April 14, 2026 · Majority Caucus · 12,877 words · 10 speakers · 67 segments
Thank you. We have our Joint Budget Committee members in front of us who are going to start our discussion. Who would like to begin? Senator Bridges.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. First and most importantly, I say this every time, but it really can't be said enough, we have some of the best staff that works anywhere in the country here supporting this JVC effort. Yes, that does deserve. And this year in particular, we handed them a rather unfair task of preparing the long bill in the days before Easter weekend. And they made a heroic effort, and we appreciate that work so much. We're glad that they're all still here. And we just, please say, you know, do you say, you know, hug a JBC member. I think, don't hug them, but really these are the folks that deserve the praise and thanks. It is incredible what they have done in service of this budget. So thank you very much to the staff. Let's start with the long bill. You all have your, what color is this? Maroon? This is not a maroon, come on. Your maroonish, whatever, purplish, your purplish books. The first page that I think it's important to turn to is actually in Section 2, Long Bill Narrative, page 14. We'll show you essentially the difference down here, and we go over this every time we have this conversation, so hopefully this is familiar for you all. The difference here between general fund and total funds. We have a general fund budget of $17.3 billion. We have a total fund budget, 49.5. So when we talk about the state budget, you'll hear folks out of the building talking about, oh, they have a $50 billion budget. We really only have control over that general fund portion, over that $17 billion portion. And the rest of that is made up for, with reappropriated funds, with federal funds. There's all sorts of other things that go into the state's total budget that are not general fund. Today we will be talking primarily about general fund, although we may mention when there are federal funds that come into some of these, like with the Department of Agriculture, because the Department of Ag has their Agricultural Management Fund, which is part of how they achieved, on page 16, a 9.6% reduction year over year. Big round of applause here for the Department of Ag. The tragedy here, though, with that reduction is that they only account for about $20 million of that $17 billion general fund. So even if we eliminated them entirely, we would not be able to make up for that $1.2 billion shortfall that we are managing this budget to. But we do appreciate that 10 decrease largely attributable again to that offsetting general fund with agricultural management fund dollars Next up is corrections on page 19 Lots that we as a caucus have discussed with corrections I'm sure much more that will be discussed on the floor. Two big drivers of cost here, medical caseload and then, of course, prison caseload. The prison caseload number we did ultimately vote to increase. I think where we really pushed back on the administration on this is initially we voted no. They came back and said, but really please, we've been working very closely with folks in the Senate, Senator Gonzalez and Senator Weissman, on reducing the caseload overall, reducing the number of folks that are in prison in ways that don't pose any threat to public safety here in the state. And this year, I think the leverage that we were able to provide to our colleagues in order to have those conversations has resulted in more movement in the executive branch than we have seen in my previous eight years of work with this particular executive branch group of folks. And so real kudos to the two of them for the work they did. It gave us comfort saying yes to the caseload increase this year, knowing that there are plans in place to make that not an ongoing increase. It is also why we decided to not say yes to a new jail, but instead say yes to putting money towards a private prison to provide any buffer in caseload that we need. Now, I, generally speaking, am not a fan of having folks in the state penal system in private prisons. But what we do here is this, first of all, saves us money in the current fiscal year. Second of all, when you try and close a prison, it's really hard. So if we open a new prison, and then five years from now, it turns out we don't have, thanks to work from folks in this room and others, we don't have the same caseload challenges that we have right now. it is enormously difficult to close a prison once we have opened it. And so rather than be in that situation, put future legislators in that situation, we did decide to go the private route, and that gives us the chance in five years then to end that contract without having to close a state facility. I'd say that's the biggest piece of this, but obviously happy to answer any questions. One note I'll have, just because this one gets me. The offset for polygraph testing, we did reduce general fund spending on the polygraph. We can't eliminate it because it is required by state law. So if anyone has any opinions about changing state law on polygraphs, open to that conversation. Do you want to weigh in on polygraphs?
All right, early childhood.
I can't say anything because I might be subjected to a polygraph. In the Department of Early Childhood, you will see sort of the main thing we did in the Department of Early Childhood is we shifted $10 million of general fund spending, and this is in an orbital that we'll run along with the long bill. We shifted $10 million of spending from general fund to money generated by Prop EE. That $10 million is allocated towards cessation programs, anti-smoking campaigns. But it did come from Prop EE. And our understanding of what folks mostly had in mind with Prop EE was that it was going to go for early childhood So we felt comfortable although certainly not great That is I wouldn say we even feel comfortable with many of the decisions in the book in front of you We feel really not great about a lot of the decisions that we made in here. But we did our best. And this is one of those where we took that $10 million generated by Prop EE and moved it to child universal pre-K instead of that cessation program work. Early interventions is another piece in here that I'll note. We have had some challenge in previous years predicting what the caseload will be for early interventions. I think they've got a better handle on it now, and we do have an ongoing reduction of $2 million general fund from HICPUF and moving that into early interventions. It was given to HICPUF for purposes that are served by early interventions, but then somehow never used for those purposes, so just taking that money and moving it on the front end. in previous years it sort of disappeared into that morass that is more than a third of our budget now over in HickPuff. Education is still me. And in education I think one of the things that I would point to most in here is that we do have an increase in total program of $206.7 million for state share and $109.2 million from state ed, $97.6 from the state public school fund. We also moved some funds around with the Healthy School Meals for All program. We had given a loan to Healthy School Meals, and this will be in one of the orbitals. In order to start that program up from the state ed fund, we are paying those dollars back to the state ed fund. The intention there was to get the program started. We knew the voters wanted it, get it started early, knowing that the funds would be there later on to pay back to the state ed fund. That was an expression of fulfilling voter intent from the legislature, getting that program started as soon as possible without waiting for those dollars to come in, knowing they would be there, and then moving them back.
