Joint Budget Committee [Apr 01, 2026]

these recommended changes to total comp. Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you Madam Chair. I move to reconsider the JBC's previous action on range adjustments and step like increases to employee compensation. The committee's previous action was to fund a 0.6% step-like adjustment and not to fund a range movement for state employees. Instead, I moved to fund a 1.0% salary range adjustment and a 1.0% step-like adjustment for state employee compensation. Finally, I moved to allow staff to work with the governor's office and DPA to develop estimates by department, which I think has maybe already been done.

Thank you Madam Chair. Craig Harper, GBC staff. I think I have an overview that we can walk THROUGH NOW I BELIEVE MISS BICKLE HAS A MEMO AS WELL THAT MAY BE USEFUL I DON'T KNOW IF THE COMMITTEE YEAH IT'S A TOTAL CONFIRMATION KIND OF A FOLLOW-UP CONFIRMATION MEMO BASED ON THE MOTION THAT YOU ALL JUST TOOK OKAY SURE SO THAT THAT MAY MAKE SENSE AS THE STARTING POINT GREAT

MS. Okay, so, Amanda Bickle, JBC staff. So the first part of this is mine, and that is just getting confirmation from you on how the 1.5% reduction that's in the numbers right now has been calculated for judicial, and this is really big. based on what you did last year for judicial in terms of how you took the 1.5% reduction. And that is what you did before, and so what we've done so far, is to exclude judges, judge support staff, law clerks, magistrates, interpreters, and court reporters from the calculation of who's reduced of the 1.5% reduction. I think the idea discussion last year, I wasn't doing this, but my understanding is it was kind of about the fact that these are critical state staff. If they're not actually there, you need replacements, right, for a court reporter, that kind of thing. But it does change the scale of the reduction, So it's a reduction of $3.4 million instead of a reduction of $6.2 million. But, of course, this is your call, and I wanted to make sure that this was something that you were comfortable with.

This is different. No, this is different. This is, you voted to do a vacancy savings reduction of 1.5% on a one-time basis that you did in the, I mean, we built it into the Health Life Dental line item, but there was a reduction that you layered on top of all the other things that you've done to account for vacancy savings. And you exempted staff at 24-hour facilities, and always because of that judicial ends up getting a huge share of the reduction because it's got a ton of staff and not technically 24-hour staff. So I think when they came in last year the discussion was do you really want to take them down all that way and pretend that judgeships are vacant when in fact they like can't be for very long or would you make this adjustment? So this was, I think, that you were given four options last year. My understanding was that you took the second option, but I wanted to, you know, make sure that this year you affirmatively made a decision one way or the other. And if you want to use a different figure and take a bigger reduction from judicial, you certainly can.

What is built into Director Harper's numbers right now is the option two number that's highlighted here. So this is already built into the figures you've seen, but if you wanted to take a bigger cut, you could.

So the figures that you've got from Director Harper are based on that $3.4 million reduction for judicial that you see an option to, the courts and probation calculation. If you wanted to, you could do the $6.2 million reduction, which would be a bigger cut to them. The balancing figures you've been working with so far are based on the 3.4 million reduction.

but merely that it was, I think what was communicated was that it was challenging for them last year. and what you're saying and so they were asking us to be thoughtful about that as we applied this 1.5% vacancy savings reduction to them this year and so but you're saying option two is what is baked into our assumptions now and that is what we did last year. Yes and I did that based on the fact that your motion was more or less do what you did last year. And so except for that you were just not doing the smaller line items, right? The 20 FTE line items was not something you excluded this year, that you did exclude last year. Okay.

So, and as you go across this, so option one, there's fewer people that are excluded, and option four, there are more people that are excluded. So if we were to choose something like option three or four, we would be excluding more people from the 1.5% cut, but we would be not saving as much money. Correct. Okay.

Does anybody have a preference? Rob Taggart.

Between option three and option four?

So I think in each case it kind of adds more people. So option four includes what's in option three. In option three, you have the judges, the judge support staff, law clerks and magistrates. You have interpreters and court reporters. And then you've also got the court chief executives and chief probation officers that are in each of the judicial. It's the chiefs. It's not as opposed to all the staff, whereas the final one is like you would exclude all probation officers in option four.

And does this include all the independent agencies as well?

Okay. Anybody want to make a change? My fear is I'm going to make this more complicated, which I really don't want to do at this point. But the folks, to me, that are under so much stress right now, not that some of the other, are the probation officers. And I wish there was a way to bring the probation officers into maybe two, because they're the feet on the ground situation. And there a lot of stress there right now But I do whatever everybody else thinks is right but that is the group that I worry about in this Is it, though, the assumption is there are vacancies in, and basically the assumptions that you're making with these different options are that some of these, you cannot really have vacancies in some of these particular positions, not for very long anyway, but maybe probation officers, we might be short on them, but there are going to be positions that continue to be vacant.

Director Harper.

Thanks. I guess, I mean, with the utmost respect for all of the work that everyone does at the Judicial Department, I would be inclined to follow the precedent from last year and just stick with option two. Okay. I'm open to option three, just a little bit more if people want, but I'm fine sticking with two if that's where the committee wants to be. Anyone?

You want to jump in on the next? Madam Chair. Yes, Mr. Thompson.

