLARS. WE'D HAVE TO HAVE AN IMPACT. AND SO WE WOULD ASK THE COMMITTEE TO RECONSIDER THAT REDUCTION AND BE ABLE TO COME BACK ON THAT ONE. REB TAGGERT.

think no crassness in there. I think it's an accurate or understandable statement. I think the we as departments analyze what the committee does and as we as the governor's office analyze we try to prioritize what we think is the most important or most critical on coming back I mean we submitted a balanced budget I know that there are questions and disagreements on what that is and we don't have to go through that right now, but I do think...

Well, there are ways and paths to do, but I'm not going to get into the sidetrack. I don't want to get into that sidetrack. I do think that it is important, like we are trying, we're putting out information. You got information from your staff that said certain things. We, especially if there are places we don't necessarily agree with the analysis of the staff, We want to bring it to your attention that we have a different take on that. Like this is an example where I think it was justified because there was the argument that there was cash funds available to do this and it wouldn't impact FTE. That's not accurate. The cash funds aren't there. We would need to actually reduce staff. And so we want to make sure that you as a committee understand if that is what you're, you know, what you want us to do, we will, you know, we will debate that as we work through the budget process, of course, and do all that. But that is, we want to make sure, one, you have the information you need. Two, a lot of the things you're seeing here are either reductions in what were in our budget or, you know, coming back and saying you took something that wasn't even in our budget, but we're coming back for less than that. So we're trying to find middle grounds, where we think we can give up things. And as I said in the beginning, there's at least $50 million of things that you've done, and that's not counting each individual. I just did the big ones. At least $50 million of things that you've done that we're not coming back at all. I think that we really tried, we understand, and we were pretty... I know it looks long, and it is. This is less comebacks than we had last year, and I would say about a, we were in the 67, 68 last year, and we had two packages of comebacks last year. This is less on the number of comebacks, more pages, because we have more details on them. And I would say a decent amount of these comebacks are informational comebacks that the committee has asked for questions, and we are trying to be responsive to the committee. So I would also say, and this is... Sorry. Yeah, sorry. And we've had this conversation many times, and I think there is a balance of two things I'll say, and I really say this with the utmost respect. One is if there are programs we want to eliminate and we want to deprioritize, that is, to me, the better way to do this than to say we're just going to cut a million dollars out of a line item and you deal with it because we have statutory requirements. It's we have requirements we need to do. Let's get rid of those requirements and then we can reduce both cost and FTE with that and that's to me the the better approach the other is as we've talked before is the significant portion of our state's budget is not in many of these departments the significant portion is in payments out to either educational providers or health care providers and that is where both from p all the way through 20 for education as well as health care that is really where all the money is. And so it is like, I think the departments, we, we had them do a two and a half percent reduction. Most, not every department we, on average, we hit a two and a half percent operating reduction across state government. That's not every department. We tried to prioritize across departments of what we're doing. I would argue as both someone who's, you know, I've been around here a while. There are very, if you probably find some, but there's very few places that in our state we are at or like above the average in terms of funding of departments of staff and you know our funding ratios per either dollar per program per per Colorado tax dollars or per person per GDP are usually among the lowest in the country and so it's we we are pretty lean in what we do already and that does it's like i said to someone the other day and this is gets to some of the like i think the stress of and we'll talk about competency in a little bit but the stress of when something new comes in that's 20 million dollars we're going to talk about a little bit is significant because we are we have been me when I was over on your side and everyone ever since to you now are duct taping and band-aiding the state budget to try and address it and so there's not a lot of give unless we want to you know cut off an arm so I usually say like we can't just like we need to figure out big programs that we just don't want to do anymore to right size this or make significant reductions in some of those bigger programs. Not to say departments can't be part of the solution. And we are trying to, and I think this one is an example of where we're trying to be like, this is not, I think, what you thought when you were voting for it. And it does have consequences. And if that's what you want, we can work through that with you. But that is not, you know, how we read this one on this one.

Director Ferrandino. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Representative Tackard, I think that's a valid point and something we'll take to heart as we have these conversations. I do think it is people who work in the departments and this is like they, anyone who does the work that they do, they are passionate and love the work they do. and it's hard for them to put ideas out there. And that's on us as leadership, both from the legislature and from the governor's office to continue to push harder on how do we have those hard conversations. Moving on to community corrections number 23. We are in agreement with you in terms of the funding of 1.5 versus the ask of 4.2. however we're asking for a few changes of how to address this you had dealt with it through the facility payments the facility payments really do help especially the lower community or the lower the smaller community corrections because it helps deal with some of the fixed costs and so if we just take that money out and we increase per diem they end up not seeing much of a benefit because those but the bigger ones, yes, but the smaller ones because of that fixed cost, it doesn't help as much. So what we are looking at and what we're suggesting is that we move some into the fee that was approved by the committee to be able to pay for that as well as do the increase instead of and pay it through that, the fee, versus doing it out of the facility payments because we think that would hinder some of those facilities and what they're able to do in that area. So we agree. We just think it needs to be just a little bit different. Yes.

Next one, community corrections, centralized referrals. you this was I believe either staff initiated yes one time increase of 0.4 general fund for centralized community corrections we think this is a great idea we actually we really like it we do think that having it more than one year and maybe it's term limited for three years or something and then seeing how it works to see if it helps deal with because we can if we can get more people into community corrections we know we're going to save more money than what this person would be. So we like the idea. We would just ask that it be funded at least, if not permanently, funded for a term limit position so that we can actually see if this is having an impact and be able to support with that. Next, moving on.