I'll just add.
Yeah.
Plus, we had last year a deficit in healthy school meals for all. There wasn't enough money to cover the entire program, and so we put the money into that with the expectation, and it was in the bill that we ran then, that that money would be paid back to the state ed fund. Thank you. Important update. The color on the front officially, according to LCS designers, is maroon. So this is a maroon packet. Hard-hitting news.
My wife says I'm not good with colors. We're really grateful for that information. Thank you. For more on education and particularly what it is that the total program piece here is, I would really point you to the sponsor who we have here of the education funding bill. But there is one more thing that I would point to that I think is a good thing that we have done, and that is on page 35, the middle of the page, early literacy adjustments. We were taking money and we were putting it into like a different cash fund that would then pay a different cash fund. And it was sort of unclear what it is that we were doing with these funds. And so we've just simplified the way that we move money from various different funds so that there is transparency on that. Lots more here. Happy to answer questions. Or we can continue on, and I'll turn it over to my colleague for the governor's office.
Okay, thanks. I mean let me just ask is this helpful for us to go through this like this Because I happy to do it I just want to do whatever you guys think is the best use of our time
I think, yes, Senator Mobley, unless anybody disagrees, we could quickly go through each department. Then I think folks might want to talk about certain amendments to the long bill or to these departments, and then we can get a discussion about the orbitals.
Okay, great.
So the governor's office has OIT in it. We did some changes around with the reappropriated funds from the IT revolving fund. And what that is is other departments pay OIT to do stuff for them, and that makes that a reappropriated fund. It's not new money. But we did get some general fund savings out of that. and we did the across the board common policies employee compensation and that was a that's all first every department goes up according to the WINS agreement and then they came down because we dialed back on what the WINS employees got and actually that impacts every department because every other department that doesn't have WINS employees or that has WINS and other employees makes those same adjustments to everybody's pay. And then we did give spending authority for the Youth Mental Health Corps. That program is AmeriCorps. It got cut by the federal government, and we managed to find $750,000 to put back into keeping that program going. It still needs, I'm looking at Senator Wallace because I know she's working on a bill about getting some additional funding for that program. There was a 2.5% general fund reduction in the governor's office, Lieutenant Governor's Office and OSPB. Total savings of $263,000. And that's it for the Governor's Fund.
I don't know.
TPA.
Yeah, go ahead. All right.
Health care policy and finance. This, of course, is where we spent a lot of time and energy talking about Medicaid and making cuts to long-term services and supports, as well as other programs that are run by Medicaid, including Cover All Coloradans, that is a Medicaid-like program. And I know people have a lot of concerns and issues around that. And I will just say that somebody from the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition came and testified today, and what she wanted to say to us was, Thank you. I know that the cuts were hard, and we know, we're aware that cuts had to be made, and they appreciated that. We listened to their input on what cuts to make, and we didn't take every cut that was offered by the governor or part of the governor's budget, and we didn't even take all of the cuts that the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition said wouldn't be too bad, but we took almost all of it. And so fully know that you all are getting outreach from constituents who have experienced cuts And that's probably different. I think last year, I don't think people were saying to you, my life is going to be different because of these cuts. I think last year we found some ways around actually impacting people in this very direct way. And this year there was, well, there wasn't, we didn't see a way around it. And I would love for my colleague to give you the, you know, the little, you know, the thing about Medicaid.
Sure. So Medicaid growth, the Tabor limit is inflation plus population. The costs for the state government, a third of our budget is Medicaid. Health care costs go up much faster than inflation. A third of our budget is K-12. Most of that, thank you for taking the photo of this, most of that is wage growth. Ninety percent of K-12 is wages. Wage growth, much faster than inflation. DOC, almost all wages. you look at the cost of construction materials for roads and bridges, that goes up faster than inflation. And so the costs for the state government go up much faster than that revenue limit. But even if we weren't limited by Tabor, the amount that health care costs go up every year, and this isn't just for the state, this is true for health care in America broadly, costs go up faster even than revenue we'd be able to keep pace with. So we have to bend that curve. We have to bring those costs in line with what it is that we are able to spend year to year, or it will eat up our whole budget. There was a graph at the beginning of the year that Mark Ferrandino presented to us that showed that if we stayed on pace with what we'd done over the last few years, then in 10 years the state government would be K-12, higher ed, and Medicaid, and that's it. No Department of Corrections, no Human Services, nothing else, that it would eat our entire budget. And so the cuts that we made this year were difficult and painful, and with the intention of at least bending that curve, we have not made enough cuts to bring that curve in line with revenue. We have not. We will need to do more on Medicaid. We have a plan over the summer for the JBC and the heads of the health committees to meet to really look at Medicaid and how it is that we can reduce costs. But last year we cut programs like half a million dollars a year that help marijuana companies make their grows more efficient. Right? Cool, but probably not what we should be using taxpayer dollars for. This year the cuts we felt. We did all the easy cuts last year. This year it is painful for folks across the state. And as Hillary with the Cross Disability Coalition put it, we are not in a benefit expansion mode. We are in a harm reduction mode. How can we make these cuts while causing the least amount of harm to the people of Colorado? And she says that we found that right balance. I look forward to hearing from all of you and seeing the amendments that come in to how we adjust that balance, but know that this was the hardest part of the budget this year, and we did our best. I'll just add, Medicaid spending is up, even with all the cuts. So if you look at the chart on page 43, you can see, if you just focus on the