Ms. Bickle. And we had spoken earlier with Senator Amabile about whether that sort of the state average was a reasonable figure to use. And I would say looking just at the judicial branch, very similar. Like if I take the courts and probation and divide it by the number of staff in courts and probation, it also would end up being about $1,000 per person.

you know like I think Senator Mowley I thought your your concerns were reasonable and that's why we were I was kind of doing the math on like at least narrowing it down to judicial and yes judicial has probation officers and people who are paid less but it's not it is I would say it's the range is quite similar on a per person basis and so I think if I'd seen it like whoa it's much higher WHAT WE'RE DOING IN STEP SYSTEM FOR COURTS OF PROBATION, THAT WOULD HAVE GIVEN ME MORE PAUSE THAN THIS. THIS DOESN'T SEEM COMPLETELY A TOTALLY UNREASONABLE ADJUSTMENT TO DO STEP LIGHT. OKAY. SO GIVEN THAT YOU ARE SHARING THAT YOU BELIEVE THIS IS CONSISTENT WITH THE MOTION THE VICE CHAIR ALREADY MADE, WE DON'T NEED TO TAKE ANY FURTHER ACTION? CORRECT. OKAY. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. As necessary.

OASIA.

Yeah, I think it does make sense what you are saying. I just also think that we are talking about they are independent agencies and they are an independent branch. So, you know, we have some state employees and departments which have, you know, a bargaining team, you know, that are part of a union. and then there are just different branches. It is very clear that it makes things more difficult, more confusing. I don't know what the solution to that is.

Director Harper. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I understand it from a bit of a phone to friend here, I think getting to your question to some extent, Representative Taggart, It sounds like courts and probation has a statute in place that requires them to set up their compensation system similar enough to the executive branch to avoid creating a disparity which is open to interpretation But the statute is there. The Indies don't have that. So I think without an umbrella organization, unfortunately, this is an annual task for this committee, actually, is to make those compensation decisions for these agencies or at least make the amount of money available that would support those compensation decisions. So, I mean, one could consider a similar statute for the independents, which that's you all's task to consider how that would go. Probably not great right now. But there is a big spread.

Yes.

I'm not trying to be critical of anybody, but it's awkward.

I think it's something that is worth talking about, but I can't imagine this committee is going to change it today.

Okay.

I've put a memo at your places, should be posted online now as well. Dated today, subject line is general fund overview under March 2026 forecast with actions through March 31st, so through last night. And as alluded to earlier, we did our best to build in an assumption because there had been a motion discussed last night, just not voted on. Otherwise, I was going to come in with a number that was going to be out of date before I could even open my mouth. So we went ahead and built that into the database, and so this is where we're at. I just want to note the first two bullets there, when you all selected the March OSPB revenue forecast, the shortfall that we were showing was about $53 million in the current year and $740 million in the budget year for 26-27. And the actions, the many actions that you all have taken in the last 10 days or however long this has been, time is definitely doing weird things for us, have really closed that gap. So the number that everyone cares about, and I should have highlighted it in the document, but is the lower right-hand corner of Table 1. You can see that year-end reserve above slash below the requirement. I have you $95 million above the requirement, 13%, and I want to stipulate up front. Current law is 15%. I have a bill draft when we have all six members for you all to consider dropping the reserve to 13%. But consistent with my last several memos, I'm focusing on the 13% requirement. If you wanted to get to 15%, then the shortfall goes you need to add $340 million or so to both years. So in the current year, I have you $95 million to the good. And the big change since the previous versions that you've seen is you approved a recommendation to accelerate as many transfers as possible into 2526 to build up that balance to go into 2627. So I think we're solid based, again, key caveat here based on the OSPB forecast. We're solid for fiscal year 2526. That number would be very different under the council staff forecast. As you recall general fund revenue was markedly lower in the current year under that forecast But under this forecast I think we nearly million above the 13 requirement For 26 you all have shrunk a million gap when you selected the forecast down to $3.6 million. You would have been, without the tweaks to the total compensation motion, I had you a few million dollars above the reserve requirement. The changes that you've just approved take you about 3.6 million below. The rest of the memo we can go through very quickly, I think. That's the key number that the committee needed. But I do think I debated whether to give all this information again in this particular memo, but I think it's important to sort of maybe memorialize the complexity of the decisions that you all have been making and that our staff is doing our best to implement for you. It's also made, just because of the complexity of the state budget at this point, it's made your decision-making extremely complicated, and the number of bill drafts that we're putting in front of you is pretty astounding to make this budget work. So if you go to page two, available general fund, that top table is not a terribly useful number. It includes the general fund reserve. So you could spend, under the OSPB forecast, you could spend $20.3 billion of general fund next year. That also includes some TABOR refund obligation. So that's the amount that would be available for all of your obligations if you spent all of the reserve.