All we saying you would it no it not informational What we saying is this is you did it one time We would just ask that you do it as a either term limited for several years or an ongoing So it not one time It doesn change the appropriations for this budget It just would mean in the annualizations Right now this would zero out in the annualizations We would like to actually keep it at least for a few years to see if this actually does have an impact on getting more people into community corrections Laboratory renewal Thank you very much for the support and the work on this We are an example where we had asked for roughly $5 million. We're coming back for just about $600,000, a little less than $600,000, more than what was funded of the $2 million. On page 59, there are three areas. One is an existing employee that is already there, which is the infectious disease scientist. The second is for contracts one time to help with the risk management and non-conformance contracts. So this is to make sure we have everything done that we need to make sure that everything is done. And then the last one, which I think I have had a conversation with at least one member on this on the replacement fund. This would be I understand this is one where the goal here is to make sure we're building up a fund so when the equipment needs to be replaced, they're not coming in front of the committee to ask for we need, you know, a million dollars for one lab equipment because that's what they cost and trying to put it so that because that we got INTO THIS PROBLEM WAS WE WEREN'T REPLACING THE LAB EQUIPMENT AND SO WE WOULD LIKE THIS BECAUSE IT WOULD HELP KIND OF SMOOTH OUT THE BUDGET AND BE ABLE TO MAKE SURE WE'RE DEALING WITH THIS AT A TIME BUT IT ALSO COULD BE A PLACE WHERE WE JUST COME BACK EACH TIME WHEN WE NEED IT AND WE NEED TO DO A BETTER JOB AS ADMINISTRATION OR ASKING WHEN WE NEED THIS SO THAT WE DON'T GET INTO THE PLACE WHERE WE WERE THAT WE HAD THIS. In addition, I would just highlight on page 62, the department is, and you asked for this, a long-term financial plan for the lab. And that we plan to finish that long-term plan by June, 2026, and we'll share that with the committee once that is final. Payday shift, number 26. We had asked you for having a reduction on the comprehensive sexual education grant program and the community behavioral health disaster program. You as a committee eliminated the program, which we don't have a problem with. One slight little wrinkle, we are asking for $30,000 because when you end the program at the end of the fiscal year, the payday shift moves the salaries of those last payments into the next year. And we wouldn't be able to make final payments to those individuals in the next year, if we didn't have at least 30,000 of appropriation to be able to pay those out. So the fun of the payday shift that keeps on giving. So this is very, very technical, but we would ask for that slight consideration there. You could also do it through a roll forward authority on that one, I believe, but maybe not actually, I don't think you can't, because the statute would be there for dual rule forward authority. Okay, number 27. Yes.

Oh, I know what it means. This, Mr. Vice Chair, this was done, I believe, in the 2002 or 2005. Prior to the original ref C.

Yeah this was well before my time and we tried to get rid of it every time We we are slowly getting rid of it as we are moving more and more people to payday to bi paydays but we still have that problem Okay. Moving on to DPA, several requests for DPA. The first being the Burnham Yard Cleanup Funds. You had voted to transfer $9.9 million in the Burnham Cleanup Fund. We are asking for you to not do that. this is let's remember like I had to get brought up to speed to remember the history of this we purchased this land back in 2021 for the purpose of expanding I-25 that is why the land was purchased later on both because of the costs as well as the decision based on legislation and guidance of how we move forward with the GHG rules and expansion, the expansion of I-25 was no longer viable and did not move forward. And so, but if we were to, just to be clear, one of the things, and we'll get through this, the seller of the land knew very clearly if we were going to expand I-25, we needed to buy that land. And so we probably paid more than anyone else would pay for that land because we needed it at that time as we were going to try and make that decision. Now as we make the decision later That we're not moving forward with it We need to figure out how we are moving forward with that land Part of the original agreement was to deal with the cleanup Of that land and make sure that it was dealt with And then the other piece of it To be able to utilize it outside of the expansion Is to move three different at-grade rail lines to the other side of the, remove them actually. Some of them just use, there's two tracks, one's on one side, the other's on the other. It will remove the tracks and be able to deal with it so there's access safety onto that site. If we don't do both the cleanup, which was part of the original agreement and the movement of the rails, which is what the 9.9 million is paying for, and we thought we, this was the part of Chrissy Grant and other area of this, we will likely not be able to sell it. Right now, the agreement is we would basically recoup the $50 million that is against the loan for the purchase of the land. If we were to not do these investments, we would not be able to recoup those costs. We would not have won any interested buyer right now, and we would likely have to reduce the price to be able to sell it. And as I said earlier, we probably paid a premium more than, you know, what it was worth because of the need of that, you know, supply and demand and location, location, location. And we needed that location and we had to buy it. And now we're in a place where we need to clean it up to be able to do this. And so it would ask for us to be able to do what we need to do to be able to sell this property. Vice Chair Bridges.

So thank you, Mr. Vice Chair. The one, the cleanup, the environmental cleanup, was part of the agreement to purchase it, so the state under contract is required to do the cleanup. Two, the...

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do not believe, I mean, to be able to, I think the agreement we had with the seller was that before we would use it or transfer, we would do the cleanup. So we'd have to go back to who we bought it from. And I can't remember. It was one of the railroads that we'd have to do that. So that was part of it. The other is the Accra crossings, which are heavy rail, not light rail. These are heavy rail. And those two, we are in a better position than private sector to be able to do those changes. And we can't use the, there's no enterprise that has authority to be able to spend the money in that area. but we have experience and one of the big things is we have to negotiate with the railroads to be able to do these changes. And so we are in a better position as a state to be able to have the conversations and work with the railroads than the private sector would be able to do. And that's part of the reasons we feel like this needs to get done before. so that is why we think this is important to get done and why we feel this important to fund this right now so that we can eventually sell this and it doesn't matter like to us if you know if the broncos buy it or if someone else buys it this is still going to be needed at whatever time someone does purchase this senator probably what is what i mean maybe you're you can't say but what are we selling it for? And where does that money go? So Madam Chair, Senator Mobley, the CTI, I believe it was CTI, one of the funds within CDOT purchased the land for the expansion. They paid $50 million. The sale price would be $50 million, which would, right now there's a loan, part of a loan, I think some of it was paid with cash, some of it was paid with a loan, I believe, it would pay off all obligations that the state has on that land. So it would basically, we recoup all the money we used for the purchase of it, but no more. Senator Mobley.

Director Ferrandino. Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't know if it's 100% of versus loan, but I do believe if it's the vast majority, if not all of it, was done through a loan for the purchase.

DIRECTOR FARRANDINO. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. THE PURCHASE OF THE LAND, YES, WAS DONE THROUGH THE ENTERPRISE BUT THE MONEY THAT THEN FOR THE RAIL CHANGES IS NOT SOMETHING THAT AN ALLOWABLE USE UNDER THE ENTERPRISE FUNDING IT WAS ALLOWABLE USE FOR THE PURCHASE FOR THE And for the rail changes is not something that an allowable use under the enterprises funding It was allowable use for the purchase for the construction of the highway and all of that It's not allowable for the movement of the at-grade rail.