general fund, up by 3.7% from last year. So Medicaid is still growing, and no one thought that we were going to stop Medicaid from growing, but we have caused it to grow at a slightly slower pace. Somebody asked me in particular, well, are there any cuts to behavioral health? and yes there were lots of cuts to behavioral health and it is something I care about I think you all know that There were cuts to Office of Community Living There were cuts to IDD services We used to do an automatic. You would get into IDD placements after you reached a certain age. If you were on a certain kind of waiver, we did away with that. We limited the community connector program. We capped it and put age limits on it. We capped the dental plan for adults. We capped caregiver hours, and this was a particularly painful thing. And we cut the provider rates. We didn't cut them by as much as we thought we were going to have to cut them, but we did cut them. We did do some things that were increases. I think we increased the IV nutrition rate. Last year we found out that there was only one IV nutrition provider in the entire state, so we increased their funding so they wouldn't go out of business, and this year we increased that some more. We did bring down the non-wheelchair transport. We made a lot of adjustments in NEMT. which I'm sure you've all heard about in the news, the non-emergency medical transport. And we're taking some steps to get into compliance with H.R. 1, because if this seems bad, buckle up, because next year is going to be really challenging as we prepare for having to re-up people's eligibility twice a year instead of just every year, and also how to adjust to the work requirements. One of the things that I'll say about this department that made it especially hard is that all along the way we kept getting reporting that some other thing had fraud in it or there had been a gross miscalculation of some aspect of Medicaid. and as the process wore on, I think we all became less and less sure that the numbers we are looking at are an accurate reflection of what's happening in that agency and that is why, to a large extent, we are going to do a deep dive into what's happening there over the interim and we put some money aside in the budget to have somebody help facilitate those meetings and help us develop a report at the end And our hope is that we can provide some recommendations to the next director of HICPF and to the next governor around what might be a better way to organize this thing. I just want to say, Rep. Marshall, I just happened to tune in to their Zoom during the budget thing. and he got up to talk about why he was voting no on the budget, which I hope you all will vote yes on the budget. But he talked about how in days gone by, if you were on a ship and something happened to the ship, you would get into a lifeboat and you might have to sit in the lifeboat for a long period of time before anybody came to your rescue, and that they had rules about who they would cannibalize and eat. And that one time they broke the rules and they instead of, you know, I don't know what it should have been, but instead they decided they were going to go after the cabin boy because he was the weakest and you not supposed to eat the cabin boy So Bob Marshall made the suggestion that we had eaten the cabin boy And while, you know, maybe that's not my favorite, it's not somebody who I often take the lead from, but in some ways, in some ways that is what we did with Medicaid. We took the people who are using the services the most because they are the most medically fragile, and then we cut benefits for them. And so I would really like for us to take another look at Medicaid through a slightly different lens and figure out if there is a way for us to do some cost sharing, if there is a way for us to do some utilization management for the people who are actually the healthiest and who maybe could withstand some cut to what they're receiving. And so, anyway. Always eat the bosun first, I think is my takeaway. Well, I don't know who you're supposed to eat first, but apparently you are definitely not supposed to eat the cabin boy. Thanks, Bob. So, Kathy's looking at me like I've gone crazy. Okay, well. I don't know if they had a line and a hook. Anyway, so I'm happy to talk more about Medicaid. It was extremely hard and difficult, and people cried. I mean, Representative Taggart cried one day. And when Representative Taggart is tearing up, you know you've really hit bone.
So next up, higher ed. higher ed we we actually didn't cut higher ed we cut some things in the department of higher ed we cut some programs in the department of higher ed but we didn't actually cut what the institutions receive and we didn't change the funding formula or any of that we just left it flat and so that's what happened to higher ed Real quick, just so everyone knows, we also allowed tuition increases. Higher ed is like the one part of our budget where there is a way for them to make up money that we don't give them. So we kept them flat, which means we didn't keep up with inflation for higher ed, but we did allow them to increase their tuition by 3.5%, 5% for community colleges. So total dollar amount for community is well below what it is that you'd see for an increase of 3.5% at like a CSU. But it is, for their math to work, they needed that 5%. The other thing we did was we cut, I think, all of the funding for scholarships for private colleges in Colorado. And so if you are a Colorado kid and you want to go to a private college in Colorado, you're going to have to get them to give you a scholarship. The state isn't going to do that. is TREP in here
or is that in
that's in K-12
that's in K-12
we glossed over that it's in orbital human services again we did we made some cuts we made cuts to adoption and guardianship and we made cuts to foster care and kinship care. And I sure you all hearing about that We did put some money into so we looking at how do we get our SNAP error rate down because right now we're right around 9%. If we go over 10, then the federal government will pull back on what they give us to fund SNAP dramatically. So this is a thing we don't want to have happen, and our error rate has been going up over time. It hasn't been coming down. And so we need to figure out how to get our SNAP error rate down. The lower it goes, if we get below, I think it's 4%, maybe it's 6%, then they'll fully fund SNAP 100%, the federal government will. But anything above that costs us in terms of what they reimburse. So we are trying to figure out how to do that, And the departments recommended this centralization of people applying for benefits and then a regionalization of this benefits administration. And that made the counties go wild with sadness and anger. And so lots of people are working on a bill with the counties and with all the stakeholders to figure out what is a way for us to address the problem of how people apply for benefits and how they receive benefits and to do that in a more efficient way that saves money and also makes it better for them and better for the state in terms of what we'll get reimbursed for. Next up is judicial. The thing to point out here in