The big actions that you all have taken as a committee in order to enlarge that number though are important and so that's line 4 in table 2 you can see you've approved $392 million in transfers in the current year and we have you at $111.5 million in 26-27 The next two tables break that out based on my, I see I've got a line number that went missing in Table 3A, but break that out by the legislation that I currently expect those transfers to appear in. Table 3A is the transfers that we expect to be in the consolidated or omnibus transfer bill. You haven't approved that draft yet. That's one of the drafts that I'm hoping you'll be able to take action on today. I think the revisions are nearly done. You can see within this, if you go to, there's a long list of transfers here. You can see the number is all the way through line 23, which should really be line 24, and fiscal year 25-26. The totals in the current year that we expect to be in the omnibus bill are on page 3, and that's about $100 million. In the out year or the budget year, it's about $86 million that we expect to be in that bill. So you have an extremely large number of transfers in here, really in both years. But overall, they're relatively small dollar amounts with the kind of exceptions being at the top. The table's structured from largest to smallest transfer. And you can see some of them actually round to zero. Those are generally places where true. $17,000 worth of interest is being moved. of interest maybe although I think that one in a different spot to empty out a cash fund that was sitting there but hadn been used in years So you got this is really some big ones from severance tax and million from the Clymer Fund and Oedit You can see OIT Revolving Fund is million over two years. That's line three. $10 million from OIT technology risk prevention response. Then you start to get smaller. Severance Tax Operational Fund is in line six. You've got about $18 million there. Previous versions of the table had an identical amount for perpetual base fund, but the committee's made some decisions to swap, to eliminate that transfer and replace most of it with a separate piece of legislation that you'll see in the next table. So table 3A is what we expect to be in the transfer bill at this point. Total is about $186 million over the two years. Table 3B on page 3 is the transfers that required separate legislation. So your breakdown here is generally if it's just a cash fund balance and you're just transferring it to the general fund, you can do that in one bill. If it's a fund that you're repealing or requires statutory change to make that work, then it needs to be in a separate bill. You can see the big money in this one is right at the top. The diversion of the Prop 123 funds from Oedit is $130 million. dollars, the 73.8 million dollars associated with the unclaimed property trust fund bill in fiscal year 25-26, that's largely offset by you have a general fund impact in 26-27 to absorb adult dental costs in 26-27 in the general fund. But you can see the bigger money is in these separate bills, the smaller number of transfers, but it's larger money. You're looking at over 300 million dollars in separate bills in Table 3B over the two years. General fund obligations, bottom of page 3. You can see you're ending up with a dip in obligations from 24-25 to 25-26, really largely driven by the fact that in 24-25 you had some TABOR refund obligations and in 25-26 you don't. That's your biggest difference there. You can see there is a large change in appropriation subject to the reserve between those two years. That's because 24-25 is incredibly confusing because of the big swap. 26-27, you rebound back up to about $18.6 billion in total obligations. The next several tables break down really the decisions that you've made in here because table four is a mix of forecast items and decisions that you've made. So if we jump to page four, you can see you've approved a large number of bills making transfers, and you've also approved a large number of bills making appropriation changes. 5A is general fund appropriation changes that we expect to travel in the long bill package. However, that package ends up being constituted in time. But 2526, the change is really minimal. You have a $0.1 million reduction in health care policy and finance related to immigrant services outreach. 26-27, you've got the big jump of $63.8 million to absorb the adult dental costs from the general fund rather than unclaimed property trust fund. That number is also confusing. it interacts with the TABOR refund table below because that general fund money is available because you're not transferring it, that amount in from the unclaimed property trust fund. So they end up washing each other out, except that you do, By going this route, you do have a reserve requirement on the adult dental money. So you have a $63.8 million increase for that particular bill, but then you've got 13 bills below it that more than offset it, so you end up with a net reduction in general fund appropriations of $1.9 million. But the biggest factor there being the statewide repeal of the ADLE payments in capital construction. I'll note that you've had obviously extensive discussion in the last couple of days, particularly on Medicaid. And we have done, thanks to the, frankly, just insane levels of work from the health care policy and finance team here and at the department, we have done our best to build in all of those decisions through provider rate changes, the exemptions that you approved yesterday. all those changes should be baked into the long bill number. You can see in this particular table, 5A, line four is the cover all Coloradans benefits limits. I'm sure there's going to be some level of movement in these numbers over time. We have them locked down where they are now, but by the time the long bill, unless it sails through both chambers unchanged by the time it's conferencing.