Because we weren't putting general fund into that. Thank you, Madam Chair. And this money was then allocated out of the, during the time when we had tons of money and there was money allocated. That's where this money was allocated into this was between the ARPA discretionary and I don't remember exactly what it was like the state. There was the state excess run money. There was the federal funds. There was all these different funds coming in during COVID. That's when this money was allocated. So the money is there. Remember, this money is general fund, but general fund because it is ARPA swap money. It's not general fund in the same sense as like general fund that was there before. This was all part of ARPA dollars. Yeah, it wasn't general fund. WHAT? GO AHEAD. IT WASN'T GENERAL FUND. THAT'S WHAT I WAS SAYING. IT'S NOT GENERAL FUND MONEY. AND WE DIDN'T AGREE TO PUT GENERAL FUND MONEY INTO IT FOR THE CLEANUP IN THE FIRST PLACE. THAT WAS GOING TO COME OUT OF A DIFFERENT POT OF MONEY SOMEPLACE. SO YOU KNOW FOR ALL I CARE, GO TAKE IT OUT OF THAT FRONT RANGE REL CASH FUND THAT YOU HAVE OVER THERE. BUT THERE'S THERE'S PLENTY OF FUNDS OVER THERE AT CDOT TO DO THE CLEANUP THAT YOU NEED TO DO. SO YOU DON'T NEED THIS MONEY FOR FROM THE GENERAL FUND. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. THIS IS AND THIS IS WHERE IT'S It's general fund because we swapped the money two years ago. Whenever we did, I don't remember when we did the big swap. Was that last year or two years ago? Two years ago. So it converted to general fund because it was ARPA dollars and now we're SLRF dollars, one of those pots of money, and it moved to the general fund. So you are just spending the ARPA dollars that are now general fund dollars. So it's not new general fund money. It was always intended for this use. It was money that was then swapped and is sitting there. If you pull it back, you're basically pulling back that federal and state agreement that was there, and that's for those dollars. And that's why what I would say is, well, yes, it looks like general fund. It's not really general fund. This is the swap of money into the general fund. And we think it's the right use of these dollars.

I WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING ELSE. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. OKAY. ON TO ANOTHER FUN TOPIC, P3 OFFICE. TWO ACTIONS THE COMMITTEE TOOK THAT WE WOULD ASK FOR REVERSAL ON. ONE IS TO SWEEP $1.2 MILLION OUT OF THE FUND, AND THEN TWO IS TO PULL BACK CONTINUOUS APPROPRIATION. I will first talk about the continuous appropriation and proposal we have to address some of the concerns the committee had As we work to do a lot of these projects these projects are ones where and there are a significant number of housing projects already you know, there's 260 affordable and attainable housing units and three child care centers that we're looking at, 600, total of 600 affordable housing units of which the transfer impacts 267 of those affordable housing units. These are always complicated deals with lots of developers and they move quickly. They move slowly and then they move quickly when they're ready to be able to happen. And for the state to be able to engage in this, we need to be able to be nimble and have conversations and be able to get to agreements with developers and others quickly. The process that currently works has, like if we were to do an annual appropriation, that would significantly hinder the ability to be able to do these type of deals. We also understand the concern by the legislature of the oversight. That is why we are asking for the creation of a board to oversee the P3 office. We propose and definitely open to conversations of a five-member board, including one member from each chamber, personnel, DPA, who the head of DPA, who is where the P3 office is, DOLA, head of DOLA, who is usually a, because most of this is around housing usually where we're looking at it, so it made sense for DOLA to be involved because they're also working with locals and other things who are also partnering in these areas, and then a governor appointee to be able to do this. This would not change the need for it to still eventually go to the CDC and the process there, but this would be in the beginning part of it. Before it started, this board would have to approve it and have basically oversight and fiduciary duty on those so that there was, you know, more oversight on these projects. So we didn't get into a place where there wasn't transparency on these projects and there was buy-in to what was at least moving on and starting those conversations with legislative members involved in that. The 1.2 million transfer is the one, and I talked about that already, which is where we have significant amount of affordable housing that with that transfer, those projects are moving forward, could be jeopardized with that. Rep. Taggart.

Sorry Director Farandino Thank you Madam Chair The director of the P3 offices here may be able to address kind of what the history of the Centennial project is and the impact of that. So if that, I think Mr. Curic, Director Curic. Director Curic.

I would just say that I understand. In the end, it was not feasible. And we're looking into other options as well. But yeah, I understand the concern. Senator Kirkman. I hope you do understand our concern, because we're sitting here listening to other agencies, like in the judicial branch, they're saying they need office space and looking for higher rent places when we're looking at a building that they could have used. I mean, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of coordination that goes on between the executive branch and the judicial branch on some of these things, and we're not sure really what the plan is. So it seemed like a complete waste of money to me. And it wasn't just affordable housing, which I don't know where that idea came from, but it was also supposed to be a child care facility is what we heard. So I don't know where that idea came from either. But when we're looking at all of the different agencies in this state that are moving offices all the way around, and we've got buildings open, and then people are trying to get private leases with commercial buildings, it just doesn't make sense, and it seems like there's a lack of coordination. Madam Chair.

I'M SORRY, WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON? SORRY, 68.

ago to fund these projects senator mobley uh you know i can't tell you how many pro things we've eliminated and funding we've eliminated and so I don't know why this one would be special in terms of some obligation that we uh incurred by passing that bill I I just want to that it's too much

Vice Chair Bridges. Sure, thank you. Thought I got away without. So we increased funding for lottery by $14 million last year and then didn't hit the cap for GOCO. And I sort of feel like the two are related If we hadn given million to the lottery they definitely would have hit their cap And so I worry that every dollar we put into administration and overhead and in the bureaucracy at lottery, that it's dollars that can't go out to, you know, help do all the great things that are funded by the state's lottery.

Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. I hear a lot of different things from lottery about this. On the one hand, they say, oh, we need these advertising dollars because we're competing with sports betting and, you know, they're cleaning our clock. On the other hand, I hear them say, oh, the sports betting population is a totally different set of folks from the people who bet on lottery. There's no overlap between these universes. So it's hard to see how sports betting is competing if it's a different universe that purchases lottery as opposed to sports betting. The other thing we hear is that proceeds and lottery are entirely driven by how big the jackpots are. When the jackpots get big, people buy, and when they're low, they don't buy. So help me understand, with both of those facts, like what's true in this? Because I've heard all sorts of different things, but what it sounds like is that advertising doesn't really impact it. If it's true that it's a separate group of folks that aren't in competition with sports betting people, and if it's driven entirely, or at least almost entirely, by the size of the jackpots and not the money that we spend on advertising. And when we've increased it by as much as by millions of dollars and then fall short of hitting that go-go cap, it concerns me. Now, I do understand, though, that in January or December we had the single largest week ever for scratch tickets. So something's clearly going well for lottery on the scratch ticket side. It just makes me wonder, like, what do we need here? What's going on? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Vice Chair Bridges. This is not, I'm done. There's a dollar amount that it flips over, and at that dollar amount it actually, the odds are that you make money, and the smart thing to do is to buy more tickets. What's that dollar amount? Director Ferrandino. Madam Vice Chair, Senator Bridges, you have two different games, and it depends on your expected rate. If you do a calculation of expected outcome, when the jackpot, at least in the Powerball, I think hits about 600 to 700 million. If you could buy all the numbers, you would end up breaking even. Now there's all this, like, does it actually work? And can you buy all the numbers and do all that? But that's about, I think it's somewhere, and they've tweaked the games, they continue to tweak the games, but there is a point, and it's why your expected value is greater than one after a certain height of the time of the game. but you get screwed if two people buy it because then you get half the price so

$2 million is in there. I'm sorry.