judicial is the OADC, the Office of Alternative Defense Council, has an increase of $2 million in general fund. It has just been a more and more increase in – so the Office of Alternative Defense Council is when multiple folks are charged in a crime. The public defender can't represent all of them. They each get a separate public defender. that those other people for those groups are the Office of Alternate Defense Counsel. Apparently there have been more prosecutions of groups, and so there is a greater need for funding in OADC. We also increased, this was a frustration, the Office of the Public Defender Staff for Aurora Domestic Violence Docket, We were told from the Judicial Department that they needed more folks because of what was happening in Aurora. Aurora decided to stop prosecuting in their own courts domestic violence. And so the Judicial Department said, well, we're going to get a whole lot of folks there. We're going to need some folks working on parole. And then we gave them money specifically for that, and they hired a bunch of folks around the state not in Aurora. And so we pulled back on that funding. There is a $5 general fund increase to the attorney contractor rate adjustment on page 77. Yes, you read that right. We are required by law to increase that every year, and so we picked five. And then courthouse furnishing and infrastructure. Right now courthouses are sort of a combination fund of local governments in the state. The state would be providing the furnishings. That seems like not really our job, and so We in the Budget Committee have decided that if there's anywhere we're going to cut in judicial, we'll be on the furniture. It is the responsibility, we feel, of local governments to make sure that their courthouses are furnished. Labor and employment. We had maybe more fun than we should. This Office of Labor and Employment, it was a surprisingly quiet year in this department. I think in years past we've had multi-page bills multiple times trying to get a handle on things happening in this department. By and large, really not much that we did to this particular department. And then law, we have an increase in river basin litigation funding of $3.8 million. Everyone, I'm sure, knows what's going on with the Colorado River and how the talks on that have broken down and how the federal government has been less than helpful. so we are hoping that they aren't listening and didn't hear that comment but this is money for lawyers to make sure that we are doing what it is we need to do to protect Colorado water and then there are some voluntary budget reductions that they took as well but overall law is sort of more of a function of need and then we pay them and then legislative if you have any questions on this you've got the president sitting right up there.
Okay.
DOLA. DOLA also has a relatively tiny budget, but we did take Prop 123 money from DOLA.
Is that right?
Yeah.
DOLA.
Was it the Oedit money? We took money. We took money. From Prop 123, $130 million. Oh, yeah, it was the O-edit money. It was the O-edit money. Sorry. And, you know, they had to do the across-the-board cuts that everybody else had to do. So their general fund spend is down by a small amount, $1.8 million. and we did allow them to have a CORA administrator, which I'm sure Senator Kip would love to know about, because they don't have enough people to respond to the CORA requests in the time frame that they have. This department has a lot of programs and grants that just give money to local governments. We reduced a lot of those without eliminating them, but like you see 10% reductions, I think maybe there's a 20% reduction, But by and large, reductions but not eliminations. Military and Veterans Affairs, we fixed. Well, it's a bill, but we did fix. Last year we tried to give them tuition incentives so that more people would want to be in the National Guard. And the bill that we passed last year didn't really work, and so some of the institutions didn't want to do what they were supposed to do because the bill didn't say that they had to. So we have another bill this year that is hopefully fixing that, and that was a big ask that they had. Natural resources, is that me too?
Yeah, just real quick on DMVA, you'll notice the general fund is $17.5 million. The federal funds is $140. So this is one of those where the salaries for most of those Guard members paid nationally, this is one of those big lots of money coming in from the feds less money coming in from the General Fund That the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs that we were talking about
Natural Resources. Okay, Natural Resources. We did reduce their General Fund expenditure by 4.7%. we did some stuff to severance tax and we talked about roles, maybe that's CPW and again it's a pretty small department, there wasn't like a lot of money that was able to be saved and mostly they're funded with cash funds like the Keep Colorado Wild Pass, things like that sure I'll talk about DPA because this is the one where I think there is a comet with the long bill. So there's the long bill as sort of the center of mass here, the gravitational pull. There are orbitals that run with the long bill because we don't do substantive law in the long bill. Any program eliminations or transfers have to be done in separate bills. And sometimes the six members of the budget committee can't agree on a bill. And so then four members, in this case the four Democratic members, run an additional bill. In this year, that bill is to remove the statutory limitation on paid sick leave days for state employees, which is currently 10. This bill removes that. It also increases the number of weeks of leave that folks can take for military service from three to four. We cut from what Colorado WINS had negotiated for this year, we are down about $70 million from what it is that they had negotiated. And their primary, one of the asks that they had in that conversation was this orbital bill, this comment that we will be running for eliminating, essentially allowing those 10 days to be negotiated as part of the agreement as opposed to that just being set in statute. So that bill will be running along with the long bill we had in appropriations today. But that is the big hit. That is the big thing to know about what it is that happened with DPA, that we funded the WINS agreement.
Maybe you're just going to say it. Yes. The cuts that WINS took, what we tried to do and what I think we were successful in doing is that no one will actually see their paycheck go down. So we funded the step increases. And so if you're at the time when you would get a step increase, you'll still get the step increase, but we did not do the across-the-board cuts. So if you're not up for a step increase, you get no increase. But we did fund, we fully pay for the difference in health, life, and dental that the employees normally would have paid. We're covering all of that because otherwise some people who didn't get an across-the-board increase would see their pay actually go down, and we didn't want that to happen. So some people will get raises, and no one will see an actual pay cut, take-home pay cut. That was the key, protecting take-home pay.