My staff's going to nail it, and they'll be perfect. But your colleagues may have thoughts. So it could happen. So I wouldn't be surprised, particularly in the health care policy and finance numbers, because the timing has been so compressed with some of those decisions. I wouldn't be surprised if those move a bit. But you can see the level of work that you all have put in, that the Office of Legislative Legal Services has put in with the number of bills that we're dealing with here and that your staff is undertaking to try and make this work. 5A, that's the long bill package. Table 5B is the placeholders that you all have approved for other legislation. And these are all increases. You can see line one is the PITP, permanently incompetent to proceed legislation. legislation 9.6 million dollars is the only placeholder that you have for the current year out your impact there and i hope that i've got this split right senator ramabli the 23.2 million for the pitp and then there's the additional 20 million dollars that came from the ospb request that i think is not pitp i think the 20 is itp so once you get past those obviously the the amounts are lower. You have the corrections capacity supplemental that you set the placeholder for in case of need to try and flag that the best available evidence indicates that there's likely to be a supplemental coming for that. Then you get down to DHS and HICPF. You've got 5 million for the applied behavioral analysis licensing, 3.1 million for county administration shared services and then a half million dollars for the placeholder for the working group related to Medicaid. All in all, that results in $57.7 million of placeholders outside of the long bill package in 2627. Table six on page five shows you in a very high level summary. I think you will definitely this is not enough detail for anyone to make decisions on but trying to show you where you came out for capital Line one in this table is the transfers to transportation Based on the actions that you all took last year, transfers to CDOT dropped from $110 million in 2425 to $42.7 million in the current year. Current law would have that rebounding back up to $61 million in total. in 26-27, you've approved a bill to eliminate the transfer to the multimodal fund. So that's $10 million savings there, 10 and a half. The next line, line three, is capital construction. So this is physical capital, not IT. And you can see you're ending up with a pretty similar number to what you had in 25-26, but with the motions that you approved yesterday related to controlled maintenance, the amount that is there is much more heavily weighted towards controlled maintenance than it was in the current year. The current year was much more project heavy. You've allocated more to controlled maintenance, so it looks like a similar number, but it is a very different distribution. Transfers to IT capital, you've got a big drop from $24 million in the current year to $3.4 million next year in the transfer there. All in all, you end up with a fairly similar number between the two years related to capital. The last table is the one that in some ways as your staff director makes me the most nervous impacts to the TABOR refund and that's just because of the level of uncertainty here. Under the OSPB forecast line one shows March OSPB's estimate of the refund for 26-27. Again important to note that's actually paid out in the subsequent year so this is the Tabor surplus expected in 26-27. Our starting point there is $711 million under this forecast. And last night you approved, or yesterday, I think it was before night, a Tabor over-refund correction, a placeholder there for a non-package bill, $153 million reduction in the Tabor refund. You've got a $63.8 million reduction related to the unclaimed property trust fund legislation. So this is that interaction with the general fund appropriation before. You've got a transfer to the general fund in 25-26, and then you're stopping the transfer for adult dental in 26-27. So that reduces the refund by about $64 million. You have a placeholder for $30 million in reduction related to the revenue reclass. bill. That's Senate Bill 2642. That's the only one on the list that's currently introduced. Next, you've got the inflation calculation bill. That's one that the committee has approved for introduction. That's, as you know, changing the calculation for calendar year 2025. Drops the refund obligation by about $20 million with some corollary costs, particularly in school finance. Next one, C.D.U. fee in labor and employment, $11.6 million reduction, $7.1 million reduction to take care of the double count in Medicaid money received by Department of Human Services, $7 million count to eliminate a double count in vocational rehabilitation in labor and employment, and then the last one there, $1.4 million related to the adult dental cap. All in all, that's a $293 million reduction to the projected TABOR refund. Still leaves the TABOR refund under this forecast at million which would be enough to cover the homestead exemption in 2728 So if this forecast holds up and we end up at this level of Tabor surplus then you've made the adjustments shown in Table 7 and you would still have enough to cover homestead in 2728. The risk here and the reason that I noted up front that this one makes me so nervous is that the level of uncertainty in this surplus is obviously high. and the $300 million of balancing benefit that you're getting evaporate if the surplus comes in lower. So that's where you are to the best of my and our staff's ability to estimate it now. And you have closed $736 million of a $740 million gap. It's actually a little bit difficult to believe that we have reached this point.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks to the amazing work of both your staff and legal services. It looks like right now we have the statutory reserve target, which is not an easy call for you all potentially, but it's an easy bill. It's less than three pages long. That one's ready for you. We have the new draft of the extrapolation audits bill in healthcare. policy and financing and the capital transfers bill, although that one is probably, you could either approve it and then give permission if you end up balancing there, approve it and then give permission for the adjustments or you would want to wait until you've made that approval. And it looks like we just received drafts for, or we have drafts that are now ready for the joint transfer bill, so the big omnibus bill, and severance tax.

I DO. AMANDA BICCLE, JBC STAFF. MR. BAUSE HAS DRAFTED FOR YOU THE BILL FOR THE 70 MILLION DIVERSION OF REVENUE FROM THE STATE LAND BOARD to the state public school fund instead of having it go to the permanent fund. It's spread over two years with 25 million in 25-26 and 45 million in 26-27. We are also proposing that since I know you wanted to take the related general fund reduction in 26-27, we think we can do that actually in the long bill BECAUSE THERE'S ENOUGH OF A RESERVE IN THE STATE PUBLIC SCHOOL FUND. SO I JUST WANTED TO BE CLEAR WITH YOU THAT THIS BILL WILL NOT HAVE AN APPROPRIATION Clause, BUT THE ADJUSTMENT, THE RELATED GENERAL FUND SAVINGS WILL BE IN THE LONG BILL, IN THE SCHOOL FINANCE LINE ITEM. THE ONE THING THAT I DON'T THINK WE GOT INTO THIS BILL THAT HAD BEEN DISCUSSED WAS SOME SORT OF ALLEGED X. SO THAT WOULD BE THE ONLY, I KNOW MR. VICE CHAIR WANTED TO EMPHASIZE THAT THIS WAS ONE TIME ONLY, And we can add a couple of non-statutory ledge deck somethings to this. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Move to true it up.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to know if you wanted me to elaborate on that. but I think everyone understands.