This would not be supporting those items directly, but we do believe that as we help, like as we want to use the money to encourage people to eat healthy and give more options, LIKE FOR EXAMPLE THE FEDERAL PROGRAM THAT DOES PAY INCENTIVES FOR I THINK IT'S RETAILERS WHO ARE OFFERING IN AREAS HEALTHY FOOD THAT WILL HELP WITH SOME OF THIS BUT AND THEN FOR EXAMPLE THE WE HAVE AN ASK FOR CDA FOR THE COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM TO USE SOME OF THE CASH FUNDS TO to pay for some of the work around community food access program. All of that is kind of aligned with the philosophy of the administration around how do we make sure that people have healthy options in food so it's not tied directly. None of this money is going to implementing that waiver, but it is aligned with our idea as administration that we are trying to encourage people to eat healthier foods. I'm quoting you on that.

Staff is confirming none of this is tied directly to it, but it's aligned.

Well, because all of this is about how do we get people to eat healthy and how do we educate them on healthy options and things like that. That is, so it is aligned with it. is not conditional on it or not funding it. It's not, I'm not trying to be cute or try to.

Well, this is all I'm going to say about this one is that there was a deal that was made when all of this was getting onto the ballot and even after the ballot about which money would go where and how much would go to each of it. And two FTE and 2.5 million, I don't recall anybody ever telling me that was supposed to be there to fund and expand, to fund the expansion of the electronic healthy incentives program. So I'm not going to support that. And up and above in the summary of the JBC action, if the only reason it's a zero appropriation for the nutrition education program, which is supposed to be funded and was part of the deal, it is because it's in some kind of waterfall activity, then that's one thing. But if we agreed that we were funding nutrition education out of these things, then I'm with whatever the deal that was made. And this was not part of the deal. So just letting you know, I'm going with the deal. Like you said earlier, we've got to keep our promises. I'm all with you on that. We've got to keep our promises. You make a deal, a deal's a deal, especially when it's in this case. That doesn go for legislation though because every year we know we get to change legislation That what this branch gets to do Just saying Which I know probably just shocks everybody

Did the time just stop? No, you actually.

Yes. Yes.

Madam Chair, I think that might be...

Madam Chair, that might be correct. Because I, like, when we negotiated this and we worked on this bill, we, that ended up being what was referred to the improved by the voters was that what is the allowable use? There was no guarantee of funding or no specific, like, yes, we are going to fund this or we're not going to fund this. It was more of how are these allowable uses. We think this, not saying that this was like, funding this was part of a deal. We're saying part of the deal was what were the allowable uses. We feel this fits under the allowable use. If the committee doesn't see it that way, I understand that. But at least in terms of wanting to spend the money in this way than something else. But that is why we're saying this can be used by HSMA and is aligned with the work we're trying to do. Okay.

Oh, yeah, no, sorry. I'm sorry. I'm losing my mind.

You're the one who brought 60 comebacks. Thank you Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. SENATOR BRIDGES BROWNIES? YES. SPECIAL BROWNIES. SPECIAL BROWNIES.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Picking up on page 95, just a few final thoughts on the HSMA. One is it is the Agricultural Management Fund we were asking for. Important also, the EHIP program does fund, you know, it does. The federal government has pulled back on funding retailers. THIS WILL FUND RETAILERS AND PROGRAMS LIKE NURRESS COLORADO IN THERE. WE ARE WORKING AND OPEN TO CONVERSATIONS ON THIS WITH ADVOCATES ON THIS FUNDING. A WHOLE NEW THING IN A COMEBACK. YES.

I'M SORRY.

That was done to reduce $340,000.

There was the department prioritized pulling down and spending down the federal funds first that were going to expire, and that's where the money was used. but this money was the programs that were going to be there were spent and the dollars were spent for what was the intended purpose. It just used the federal funds first and page 97 outlines of where the money went and how it was. So we think this money is still needed.

but that is why we didn't spend it because we wanted to spend down the federal dollars that were going away first and save the general fund and now we're not in that spot.

This is, there is a lot in here as we look through this one. THE REQUEST FOR TANF WAS DELAYED BY THE COMMITTEE ON YOUR ACTION, BUT WE WANTED TO JUST WAIT AND PUT A FEW THINGS IN THIS CONVERSATION TO ADDRESS BOTH STATE AND COUNTY TANF RESERVES AND SOLVENCY. SO WE ARE PROPOSING THAT WE PAUSE THE COLA ADJUSTMENT FOR BASIC CASH ASSISTANCE FOR TWO YEARS. THAT'S FOR 33.8 MILLION TANF FUNDS. then doing an annual call instead of the based on the past three years, adding a new RFI for more data on some of the members in the committee and staff had requested. Managing the BCA at the state level while being, we want to be collaborative with county partners and stakeholders on that and open to conversations, but we do think managing at the state level is the best approach. and then exploring and working with your staff on the TANF reserves and the structures on how TANF reserves, removing the requirement for a general fund backfill, which your staff recommended on the state's long-term TANF reserves, and eliminate the state and county reserve minimums in statute.

and we recognize this we're still proposing substantive changes these changes push out general fund needs for five years in the tana reserve this is there's a lot of moving parts you guys had lots of conversations there is a lot of things that will move with this and we really my team and the department want to be collaborative with you and the counties on how we make sure we are implementing both either these recommendations or what the committee would want to move forward WITH IN A WAY THAT HELPS TO BOTH PROTECT THE GENERAL FUND AND MAKE SURE COUNTIES AND THEIR CONSTITUENCIES HAVE THE NEEDS THAT ARE THERE OR MEET THE NEEDS THAT THEY'RE THERE.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. I DO NOT, WE HAVE NOT BEEN IN A CONVERSATION ABOUT THAT. I CAN BRING IT BACK AND WE CAN HAVE THAT CONVERSATION. I KNOW ALSO, YOU KNOW, I THINK THE LEGISLATURE HAS HAD STRONG OPINIONS ON THE BASIC CASH ASSISTANCE PROGRAM. I THINK BETWEEN THE LEGISLATURE AND OURSELVES, WE'RE HAPPY, OTHER MEMBERS OF THE LEGISLATURE, HAPPY TO HAVE THOSE CONVERSATIONS. AS WE SAID, WE DEFINITELY WANT TO BE COLLABORATIVE ON THIS CONVERSATION AS WE MOVE FORWARD, BUT IT'S NOT, I CAN'T ANSWER THAT BECAUSE WE HAVEN'T HAD THAT CONVERSATION, SO I DON'T KNOW WHERE WE WOULD BE IN A POSITION-WISE. THANK YOU.