CDPHE, the next one. I know this one generates a lot of conversation in the legislature. We have a reduction here in CDPHE of 4.9% of general fund spending over the previous year. The thing that we really concentrated a lot on in supplementals is the state lab ensuring that we have the ability to do our own testing here and maintain primacy in the state We also increased by 5 million the cash funds from the Closed Landfill Remediation Grant Fund to help local governments close their landfills. A lot of these are when the landfills were made and the regulations from the federal government were different than what they are now. And so when those regulations change, and CDPHE is the one responsible for enforcing those, we are helping those local governments ensure that they remain compliant. That was a big piece of conversation last year, doing a little bit more this year. And then the Electric School Bus Grant Fund. We gave as much to the Electric School Bus Grant Fund a few years ago as we gave to all of middle-income housing support in the state. It turns out about half of those dollars weren't spent, so we are moving $21.7 million back into the general fund. Some other reductions in grant programs, again, mostly reductions, not eliminations of those programs. Department of Public Safety, this is where community corrections lives. We did two different things here. We tried to centralize community corrections referrals in an effort to ensure that more folks at least were referred, even though we didn't change the structure of saying yes or no to those referrals. And we did increase the caseload in per diem for community corrections. We know there are better outcomes, and it is less expensive when we have folks in community corrections as opposed to in our prisons. and we did eliminate general fund in Cat Paw, the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority. That does not require legislation, but that is a $6.7 million reduction in total funds, including $7.7 million general fund.
I just want to add that Cat Paw does have other sources of funding, so we did not eliminate the program. We just eliminated the general fund contribution to it. And then various different reductions in other places as well, which is the story of this budget. And then Dora. Still me. Part of regulatory agencies, the biggest change here, weirdly, is leased space. So it's reduced what it is that we're spending within the executive director's office on leased space here in regulatory agencies. and a base reduction to the Division of Insurance in the Colorado Civil Rights Division, also in the Department of Regulatory Agencies. Revenue, no real major changes here. Some realignments, reduction in marketing for lottery, and then again, prior year actions were many, so many bills that you all ran, we all ran regarding DORA. sorry, regarding Department of Revenue over the last few years. And state. State. We, I mean, there's not general fund in the Department of State, generally speaking, so we didn't do a whole lot there. Transportation. I think the big thing is we made some adjustments to the bridge and tunnel enterprise. the local transit and rail grant enterprise but we did cut all of the general fund contribution to the multimodal transportation fund So that's money that mostly goes to local governments to do things like bike paths. And they still get the money from the fees that are charged on delivery, but we took out all of the general fund, which was about $10.5 million. Treasury. No. I know it's supposed to be me, but they asked for some additional FTE, which we I think we gave them a couple. And they needed more accountants. We should have done more. We maybe should have done more in retrospect. Yeah. Senator Bridges thinks maybe we should have given them some more FTE. but it's I'm kidding okay am I on capital capital construction so capital construction so in years past when we had COVID dollars we funded not just tier one of control maintenance but tier two as well we did not fund all of tier one of control maintenance this year tier one is threats to health, life and safety we can't afford to do all of it. So we did, originally when we looked at our budget and our overall budget picture, we funded only to Tier 4 within that Tier 1 of need. We were able to actually, after we had done more balancing actions, to fund almost all of Tier 1, but there are still a few projects in sort of Tier 10 of Tier 1 that did not get funded. We did manage to still fund the final phase of a project at CSU, the second four phases for – there was a project at SimHip, and there was a project for DOC that was funded. I should probably look at the description, not the table. So we did manage to fund those. and then on the IT side, IT capital, and then some cash-funded projects as well. Let me just say that because I know some of you are on the Capital Development Committee and grappled with whether we should be building a fence for DOC. I think it was $15 million to build a fence around one of their facilities. They didn't grapple. They just said no way. So we also rejected that. on the recommendation of the CDC, so we won't be doing that fence. No fence, no new prison. And then IT capital projects. And that's all that we have until we go to the orbitals. And I saw a hand up, so we'll pause and stop there. All right. Thank you to our JBC members. We appreciate it. Colleagues, let's open it up now to discussion about the long bill specifically, so House Bill 1410 and any of the department questions. We will then get into orbital bills and have the opportunity to discuss those specifically, but to keep this a little organized, let's try to confine the discussion right now and questions, et cetera, to the long bill, potential amendments coming to the long bill that you want to discuss, or any questions more generally about any of these departments. So, Senator Weissman. Thank you. I guess no questions. Thank you. members for the walkthrough. I just wanted to share a little bit about some Amendments that I intend to put into play tomorrow. The first one will essentially be footnotes and $1 placeholders. By analogy to what the Budget Committee has decided to do for the DOC capacity issue, where we held the line and thank you on spending money we don't have for a new prison, but we acknowledge we may find ourselves in a problem in the future. So in the DOC part of the long bill, there is a new line in anticipation of contracting for capacity and a rate is specified and $1 is written in and there's a footnote, that is necessary because 1331 authority requires there to be an extant line to overexpend. Picking up on that same mechanism, and thank you, Mr. Brackey, for your ingenuity, this amendment, which would be equivalent to J-71 that was run in the House, would simply make two additional $1 placeholder lines to encompass other things we talked about in this months-long DOC capacity conversation. We have a thing called special needs parole. A number of us have been trying for years to make it work better. Part of how come it doesn't work is a challenge of suitable places to release people to. We've learned a little bit the last couple of months about how other states use this. Connecticut is an example. Honestly, I'm not wildly optimistic. We'll figure something out in the interim. But the point of this amendment is simply that if we do, let's not get jammed up for a lack of ability to proceed in the 1331 process to do that. So if we figure something out, if