Madam Chair, apologies, not yet. But I do have a bill in front of you handed out yesterday. It's LLS 260989. Bill topic is temporarily reduced the general fund reserve. Simple, really page and a half bill that reduces the statutory reserve requirement from 15% to 13% for two years. The 13% requirement would apply in the current year, fiscal year 25-26, and in the budget year 26-27, and would then return, pursuant to the committee's request that it be clear that it was temporary, it would return to 15% in 27-28. I'll admit that I'm, that would mean that the budget request that we would receive, we expect to receive this November would need to reflect the 15% reserve or start the request again to cut it back. So I think that's certainly an ambitious timeline, but the bill is simple and straightforward. Okay. Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. Move to introduce 0-9-8-9,

Madam Chair, while Mr. Kurtz hands out his bill, one bit of cleanup that Mr. Lively reminded us of. You have a bill that you've already approved FOR INTRODUCTION, YOU'VE APPROVED THE DRAFT RELATED TO THE PROP 123 TRANSFER WRITTEN AS 130 MILLION, BUT YOU ASKED TO HOLD IT AND NOT ACTUALLY GIVE THE FINAL APPROVAL FOR INTRODUCTION UNTIL YOU WERE CERTAIN THAT THAT NUMBER WAS GOING TO STICK AT 130 MILLION. THAT IS WHAT I'VE ASSUMED IN MY BALANCING. SO IF YOU'RE GOOD WITH THAT NUMBER, IF YOU CAN TAKE A MOTION TO GO AHEAD AND GO AHEAD AND FINALIZE IT. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. I WOULDN'T SAY I'M GOOD WITH THAT NUMBER,

That passes on a vote of 6-0. Mr. Kurtz. Thank you, Madam Chair. I've just handed out the revised draft of the bill for statistical sampling and extrapolation FOR HEALTH CARE POLICY AND FINANCING. THERE WERE TWO MAIN CHANGES THAT THE COMMITTEE WANTED THAT THIS NEW DRAFT REFLECTS. ONE OF THE CHANGES WAS RATHER THAN ALLOWING THE DEPARTMENT TO DO EXTRAPOLATION ANY TIME THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT USES EXTRAPOLATION TO COLLECT MONEY FROM COLORADO, YOU WANTED TO LIMIT IT TO JUST NONEMERGENCY MEDICAL TRANSPORTATION AND THE PBT OR PEDIATRIC BEHAVIORAL THERAPY SERVICES. SO THIS BILL APPLIES THAT LIMITATION. AND THEN YOU WANTED TO ADD SOME OF THE SAFEGUARDS FROM THE RAC AUDIT BILL TO THIS BILL. AFTER REVIEWING THOSE SAFEGUARDS, MS. ROSS DETERMINED THAT MOST OF THOSE SAFEGUARDS ARE RELATED SPECIFICALLY TO A CONTINGENCY CONTRACT AND THIS BILL IS PROHIBITING THE DEPARTMENT FROM ENTERING INTO A CONTINGENCY CONTRACT FOR THIS AUDIT AND SO MOST OF THOSE SAFEGUARDS is prohibiting the department from entering into a contingency contract for this audit And so most of those safeguards don apply or maybe a better way to say it is that they're taken care of by the fact that this bill prohibits the department from using a contingency-based contract. So that's what this bill does, is that prohibition. There is one drafter question at the bottom of page 3. There's a section. This is existing law that says that the department can use extrapolation if data is not available to do claim by claim analysis. In one of the department's initial suggestions on how to draft this bill, they had suggested deleting that section. It's not really relevant because it's existing law and it's not part of what was at issue with this bill. If you would like to delete it, though, I think it also doesn't do any harm to delete it. There's never going to be a circumstance, I don't think, where they have enough data to do an extrapolation audit, but they don't have enough data to do a claim-by-claim audit because you need the claim-by-claim audit to do an extrapolation audit. So my advice is just leave it the way it is in existing law, but if you wanted to do what the department was asking and strike that, we could change the bill draft to strike it.

Mr. Kurtz. They had suggested just striking this piece of existing statute. From the statutes?