Madam Chair, Senator Kirkmeyer, I APPRECIATE THAT. I THINK OUR PROPOSAL AND WANT TO WORK TO MAKE SURE THAT, YOU KNOW, we're at least looking at getting through 2031 without the need for general fund, but I understand long-term there are still issues, and happy to continue to have those conversations.

THIS IS AS I THINK SENT TO THE COMMITTEE YESTERDAY IN AN APPENDIX AS WELL TO THIS DOCUMENT IS A LETTER WE SENT BASED ON THE LATEST REPORT BY THE SPECIAL MASTER OF THE CONSENT DECREE WHICH WE ARE CURRENTLY IN COURT WITH THE DISABILITY LAW COLORADO. well, we have been since 2011 with Disability Law Colorado. As we're working through this, it is back in the courts in compliance, around compliance. I think I wanted to highlight two things. One, we are, and Representative Brown, to your point earlier, you know, we had asked for $10 million. We thought that would be enough. As we've worked to do this, we've come to the realization that that is not going to meet the needs of the consent decree. AND NOW WE ARE LIKELY TO NEED 30 MILLION INSTEAD OF A 20 MILLION DOLLAR INCREASE WE ARE ACTIVELY WORKING ON WHAT THOSE PROPOSALS ARE AND WE BE PROVIDING THE GOAL IS BY APRIL 1ST THE COMMITTEE AND ASKING FOR A POSITION increase We are actively working on what those proposals are and we be providing the goal is by April 1st the committee and asking for a placeholder for that as we move forward with this. This would be for more beds as we work through. As you can see what the issue I think on the number on the right side is and in the letter we have seen and made progress on keeping the wait list from growing, but as more referrals occur, we are still seeing a, while we were making good progress, brought it down, we're starting to see it creep back up, and we know we need to be at, I believe it's 100 by, in a year and a half, roughly, I think it is. The department knows better than I do. And so we, we think this amount of money will help us be able to put up more beds to be able to SUPPORT AND GET TO WHERE WE NEED TO BE TO MEET THE CONSENT DECREE AS SENATOR IMABLE POINTED OUT EARLIER. IF THERE IS THE WORRY OF IF WE DON'T FUND THIS THAT THE COURTS WOULD RELEASE THE CAP ON THE FINES AND THOSE FINES COULD BE IN THE TENS TO HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS PLUS TO THE STATE. AND SO WE REALLY WOULD LIKE TO BE ABLE TO MAKE PROGRESS IN THIS AREA.

So, Director Ferrandino, what you're saying to us is that you don't know what you need yet, but you know it costs $20 million. Is that right? Director Ferrandino. Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Brown, we are working diligently to identify all the different options. What we think is, as we look at it, that it is around $30 million. but to put pen on $20 million additionally. To put pen on paper and to be clear on what we would need to build out a decision item our teams, my team and DHS are actively working on that we built out a skeleton but we have a lot of vetting to do before we get that but given where we were with the committee and the timeline we wanted to make sure we were putting this in front of you now and I know the timing is not ideal, but we felt the timing was better now than it is in two weeks from now as we're having these conversations. And it's not, you know, our goal will be to figure out if the $30 million is what we need. We believe we can do enough to make progress and show the special master that we are making the progress that is needed. with this, but I can't tell you, one, if this is going to get us in compliance, or two, if the courts will recognize this. But we do think both from conversation with the department, with our lawyers and others, we think this is a significant good faith effort to work to meet the needs.

Yes. Director Ferrandino. Madam Chair, Representative Brown. Yes, that is. But I do think our belief is that spending this money lessens the likelihood of that not spending the money. Sure. Given the conversations with the courts probably makes it very likely that we would get the fine cap removed and see significant fines there no guarantee that because we don this is you know the courts will make that determination but we think this will show good faith and allow us to not have those done But I can't sit here and tell you if you do this, we're going to all be great.

I don't want to belabor it here because I think we're all exhausted. But I first want to say to the committee, the fines and the competency wait list are separate from the bill that you all put a placeholder in for. They are related, but they are two separate populations that are being addressed. And I just want to make that clear. And then I just will say one more time, because all these people are listening, and hopefully some more too, that we will not solve this problem until we create a viable and robust civil mental health system, which means that we need another hospital for civil commitments. We need more transitional living homes. We need nursing homes for people who are incompetent to proceed but are not mentally ill. And we need to, we should prioritize putting those things first. And that will actually solve this problem. And I don't believe that anything else will. So we can surge competency beds, and we can have the number go down, but then as we see, the number goes back up. And so until we get people actually into treatment and recovery, they keep coming back. 25% of the competency population comes back. Once they get restored to competency, they have their case heard, and then they come back, 25%. So, we're not going to solve the problem until we address the epidemic of mental illness, serious mental illness that we have in our state.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, listening to Senator Mobley then, if the first $10 million legislative placeholder and now the additional $20 million placeholder isn't for the issue that was from the 1034 issue. The first 10 is. Well, but what I heard you say is they're unrelated. The fines and the wait list are separate from the 1034 revision that you're doing in the bill that you have. I don't know what number it is. Sorry. So do we need to basically be looking at a different line that says we have a $30 million placeholder for this issue with regard to the fines and the wait list? Because I thought I heard that they're separated. SO THAT'S MY FIRST QUESTION. MY SECOND QUESTION IS WHERE DO THE FINES GO? I COULD...

SO AS THE SENATOR SAID, THESE ARE, HAVE SIMILARITIES AND HAVE SOME INTERRELATIONSHIPS TO EACH OTHER, BUT ARE DIFFERENT POPULATIONS. AND THE 12.3 MILLION, I BELIEVE, WHICH IS WHAT YOU PUT IN AS SET ASIDE FOR THE BILL IS I BELIEVE IT EITHER 13 OR 12 THAT YOU PUT IN FOR THE BILL IS SEPARATE FROM THIS THERE WAS A SET ASIDE WE KNEW THAT AS WE point three that you put in for the bill is separate from this There was a set aside We knew that as we were dealing with that population it has an impact through SIMIP and others on this population, on the wait list population. That's why we asked for an additional $10 million to be able to address the impact on those populations. What we thought at that time when we did this back in several months ago, we weren't like we were still making progress. We weren't in a place We thought that $10 million would deal with the impacts from the other population that could have on the wait list. Now we know not only do we have to deal with the impact, but we also have to put more in to be able to bring down that wait list, given where the consent decree is and being able to meet those consent decrees. So they are similar, but they are unique populations that have overlap or I should say interactions with each other, because it's the similar beds, who you're using, who you're putting in those beds, different services. That's where the interactions are and how there's overlap on that. On the fines, the fines go out to programs and providers and others who are providing services. I think probably Senator Moblin knows this better than I do in terms of who gets those fines.

It was $13 million.

Senator Amobley.

Senator Perkmire?

DIRECTOR FARRANDINO. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. SENATOR KIRKMAYER.