money can be mobilized to lease or contract on a daily rate for capacity, this line would be there per the amendment for the JBC and the executive branch to interact with that through the 1331 process comparable line for other mental health beds outside of special needs. So the cost here is $2. It's really just sort of buying an option. That's the first one. I can pause there, Mr. Chair, if the members wanted to respond, or I could roll right into another amendment I intend to offer. Does anybody have any questions or comments on this? Senator? Oh, okay. Senator Weissman. Okay. Next one, totally different subject. It goes to the evidence backlog in CBI that we talked about a little bit earlier this year in the context of supplementals. Those of us who were here last year, we had a much more robust discussion, and the JBC was very involved at that point. Two things are true at the same time. Because of our work around here, we are in a better place than we would have been but for that work. However, we are still running a backlog particularly for non-sex assault evidence. CBI has prioritized those evidence kits, frankly, because we've told them to. We are not quite as far along on the other ones. I think we all care about public safety and solving crimes around here. Backlogged evidence is crimes not investigated, arrests not being made where warranted, criminal justice process not turning. I'm seeking, I think, something pretty modest, another half million dollars toward contract capacity that's already been set up and in use through CBI to get work done a little bit more quickly. the source will be a line that is used for marketing purposes I look forward to talking more with members about that Thanks Senator Weissman Any comments on this Okay Do I see a hand from Senator Sullivan Yeah, thank you. And I'm not sure if this is the appropriate time for this, with all the new clarification of where we are. But going through, as you were speaking here, I'm trying to get an understanding on some of the notations in here. We just came off the floor where we passed a bill for an addendum to the firearm dealer requirements and permitting. And I see here in public safety, it's got a minus $218,175 off of the 24 bill. And then in revenue, it's listed again, minus $177,600,000. I'm trying to understand what that means to me. Senator Bridges.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Anything that's enlisted in that prior year of actions is just annualizing whatever was in that fiscal note or whatever that bill directed. So none of that here is our choice. All of that is dictated by previous actions in the legislature. That was the money that was spent to keep that program going,
and it's in two different department revenue and in public safety?
Yeah. Senator Bridges. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd have to pull up the fiscal note to see why it was allocated to those two different departments, but it would appear so, yes. Again, not something that's up to us, just simply recognizing previous actions of the legislature and the impact those actions have on the long bill.
Okay. Any other questions on the long bill? Senator Mullica and then Senator Marchman. There's a question when we're talking about the consolidation of counties. I just want to clarify that, that's not the budget, you're talking about a separate piece of legislation for that? Senator Mobley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, there is a separate piece of legislation that's being worked on and that has a large coalition of people, and I'm hearing that they're getting to a good place. and there is a placeholder in the, there is a dollar amount of placeholder to implement the recommendations from that bill. Yes, Senator Mullica. I appreciate that. That was my next question. Also, I didn't hear, I was trying to mention, and did you hear any potential impacts of other pieces of legislation that might be coming before us? I heard a lot about the kind of hope and what impact that people have on the budget? Has that been talked about? Yes. Yeah, so Pinnacle is a bill. It may be a mythical bill. I don't believe it's been introduced yet. Is it a bill? I think it is a bill, and I think I'm one of the sponsors of it. The bill is drafted but not introduced. The bill is drafted but not introduced and not finalized. And what the Pinnacle Bill does is it sets up a framework for a meeting of the minds between the state of Colorado and Pinnacle Assurance. And then it says if we consummate the deal and we get money there is a list of things that the money will be spent on But there nothing in the budget We did not balance to any money from Pinnacle We might be able to, I don't know, dial back on the provider rate cuts if we get money from selling Pinnacle. And there are several things. There's a list of things. And I think that's something that hasn't been completely finalized yet. Yep. Senator Mullica. Quick question. I thought I saw it in the question. Is it now in the stock? Yes. So that is one of the orbitals. It is on page 209.
We may as well just skip there right now. What we do in that orbital is essentially eliminate the transfer from UPTF to the Housing Development Grant Fund and additionally eliminate the transfer from UPTF to cover adult dental care. We do, however, essentially we reduce what it is that we'd be taking from UPTF this year and eliminate future transfers from UPTF, but with a $45 million reduction from UPTF or take from UPTF this year. Our understanding of the fund is that while we do not have a comprehensive study at this moment of what it is that we can safely take from UPTF year over year, we will be working on legislation after the long bill as a budget committee to do that work. to look into both how much can we take from that fund and how much can we responsibly invest along the lines of the bill to move through the House right now for on-bill financing for renewable energy projects. That work has not happened yet. We feel okay. I mean, I would say I don't feel okay. I'm pretty not okay with the $45 million, but if the trade is that we aren't taking money in future years and we eliminate the housing development transfer as well, that that is, I believe the fund can bear it. We will know more after we do that study. But this is, I think this is the most that we can responsibly do from the UPTF this year.
Senator Marchman? I was just curious. I listened to appropriations this morning, and I cannot find in HICPF, I know it was long, You guys did an amazing job. I can't find what the LTSS changes are in HICPF. I'm just hoping one of you, and we can do it offline, can show me where that is, because I see something for LTSS, but it's about authorization, I think, and I don't know if that is what you're talking about. Senator Mobley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. There were actually several things that affected long-term services and supports, and so I'd be happy to walk through it with you. but there were several different places. I don't think there's any bill. I think it's all just their caps and cuts and various ways that we tried to trim that back. Thank you. Okay. Senators, do you want to... I don't think we have time, nor people want to go through every single orbital. Do you want to start with any highlights for us and then we can see where the caucus would like to go with the discussion Senator Mobley Yes so we actually got a whole bunch of the orbitals on the consent calendar Thank you.