Just didn't understand. So we're not going to do that. Sounds like nobody wants to do that. Okay. Yes, Senator Kirkmeyer. So, thank you, Madam Chair. So, I did have some conversations with CHA and some other folks about some other guardrails to be put into the bill. I sent those, most of those, I sent those to Michelle B. Who is on the House for a controversial bill. I don't know what goes on over there. I don't think I have a controversy over here. No. Anyways. It was not Barber's. No. It was not. Anyways. Thanks to you. You're not pretty smooth over in the Senate, just so you know. ANYWAY, I SENT THOSE THOUGHTS FROM THE HOSPITAL ASSOCIATIONS FOLKS, AND SHE DID RESPOND TO THEM, but there are a couple areas some of them she felt were covered in the bill but she has a couple areas where she thinks maybe some additional language should be looked at One of the things one of the areas specifically has to deal with why not Sorry There Conrad And I can send this to you, Conrad, if you want. But one of the questions, or one of the things they asked for was extrapolation not permitted unless there is credible allegation of fraud. I would probably agree with her that OIG, since we've limited it to non-emergent transportation in ABA services from July 1 of 2026, the fraud has already been identified. So I'm not sure that that needed to be in there. But I would like to have the opportunity to speak a little bit more with Shelby about it or Conrad. But it doesn't appear that needs to be in there. One of the other things they asked for was basically limit the look-back period. And she suggested that we could add a look-back period to claims that were in the time period for when the fraud was identified from OIG. Because one of the issues we had in the RAC audit was they went back like seven years kind of thing and it just kind of got a little carried away, like a lot carried away. So I would like to maybe have a look back period added into this bill. And then, I don't know, there's one more maybe, there's one there that I think I'm going to need to talk to Conrad about. There's one that Shelby doesn't, a couple that Shelby doesn't think need to be added in. One of the things they asked for is already in the bill under subparagraph 4B. And then the last one is, and so I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks, but the group asked for that the extrapolation overpayment demand that HICPF must furnish to the provider a full set of documentation related to the extrapolation process, including all the materials necessary for the provider to replicate and reproduce HICPAF's extrapolation process. So it would include like qualifications of the person conducting the audit and the extrapolation and such person's work and data sheets associated with the audit. This was an issue that came up in the RAC audit and that we ended up putting in the bill, so the RAC bill, so would like to have that put in this bill as well. And again, I can send that language. And according to Shelby, she thought this was something that we could add to the bill if we would like. I think I would agree with you that the first one isn't necessary because it's not extrapolation, it's not permitted unless there is a credible obligation. We already know that. And we are naming the two places where they can use extrapolation. I am curious about a look back period. Is there something standard in terms of when extrapolation is used by the federal government or the other states that use it? I think you could do it to align with the findings of the OAG audit. I suspect that would be acceptable to the department because that's what they're focused on is the stuff that the OIG found, they want to use extrapolation to look at that themselves.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Senator Kirkmire? I don't know the exact answer to that, but what I will say is, and why I think this is so important, is what happened during the RAC audit process was that when the hospitals would ask for the information and the backup and the documentation and try and replicate to see if, you know, what really happened there and to see what was actually being audited, they weren't getting that information. And then that led to lawsuits, which is expensive for not only hospital, but also the state. And the state lost a lot of those lawsuits. And so I'm thinking that if the data is given to them in advance, and, you know, if we need to narrow this or maybe look at it a little bit differently, I'm open to hearing that. But I think having all the information for both parties is extremely important, especially the data that is being audited or the, you know, what's being audited so that both parties have it, not just the state side. And I think that would maybe help eliminate or at least maybe reduce some lawsuits between the providers and the state, which would be a good thing, I would think. I'm assuming the department will have feedback on that particular language as well. So I don't know who wants to work with who to refine that. Mr. Immel? And I just sent that to you, Mr. Immel. I texted it to you. Thank you, Conrad Immel, Office of Legislative Services. Thank you, Senator Kirkmeyer. I'll look at that in a moment. We'd be happy to work with the department on language like that. I don't off the top of my head know exactly what CMS provides to providers when they do extrapolation. And the statute is silent regarding the RAC audits and what information we provide when they use extrapolation through those. Okay.

Senator Kirkmeyer. Senator Kirkmeyer. Thank you, Madam Chair. So in what I texted to you all, the bold part is Shelby's response that she just sent this morning, and she wasn't sure that adding this would accomplish the intent of the bill, so I wasn't suggesting that we add that language. Okay, thank you. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. On page 5, letter E, I might suggest we break this into an E and an F.

Mr. Kurtz. Yeah, Mr. Kurtz. For the annual report, what information are you looking for in that report?

But more importantly, if there are ones that are there's a delta, a little bit more information on those would be helpful. Does that make sense?

So the way the bill is written now, there's going to be an audit using extrapolation of PBT services. THERE MAY ALSO BE, AND THAT MIGHT BE DONE IN MULTIPLE STAGES. THEY MIGHT DO THAT, THESE PROVIDERS IN THIS STAGE AND THE NEXT SET OF PROVIDERS IN THE NEXT STAGE. AND THEN THERE MAY ALSO, IF THERE'S MONEY LEFT OVER FROM WHAT THE COMMITTEE HAS ALREADY PROVIDED or if the department submits a request in a future year. There may also be an audit of NEMT services, but then those audits will be done and there won't continue to be any audits using extrapolation because this bill no longer allows that in the future. So we could do two different reports. ONE IS JUST THE STATE AUDITOR REPORT TO THE STATE AUDIT COMMITTEE AND THEN A SUMMARY MAYBE FROM THE DEPARTMENT TO THE BUDGET COMMITTEE. BUT I DON'T KNOW THAT YOU NEED THAT REPORT TO GO ON FOREVER.

NO, BUT WHAT I WAS THINK, MADAM CHAIR, WHAT I WAS JUST TRYING TO AVOID IS PUTTING YOU THROUGH A SITUATION FOR EVERY AUDIT that you have to generate a report for us. And when it's in the same paragraph, you could read into it that you need a report each and every time. And I think that's a little over the top. I don't think we could keep up with it.

and verify that the department had used appropriate and reasonable methods.

Every time there's an audit pursuant to 3A4. Oh, just the extrapolation. But that's still per provider. I don't know. I appreciate the intent. I just want to make sure we're not creating some sort of a nightmare costly situation for the auditor.

Well, I was kind of moving on a little bit. I have a couple other questions. I just want to make sure that it's very clear that when we're talking about these extrapolation audits, they are very specific to the situation at hand with NEMT and ABA. And it's not like we're saying this is about every audit that they ever do now from now until in the future kind of time frame, right? It is very, we very narrowly put this in place in this bill, correct?