Senator Kirkman?

Rep Taggart.

Senator Mowgli.

Thank you Madam Chair.

Senator Amabile, and then I think we need to keep going.

Director Farrandino.

Okay Moving on to CDA Easier topic Climate Resiliency Grant Agricultural I can't Whatever Voltaics Equine Welfare Grants You had cut those

Moving on Yeah, okay

Senator Kirkmaner.

WHERE IS IT COMING FROM? DIRECTOR FARRANDINO. THANK YOU.

REP. BROWN. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR.

DIRECTOR FERRENDINO.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Director Ferrandino.

Rep. Brown.

Senator Kirkmeyer.

I do too. I would also say, though, that I don't believe that availability of a federal match makes a human being more or less worthy of health care support. I do recognize that there are, yes, we are making very painful cuts across our state budget, and everyone is feeling a cut. And I just honor that it is really hard for all of us who end up having to be the face of these decisions, and that it is also hard for the folks who are coming up with the ways in which we balance this budget, WHICH WE ARE STILL VERY, VERY FAR FROM. SO THIS IS HARD ON EVERYONE. DIRECTOR FARRANDINO.

Well, if we're not, I'm sorry if I'm not totally following. IF WE'RE NOT ALLOWED TO SET RATES BASED ON FAMILIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND THE COMMITTEE CONTINUES TO DENY THIS, THEN WHAT?

Senator Motley. I understood the difference to be if you're living in a home-like setting, even if you're living with somebody who's not familiarly related to you. And that's the difference, because you're living at home, that you actually need more resources of your own compared to somebody who's living in an institutional setting or some other kind of setting. I might have that wrong. And we don't have to debate it today, because we will have to debate it amongst ourselves. Yep.

Senator Mobley? I don't want to debate it at length here now because I don't think we have time and people look tired. But how would that work if you were a kid and you're getting some kind of SSDI or SSI? I mean, you don't have a mortgage. Your parents do. And even if you're an adult and you're on SSI or SSDI, if you're living at home, you don't have the mortgage. Your family does. So it is different, I think, than being in a residential setting that you're not on the hook for all the expenses of that setting. Dr. Silva. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Senator Maviles. I want to clarify that this is applied to adults only, not children. So when I talk about a mortgage, I mean a person who owns their own home, not their parents' home, as part of what they're considering. If they happen to live with their family, then that is their family's mortgage. And so the costs, again, are very individualized to that person and considered as part of that petty calculation. So what this reduction is aiming to sort of achieve is to bring equity in how we're treating people who are receiving access to 24-7 care across all of our waiver programs. Okay. Thank you. And probably more follow-up will be helpful.

Rep. Taggart. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Director Ferrandino. I'm uncomfortable, not uncomfortable with the approach, but where I'm uncomfortable is not putting some stake in the ground for savings because again we've got to balance this budget and if people are going to if we're going to allow 6.5 million in general fund I think we have to hold people accountable to that savings of 9.8 that you're that you're putting in here. Now, I don't know if the 9.8, yeah, you're saying that's the state, that's the state, Chair, because you're saying 19.6. So I'm assuming 9.8 is the general fund. I just, I'm just not used to folks asking for the dollars and not putting a stake in the ground

REP BROWN. CAN YOU CLARIFY YOUR CHART HERE? IT LOOKS LIKE YOUR COMEBACK REQUEST IS $13 MILLION. WELL. IS THAT RIGHT? THAT'S. BUT YOUR ORIGINAL REQUEST WAS ONLY $2 MILLION IN TOTAL FUNDS. YEAH. MAYBE YOU CAN REQUEST THAT. Thank you. Representative Brown, thank you, Madam Chair. Yes, it looks like a math error that it should be the $2 million. We're asking what we asked for originally. Just, I think, that flipped the sign and got to the $13 million because we added the 8.5 and the 6.5 versus netting them. Great, thank you. A negative, a negative is a positive. I'm doing that with my daughter right now on math, so should have got that right.

Lieutenant Governor's office. This is a lawsuit right now. What? This one is not a lawsuit. This is the federal. This one is different than the lawsuit. This is one where in one of the appropriations bills, they put money into this. But the HUD has not sent out the allocation yet by states of what they're getting. So it could be a lawsuit? It could be. There's always hope that it could be another lawsuit because they put in terms or other things that we're going to have to sue or they don't allocate in a way that we think is not legitimate or not legal. Our hope is that's not the case and we get the money and we don't even need this money, but that is why we're putting that out there.

thank you director and you know uh one clarifying question I wanted to ask regarding HICPUF the PROVIDER RATE CUT THAT YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT, ABOUT 3.6, IS THAT IN ADDITION TO THE .75 THAT YOU HAVE ALREADY, OR IS THAT INCLUSIVE OF THE .75?

Rep Taggart. Thank you, Madam Chair. Maybe as much a question to you as Director Ferrandino. When we're looking at 58 comebacks, I know what would help me, I don't know how other folks feel, if there was kind of a summary chart at the beginning that summarized all of these requests from a financial standpoint. I don't think it needs to be done on two or three comebacks, but when you have 58, it's hard. I don't know where we are after looking at this. I have no idea where we are. just a suggestion I know it would help me I see a thumbs up what's that we know we're good it would be nice to have this so if you have that I think apparently that would be appreciated I'm sure we don't have that we have it in a there's a much bigger table we can make that table and that won't be I get to we'll get to see you tomorrow during the forecast

Thank you. We're friends.

Okay. See you tomorrow.

There are any comebacks.

Is the committee okay with putting in about another 30 minutes of work?

No, there's like 10, I think, from Monday. I think they, I don't know, I think this came out of the Monday Blinder, is that right? Yeah. Yes, but, yes. But some of them are related to comebacks that also our staff brought up, so.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I do. Amanda Bickle, JBC staff. So the first bill draft you've got here is one that had been requested by the department as a savings bill. it will make the evaluations for the READ Act happen every other year, the external evaluation component.

And it has that $750,000 savings in it.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to introduce LLS 260880.

Thank you. Yeah, for the next two, yeah. Thank you, Madam Chair. I need a few more days to decide between these next two. and where I'll be. Thank you.

So I'm going to advocate for saving the $800,000. That's what I think we should do. You have to pick one or the other. Correct. And that's what we need more brownies for. Yeah. I want to advocate for the lemonade. Yeah, but it takes six, so I'll let you know.

Okay, so the next one on page 13 of the packet is the science teacher professional development program. This was requested by the state board. IT CUTS A PREVIOUS ONE-TIME PROGRAM. IT CUTS THE AMOUNT OF FUNDING FOR IT IN HALF. IT SAVES 1.5 MILLION. VICE CHAIR BRIDGES. THING I MOVE TO INTRODUCE LLS 260883, REDUCED SCIENCE TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM APPROPRIATION. WAIT. I'M SORRY, AM I ON THE LONG? YES, I WAS. IT'S 18.