So hopefully we don't need to talk about those at all. Well, most of them. There were some that didn't get on the consent calendar that we understand, And part of the reason they didn't, even if we got them passed unanimously through appropriations, we understood that there were some things that people wanted to talk about and potentially run amendments on. And so we didn't put them on the consent calendar. Senator Bridges. Thank you, Mr. Chair. There's maybe half a dozen to a dozen bills that did not get on the consent calendar. I don't know if it's useful to run through those. There's two in particular that I would highlight, at least two in particular that I would highlight. That would be House Bill 1360. House Bill 1360 is the transfer from Prop 123. dollars. This is $130 million. It was a 5-2 vote. We had testimony accusing us of violating the will of the voters by taking these dollars from Prop 123. However, the language of Prop 123 makes it excruciatingly clear that this is something that we can do. So I very much appreciate the human being who testified. I think that his comments were incorrect is the most generous way that I can put it. So there will likely be a vigorous debate on the floor about that one. And then the The next one I'd point to is 1363. Where did it go? 1363 is the change of, I think it's towards the back, it is the change of the reserve requirement, I believe. Yeah, what page? Here we go. 1363 is on page 213. This is a temporary reduction in the reserve requirement. This gets us $350 million in the current budget, reduces the reserve requirement from 15% to 13% for this year and the following budget year, and then it returns that number to 15%. Here's why I think this is the responsible number, and more is not responsible and less is not responsible. We are potentially facing a fairly major recession, and the likelihood of that, according to both OSBB and LCS, is sort of up in the air. It is really, really hard to predict. The uncertainty is extraordinarily high for various different reasons. It is not that the certainty is fairly high that it is a 50-50 chance. The uncertainty is extraordinarily high, which makes it more like a 50-50 chance, certainly with gas at $4 a gallon and the impending global oil shortage that we are facing that would take months to reverse itself, even if the Strait of Hormuz was opened by both Iran and the United States, which is now also blocking the Strait of Hormuz for some reason. Even if that were to reverse tomorrow, there would still be a negative impact on the economy. It is really hard for to know what's going to happen, and we need to make sure we have dollars here in the budget ready to take the place of even more painful cuts than what it is that we're seeing right now in this budget. That being said, if there isn't a recession, then we would be having to make, and we kept the reserve at 15%, that's $350 million more in cuts that we would need to make to K-12, to higher ed, to Medicaid, that we would, looking back in a year or two, have said, why did we do that? Why did we cause that harm to the people of Colorado when we didn't end up having this recession? And so I think 13% strikes the right balance here of ensuring that we are responsibly spending some of the reserve that we have to protect Coloradans from potential harmful impacts while also maintaining what it is that we need given the uncertainty that we see in our economic future. It's probably way longer of an explanation than you needed, but I take cutting the reserve extraordinarily seriously. The other bill that was a real talker, we had like, I think six people came and testified, which was more than any other bill, is about the type of audit that HICPF is allowed to do because they are going to be auditing these autism therapy providers. And there was a lot of concern among the providers that if we didn't get this bill exactly right, that they would be unfairly scrutinized and potentially made to pay back money. I mean, this is from their perspective that they shouldn't have to pay back. So I think everybody knows this autism provider thing has, across the country, we've seen that there is fraud and overpayments in this space and abuse of how many hours people can get and that kind of thing. And so on the one hand, we have to give HICPF, if we want them to do a better job of making sure that there isn't fraud and abuse in the system, we do have to give them tools to do that. And I guess you all will decide whether you think we hit on the right tools or whether you get lobbied by somebody to run amendments to that. and, you know, I don't, you know, however that works out. But we feel like we ended up in a pretty good place on how we were directing HICPUF to conduct those audits. And then the other thing that I think is obviously going to be a big subject is Cover All Coloradans, where we did take some substantial cuts to that program. And now I expect we will hear from you all about what do you think is the right place to land on that.
Sorry, the bill before about the audit mechanisms, what number bill is that? Thank you.
14-13. And then cover all car runs is 14-11. 14, yeah.
Senator Bridges.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just so everyone knows, we did strip all of the non-technical amendments from all of these bills as they came over from the House. That is not to say that we as JBC members necessarily disagree with all of the amendments that were put on in the House Certainly there are some that did not have a fiscal impact that changed some bills in a more positive direction but certainly as JBC members we ask for your no vote even if it a great amendment And just 1412 is the bill with the audits. That's okay, 1412, yeah. Thank you.