Because I'm getting a lot of text messages from folks who are concerned that we're opening up this whole process and HICPUF somehow is going to go rogue again. So I just want to make sure that that's clear. That's what the intent was, is that we are very narrow. And then the other question I have is there is, and this is for you, Mr. Mill, is nothing in this bill eliminates a provider's right to appeal the results of an audit. Is that correct?

All right. In the plain language of the, yeah. It's a trust issue, apparently, so just needed to ask.

I'm okay working with Mr. Emel or Shelby or whomever, Ms. Ross, and Mr. Kurtz. Well, hearing back from them, but whatever you all want to do.

Sure. We can all, yeah. However you want to proceed. I'm good either way.

Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Let's work on it and we'll approve it after we see a redraft. Thank you.

Okay. Next. Bless you. Bless you. Thank you. Which one are we on? Transfers. No, we're on severance tax first. Which one are we doing? Which one do you? No, severance tax. Severance tax, apparently. Yes. Why? Where's the train? Where's the whole time? Transfers. I don't think there's any cut for any transfers. Can we do transfers? It's easier. Okay. All right. What are we doing? Let's do transfers first. Okay.

Any questions for Ms. Shin?

Can I just ask one quick question?

Thank you Madam Chair. Why is there an asterisk behind the OIT revolving fund?

Thank you. Thank you.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0. This bill will start in the House in Rome of Longville. House sponsors will be Sirota and Brown. And in the Senate, Amable and Kirkmeyer. And co-sponsors will be Bridges and Taggart.

Senator Kerfinger.

Yeah, no, I'm not comfortable with that. There was a tier one and a tier two basically within this funding, right? There were programs that were above the line and then there were programs that if there were enough money, and that's why they said up to a certain amount. So I'm not sure that, depending on where we're at with our, I mean, I guess we could change it again next year if we wanted to. But, right, I'm sitting here thinking through it. Okay, fine.

Apparently Senator Bridges is reading my mind and we just worked that out. So anyways.

I'm sorry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So the proposed refinances are in the second page of the memo, if you flip the page over. It's that last section. So I think there was a little bit of ambiguity in the exact amounts of the refinance, but based on your motions and working with the department, this is sort of what we've come to. So the motion that you said was on that bulleted list. So $5 million is being taken away from ECMC. 1.2 is being removed from CWCB construction. What I meant by a small amount is then I went through and looked at there's some indirect cost assessments and like common policy, like common policy costs that were not in that specific, there's a specific line item that's for severance tax, severance tax money within the CWCB and that's 1.2. But there's about, I'd say like 100,000 right now that is outside of those lines. I think it's totally fair if your intent was to take everything in CW and CB and refinance it. We can make that happen.

Senator Kirkmeyer.

Okay.

And we can do that. So that would be a small amount additional.

For state park operations, it's approximately $2.4 million. I think you said $2.5 on the mic. So that's what I assumed in the transfer amount. Yes. But basically with all of these numbers, because there's staff, due to all your common policy amounts changing as those common policy amounts come down, so does the amount that's needed from SEP tax. So it's been moving up and down, but we're about 14.2.

And then the other thing, though, I do want to make sure that the soil conservation grants, that there is still $300,000 coming out of the operational account to soil conservation. That's correct.

That is the current plan.

Okay.

Yep.

Are there any objections That passes on a vote of 6 This bill will start in the House and run with the long bill House sponsors will be Brown and Taggart and in the Senate Kirkmeyer and Bridges And Sirota and Amabile will co-sponsor. Thank you, Ms. Shen. Are we left with capital? Okay. Let's just take a very brief recess so everyone can gather their papers and things. We'll stand in just a five-minute recess. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. To order Ms Ewell capital construction We have a bit of a gap to make up still about million I think And Ms. Yule shared, everybody should have this list from controlled maintenance level one with some recommendations from the state architect about where to draw the line. Ms. Ewell, anything particular to add? Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay, Vice Chair Bridges. Thank you, Madam Chair. moved to draw the line under DHS fire alarm device replacement SIM HIP and ask for a the redetermination as outlined by Ms. Ewell for this Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind line there at the top of the list.

And I will update the transfer bill draft and can bring that back in like whenever, like 10 minutes, whenever you're ready.

Vice Chair Bridges? Do we need to see it again?

We should post it maybe when we, and then we can post it and everyone can see it when it's the final version.

Vice Chair Bridges? All right.

Thank you, Madam Chair. There has been much conversation about the higher ed tuition rates since the vote. And I think in conversation with some of the schools and in conversation with this committee, I was not comfortable with the 4% that we set. I had preferred the 3 but I been convinced that 3 is a reasonable place to put it SO THAT WE ARE NOT OVERBURDENING COLORADO STUDENTS NOR our institutions of higher education I think that the right number and I move to place to replace the 4 in tuition number that we voted on the other night with 3 which holds the out-of-state at 5%, and community colleges also at 5%.