I just did the last one.

Madam Chair, I'm going to ask that we hold on the next one, if that's okay. I'd like to review the comeback request from the governor today before I make a decision on this particular program.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Yes.

And remove the cash fund too if there's an associated cash fund.

It's. No. Yeah, there's not a cash fund, but so it would involve, I think, yes, you probably change the title as well.

Thank you. Madam Chair, on the accelerator program on...

I'm right. I just want to confirm that your previous vote includes actually modifying this bill so that we're actually fully repealing it and we'll modify the title in consistent with that. Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. Move to modify the title and repeal the program.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So did you want to discuss it or we?

I understand how much we've got to cut, and I've said that. If we can find a way to reduce this for next year and not repeal it, I can find my way around it. but to just repeal it and take the $16 million, it puts some really important programs that have been very successful out of business, and I'm not comfortable with that.

It's actually $8.4 because it's for the last year of the program. I understand.

This would be the last year of it. It received three years of funding all at one time, And if you take back 8.4, you're taking away the last year of the program. And repealing it as this is written right now.

Yeah, I think that's correct.

Yeah, I mean, I think the grantees received it for three years, so they would have had it for two years instead.

I was just going to ask, I think one of the things that I didn't fully appreciate when WE HAD THIS CONVERSATION BEFORE WAS THE SORT OF FORMULA ASSOCIATED WITH H-SMA. AND I THINK THERE IS SOME CONCERN THAT IF WE STOP THE TRANSFERS INTO H-SMA THAT THAT SOMEHOW UNDERCUTS THE FORMULA. I DON'T THINK THE TRANSFER BACK TO THE STATE EDUCATION FUND IS NECESSARILY THE ISSUE THERE. BUT I THINK IT'S THE OTHER TRANSFERS AND STOPPING THEM ON GOING. I DON'T KNOW IF YOU HAVE ANY INSIGHTS INTO THAT, MS. BICKLE? I MEAN, I HAVE SOME. A LOT OF THAT, OF THE FORMULAS THAT ARE INCLUDED, BASED ON THE MOST RECENT ESTIMATES WE'VE HAD FOR HSMA, IT'S NOT GOING TO AFFECT THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT'S AVAILABLE FOR THE STIPEND AND GRANT PROGRAMS. The thing that it would do potentially is if you had a situation where the total amount of money that's available when you do a calculation of the need for meals and administration versus the balance in the fund, if that figure falls too low, if it falls below 10 percent, then the funding for these grant and stipend programs is reduced, and the source of funding for those programs that would remain is this money that is transferred from the state ed fund. So from that perspective, if numbers fall really low, there's a sort of, I call it a reserve, it's a kind of a reserve for those grant and stipend programs, which is why one of the drafting questions in here is, if you were to make these changes as drafted in this bill, do you want to establish a minimum amount for the grant and stipend programs? You know, if you eliminate that, because as you can see, there's like pieces that are struck here. There's some drafting questions on page three. And this includes changing that sort of what happens under those particular circumstances. It would, as part of this, right now that state ed fund money goes to this special account that's within Healthy School Meals for All. So one of the things this would do would be to, like, you don't need that account. And I don't think it would otherwise change the formula calculations, but it would change whether there's sort of this special sort of reserve if your total funds really fall.

Yeah. That's totally, that is completely, we will redraft it reflecting that. Do you want us to bring it back to you so you see that final version before it's introduced or just keep it moving? Senator Kirkmeyer. Yeah, sure, you're going to have to bring that. Because here's the thing. The Constitution was clear. Last year we were basically told that we needed to fund or transfer this $8 million because of the increase in taxes that come in from the Healthy School Mills ballot initiative. That's not accurate. The Constitution is very clear. Money coming in, income taxes, 3% of 1% is supposed to go to the state education fund. For the purposes of funding education, K-12 education in the state of Colorado. and it's essentially an earmark that got put into the constitution so these these dollars weren't supposed to be going to healthy school bill and we started transferring them because of that information we received last year so unlike the constitution says this money is supposed to go into the state education fund if we want to put some place in the state education fund through the school finance act that we're going to start transferring money over here when we don't have it I mean the state education fund is getting depleted to the point where you know the governor is putting in his budget request that we need to put another 50 million general fund into school funding, into K-12 funding. So I think we should follow the constitution. I mean we definitely need to make a 31 million dollar transfer. You know if we want to, I don't know. I just don't know why we aren't following the constitution and putting the money in the state education fund. There was no provision that says we have to put money from the state education fund in the healthy school meals. It's not an automatic. And that's what we were informed about last year or how it was presented last year.

Okay. We will definitely bring it back. And when I bring it back, just to clarify, I'm going to change the dollar amount so it's not an even $31 million, but it's 31066831, which is my calculation of the exact repayment figure.

Someone or something.

Thanks much. And I think that's it for me. Okay Ms Ewell Andrea Ewell JBC staff On page 29 there one bill for you within the Department of Local Affairs for a pass grant program that goes to the State Public Defender and Colorado District Attorney's Council. After talking about it, we determined that because CDAC is sitting on a fund balance from previous appropriations that we could cut their funding for one year, but it takes a statutory change to direct the money a certain way. There is a drafting question for you on page 30, and that is, would you like this ledge deck to explain that you're doing this because they indicated that they have a balance that can float them through the year so that it doesn't just look like you're cutting them?

So that's pretty much it for now. I think we will have to revisit this program in the future because it is a tricky setup statutorily. But for now, this allows $250,000 of savings, which is in the long bill. and then this new paragraph to direct funding only to a public defender for next year.

If you're okay with this wording, I think you can approve now with that ledge deck.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move for the introduction of LLS0923 Public Defender and Prosecutor Behavioral Health Program. Are there any objections?