Madam Chair, in terms of housekeeping, I think particularly given the timeline that all of us involved in this process are operating on, I expect technicals to continue to be an issue, so I would request some flexibility to authorize technical adjustments. We can continue to track them the way that we have, and then you'll get a list. So that would be the first one. The second one and this one is a little bit of an awkward position, but I think as you've seen the numbers now, the placeholder for the legislative budget is based on the introduced bill. we don't know what action the bill sponsors on that bill may take to align with the compensation decisions that you've made. And speaking for myself, I'm still working through exactly what, frankly, very small changes it would impact in our particular budget. But I expect that number may move a little bit and be a little bit more expensive. I think that is something that could easily be dealt with later in the process. But I did want to flag it as a point of uncertainty because that will be a discussion for those bill sponsors.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm sorry, which bill is that?

Senator Kirkmeyer. Yes, I agree 100%.

Okay. That was it. Do you have a question?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I don't know how much room you have, Director Harper, in terms of being able to make technical changes. Is it helpful to give permission to make those adjustments via controlled maintenance? Madam Chair, I think realistically, you could do it via controlled maintenance, but I think for the immediate term, it's basically just going to, when you get back to conference and we have real numbers on the bills as they've passed, it would be the reserve going up and down by some minimal amount. And then you could decide at that point where you wanted to balance it. If we end up needing to add some amount of money, then I think that would be the clearest point to take it. Because right now I don't have a good INDECTS OF WHAT MAY BE COMING.

EMMA, WHEN DO WE NEED TO BE READY FOR APPROPRIATIONS?

.

Okay. And there'll be the summaries for the purpose of. Okay. Okay.

I lost you there. Okay Thank you All right the Joint Budget Committee will come back to order Ms. Yule.

Vice Chair Riches.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0. This bill will start in the House and move the long bill. Are there House sponsors? It should be Sirota or Teggert. All right. Teggert and Sirota. And in the Senate? Thank you. Sure. Bridges and Amable and co-sponsors Brown and Kirkmeyer. Alright. One more motion. Senator Kirkmeyer.

I loved your look though. Before the motion is made, I'm assuming that motion is the very last motion to close out the budget.

Thank you. Thank you. Senator Amabile. Well, I would just like to echo that because I do feel like we have done, I actually would like to thank the whole committee and especially Madam Chair, but I think we have done a really good job of allowing people to, you know, have their priorities and allowing people to be heard and still really balancing the interests of the citizens of Colorado. And it hasn't been easy, but we have had some laughs along the way and I appreciate that too. And so thank you everybody. And thank you to the staff who you know are just working tirelessly day and night and that doesn go unnoticed So thank you to all of you Brett Brown I will just add my thanks.

I would extend my gratitude to the entire committee. This has been an extraordinarily difficult process, and everyone came to work every day. though there are many things happening in people's lives, personal and professional, people showed up here day after day and everyone worked really hard and honestly to do a really, really difficult task. And I'm grateful for the opportunity to have done this with you all and I am very grateful for Director Harper and the entire JBC staff who, yes, have worked tirelessly day in and day out. And, you know, they have had to work to bring us all of these really painful suggestions that we have painfully considered. And we are, the state of Colorado is fortunate to have such an exemplary group of people doing this work. And I feel the same way about Director Perondino and his staff and the work that they have done, their collaboration and all of our state employees who have also worked really hard to make a lot of painful proposals about how we deliver a balanced budget across the street. And we still have a lot of work to do, a lot more to do in order to get this across the finish line. but I'm very grateful for everyone's commitment to this really difficult task that we've been delivered. But we did it almost on time until the very end, and really actually pretty collegially as well. And that's not an easy thing to do with the difficult decisions that we had to make and maybe a difference of opinion about how we make them.

Ouch We'll probably have to have a discussion about that.

Oh, go ahead. Rep Taggart.

And thank you to the vice chair. This is four years we've done this together. And it has been quite an experience. But I, well, it has. We've sat next to each other for four years here. And it's, you know, it's been really great. And I didn't know you very well before we started this project together. And we actually, we have. I was very concerned that I was sat next to you the first day we showed up. We've had a lot of laughs and we have a lot in common in terms of our values and what we're trying to accomplish here. It's been a delight. Thank you. I think there have been more for to you and me votes than I think any other votes that we were divided on. So it has been a learning experience for me. It's been incredible working with you on our slow march from the far side of this dais. And I do think it will be the last time that I get to do all of this with all of you, and it's been a privilege.

Is $5 million okay? Up and down. The range of $5 million.

Director Harper?

So we all just celebrate the motion. Let's, I think, let's just cover our bases, close it. Anything? Move to introduce. I suppose it moved to introduce and then we will need to make sure that we have sponsors to have the conversation about whether folks want to co-sponsor. Yes. Vice Chair Bridges.

It has been so nice working with you these four years. It has been actually. It's been really wonderful. No, on this committee for four years.

We were on education together.

You were.

I think people are getting hungry. All right.

Are there any objections? That passes on a vote of 6-0. We'll start in the House. Oh, yeah. Will it run with the long bill? It will start in the house. It is the long bill. And the sponsors will be Sirota and Bridges. Co-sponsors, Taggart, Brown, Amabile, Kirchmeyer. All right. Thank you to everyone. I think we have two more bills that we'll need to approve before we're fully done here, but I don't know if that'll be today or tomorrow. So, Director Harper, you'll just keep us posted.

All right. The Joint Budget Committee will stand and recess. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you.