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Michelle Curry, Joint Budget Committee staff. I have two bill drafts for you and then a memo regarding some adjustments to a draft that was already approved. THE FIRST DRAFT YOU HAVE, IT'S PAGE 32 OF YOUR PACKET. THIS IS FOR A BILL THAT WOULD ADJUST THE MAXIMUM RESERVE, THE REQUIREMENT TO CHANGE THE FEES ONCE A CASH FUND HAS HIT ITS MAXIMUM RESERVE. SO FOR THE TWO CASH FUNDS IN QUESTION, THIS IS THE PUBLIC SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION AND INSPECTION CASH FUND AND THE HEALTH FACILITY CONSTRUCTION AND INSPECTION CASH FUND and it would just make it so that those funds could exceed the maximum reserve limit for three years before having to reduce their fee. Senator Kirkmeyer. And remind me again why we're doing that. Why we would let them increase the reserve, especially in this time? Without cutting or reducing the fee. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Senator Kirkmeyer. because the fees that are charged at the beginning of a project tend to be expected to cover costs for multiple years. The department have requested combining all of these funds into one. And so from my perspective, this is a more transparent way to ensure that there's not like if if one school is being constructed, they would be basically supplementing the cost of of school construction in the following year because their fees would have dropped in order to cover that. Senator Kirkman. I'm sorry, Madam Chair, thank you. It's just these two. It's fine. It's not like a whole bunch of them. Correct. Correct.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move for the introduction of LLS 0908, maximum reserve requirement for certain cash fines. Are there any objections?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Next on page 37 is a bill draft to repeal the Wildfire Resilient Homes grant program, as well as transferring any remaining funds in that cash fund, that balance, to the general fund. NEW SPEAKERS, MADAM CHAIR. NEW SPEAKERS, MADAM CHAIR. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. MS. CURRY, THANK YOU. CAN YOU REMIND US WHY WE'RE DOING THIS AGAIN? IS THIS PROGRAM DEFUNCTION IN SOME WAY OR LIKE IT DOESN'T TAKE MONEY OR WHATEVER? SORRY. I JUST CAN'T REMEMBER. NEW SPEAKERS, MADAM CHAIR AND THANK YOU, REPRESENTATIVE BROWN. THIS WAS A PROGRAM THAT WAS CREATED A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO IN ANTICIPATION OF FEDERAL FUNDS BEING ABLE TO PROVIDE GRANTS. THOSE FEDERAL FUNDS NEVER CAME. SO THE FUND WAS STARTED WITH $100,000. THE DEPARTMENT GRANTED OUT AS MUCH AS THEY COULD, BUT BASED ON TIME CONSTRAINTS, MONEY CONSTRAINTS, THEY WERE ONLY ABLE TO GRANT OUT ABOUT $40,000. SO THERE'S A REMAINING BALANCE IN THE FUND, AND IT HAS NOT BEEN FUNCTIONAL, NO MORE MONEY IN THERE FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS. OKAY, THANK YOU. HAS ANYONE BROUGHT UP SOME ISSUE ABOUT

Thank you, Madam Chair. This was a one-time program, and it just doesn't have any money. We're just taking the money left in it, and it wasn't ongoing. We're just, this thing ends, it just ends early. Move for the introduction of LLS 0911, Repeal Wild Fire Resilient Homes Grant Program.

I can do it. I got it. Bridges and Amable And co by Kirkmeyer and Brown

Thank you, Madam Chair. And then the last page of your packet is a memo from me. YOU HAVE PREVIOUSLY APPROVED FOR INTRODUCTION A BILL THAT ADJUSTS THE DTRS PUBLIC SAFETY COMMUNICATION FUNDS. MOST OF THE THINGS ARE GREAT IN THAT DRAFT. THE DEPARTMENT IDENTIFIED TWO SMALL ISSUES WITH THE BILL AS DRAFTED CURRENTLY. AND SO THIS IS JUST REQUESTING AUTHORITY TO CHANGE A COUPLE OF ASPECTS OF THE BILL IN ITS CURRENT FORM, WHICH HAD ALREADY BEEN APPROVED FOR INTRODUCTION. SO THE FIRST REQUEST WAS TO DELAY THE FIRST TRANSFER. THE BILL WILL TRANSFER ALL REMAINING FUNDS WITHIN THE REVOLVING ACCOUNT TO THE TRUST FUND AT THE END OF THE FISCAL YEAR. THE DEPARTMENT IS REQUESTING THAT THE FIRST TRANSFER HAPPEN AT THE CLOSE OF THE FISCAL YEAR 26-27. THAT WILL ALLOW THEM TO MAKE SURE THEY'VE COVERED ALL OF THE COSTS, ALL THE THINGS THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN APPROPRIATED FROM THAT FUND BEFORE THEY START TRANSFERING AND THEN THAT WOULD BE AN ONGOING TRANSFER FROM THAT POINT ON. THE SECOND REQUEST IS TO MAKE AN ADJUSTMENT TO THE STATUTORY CAP ON THE TRUST FUNDS BALANCE. CURRENTLY THE TRUST FUND IN STATUTE SAYS THAT THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF THE PRINCIPLE IN THE FUND SHALL NOT EXCEED $50 MILLION. Currently, that fund is not anywhere near that cap, but the department has indicated that because it's identified as the principal balance, that as ongoing capital expenses come from that, capital costs come from that trust, that there could be an influx of money that would be identified as unencumbered just because they're not in contract yet, but be in the process of moving and funding big projects. They also indicate that they occasionally receive large amounts of federal funds in order to, for the upkeep of their towers and things like that. And so the department had requested to adjust that cap to create a report that would come out and identify that this is about to be over 50 million. Here's why. Kind of to let you all just know that that was about to happen. I'll also note that the current reporting requirement for that, the trust fund, that expired November of 2025. So having them do that ongoing reporting of actual and anticipated expenditures and revenue would still serve that purpose of ensuring that the department not over collecting from agencies or misusing any of the funds that are in there Senator Kirkmeyer. Thank you. How many times do they think they're going to go over the $50 million? I mean, we allocated only $15 million a year for the project that was going on. So, and it's a total of 110 years for 150 million. So how many times do they think they're going to go over that? I'm not so keen on removing the statutory cap. I think if there's a way to say that, you know, that the transfer over does it impact the cap or whatever, like, you know, that doesn't get counted in the cap or something of that nature. I had some other language in my head, but I can't think what it was now. That's fine. But I don't want to eliminate the statutory cap. If they're going to go over that, they need to come in here and ask for permission. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm not comfortable with the request as a whole, either bullet. You know, when we look at the unencumbered, it is what it says, unencumbered. And for them to come back and now say, well, it wasn't really unencumbered, I'm not comfortable with their request at all. Yes, Senator Muffin.

Well.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. THIS MAY MEAN THAT WE GET A SUPPLEMENTAL REQUEST FOR DIGITAL TRUNK RADIO, AND I'D SWORE THAT I DIDN'T EVER WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN. SO THAT'S THE ONLY DOWNSIDE I SEE IN THIS, BUT LET'S TAKE THE MONEY NOW.

Yeah.

Thank you, members. I will be sending you a document with an updated general fund overview or tomorrow in reference to the December forecast which is unfortunately not very timely given that you be receiving the March forecast tomorrow but trying to give you some context as you go into that conversation And then we'll be ready whenever you all are available tomorrow. We can either do staff items in the morning if you want to do more bills or comebacks. And if members are available, forecast is scheduled for 1.30, but I understand there maybe floor complications.

I know we have come back packets that are being finalized as we speak.

So nothing that we need to keep track of at the moment. I do not believe so.

Thank you. Thank you. .