All right, Senator Marshman? On that, say no to all amendments. I wanted to mention House Bill 1357 I know you guys got a little bit of conversation about I don't know how to pronounce it I call it T-Rep because it reminds me of T-Rex but I don't know I just want to clarify what conversations that I've been having so folks are aware that is on page 151 of our book and what we're seeking to do and this is a bipartisan effort is to allow the 193 students in the 30 districts that are set to graduate next month to be able to support them and see the end of the program. The House sponsors said they ran out of time to get this on which was interesting to me because it seemed like there was a lot of time on the bill. I was literally, I had to reread my message. It was a multi-page amendment that they didn't distribute the day before. Is that right? Okay. So I'm going to be working with our JBC staff because if you look on page 106 and you guys probably don't need to but it's under the CDPHE and I didn't know if I should talk about this in 1410 where the governor is proposing getting this is from that electrifying school buses grant fund under the mobile sources. So I will be working with the JBC staff today to try to figure out what that would look like. Ferandina says we need to mess with the transfer bill, but I don't see that cash fund in the transfer bill. So nonetheless, I just wanted you guys to know kind of what I'm doing. I know Senator Amable and I were at a town hall recently where we had a mom of one of these 193 students saying, please don't do this to my daughter. She's given up scholarships and this and that. So that's the intention of anything I bring on 1357. Thank you. That mom and her daughter were both at the appropriations meeting today and testified about the bill. So, yeah, and we did hear today that there is, the governor apparently has freed up some money that they might like to use to pay for this. And, again, that would be up to you all. I'll just, I'll add that that is up to you all, whether we use it for this or if we use it for legislation that you all may be running as well. I think the testimony today was compelling. I understand the idea of thinking that you've made a deal with the state only to have the rug pulled out from under you on this program. The reason that we are eliminating it, and my understanding is the amendment does maintain the elimination. It just delays it so that folks that were counting on it this year can still get it. The program itself, like many of the extra-year programs in high school, just simply doesn't have the return on investment, the outcomes that we would like to see in programs like this. and that it is the data would suggest that folks moving from high school after their fourth year into a community college or a four setting creates better outcomes both for those folks and for the state and is less expensive overall which is the reason we eliminated the Ascent program last year. This is a similar program. We did maintain other teacher training programs here in the state, and so it's not like we don't value teacher education and recruitment programs, just that this one we didn't see, like the Ascent program, we didn't see good data for. but recognize that the testimony this morning was compelling. On this, Senator White. I just have one quick follow-up that I wanted to say, and it was related to what you said. When we got rid of ASCENT last year, we provided that little bit of a glide path for those seniors, and so that's really the intention of this, is to treat the TREP program the way we treated the ASCENT. So anyway, thank you. Senator Weissman. Mic's off. There we go. Okay. I was sitting in a pro-op's all morning and heard the testimony, and it's forceful from the families who are impacted. And Senator Marchman, thanks for your engagement. And I appreciate your referencing a sent to which was killed off by the JVC because there was some data about unintended effects. I'm grateful for Ms. Bickle, who's briefing on that, I read. That's one of a couple of these sort of post-fourth year programs. I'm speaking up because for years, the district that I'm here to represent, APS, was one of the greatest beneficiaries of ASCENT, and now it's dead. and we have P-TECH and we have TREP, and, you know, I think figuring out some, a little longer glide path is fine, but, you know, years ago we started, and there have been whole reports on this and whole bills on this, we started or tried to start a holistic conversation about what we've come to call the blur space, which is what exists in between, you know, the old fictive world of you take four years to get a high school degree, and then you go to a four-year residential college experience, and then you enter into the middle class, and everything is fine. Obviously, that's not the world anymore. The blur space is part of acknowledging that new world. I just want to urge us to really look at the equities of these things. APS was a, I'm sorry, Ascent was a district that was utilized. Ascent was a program that was utilized by many districts. Some of them happened to be low-income districts with a lot of kids of color. And if you look at some of what I think are the big drivers of these other efforts, it's a bit of a different distribution. All we do in a budget, even in a good year, and especially in a bad year, is make hard choices. And if we can figure something out for another year here, like I will be for it, I'm more just dropping a pin for our future selves, that we just sort of treat everybody equally in these spaces. Senator Bridges.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to say this because it may be my last chance to say this in front of all of you. Three-quarters of all jobs in Colorado today require some kind of education beyond high school. We can provide that education in high school. We have the time. We have the flexibility in our curriculum programs is every kid in the state should be graduating from high school with an associate degree a certificate in a high high in industry or a meaningful internship that leads directly to a job. We can do that. We have the resources. We realigned many of the grant programs that we had in the blur space last year to create a more equitable distribution of these funds across the state, across districts. We had some grants that were being used by like two districts, and some districts were like 50% of their revenue was coming from grant programs because they were really good at applying. We've leveled that playing field. We've created that opportunity. This is a path that I think we need to continue walking down, ensuring that we have the workforce development programs that the students in our K-12 schools need and the employers in our state need to make sure that folks are getting the education to get those good jobs in high school before they leave.
Senator Mobley. Andrea. Thank you for that comment. I will say that part of the reason that TREP, why we were looking at that, is because there's very few districts that are using it, and most of the students that are benefiting from it are coming from just a couple of districts. And so it didn't seem like it had the statewide reach or that it actually was being used in an equitable way. Which isn't to say we shouldn't put in the glide path. That is part of why that came across our radar. And I'd also say that in a year where we're not looking for programs to cut, this is probably one that we wouldn't have cut. Ascent probably isn't one that we would necessarily cut. Maybe we'd cap it. But certainly in a year like this one, in an effort to ensure we have equitable funding across our state, this one just simply didn't cut it. Okay. Senator Benavides. Thank you. My question is about 1409. That's the marijuana tax cash fund distributions, and it includes stopping a distribution to local governments of roughly $6 million. And I'll be honest with you, I've been asked by different municipalities about that. They're not really complaining so much about this year because of the budget, but that why is this two things. One, is there some way from JBC that I could get a list of how that $6 million is allocated to counties and municipalities? That's the first question. And that why is this taken, I get it, taken for this year, but for every year in the future, there will be no more sharing with local governments? Senator Mobley. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So this is the state tax, and there was an agreement to share that with the locals, and it wasn't part of the ballot measure. It wasn't in statute, I don't think. And so we took some of it last year, and this year we decided to take all of it. the local governments absolutely do and can tax marijuana at whatever rate their citizens will bear and so they can do what they want with that we have no effect over what they are what taxed on there, and every municipality, every county is doing that differently. And some are charging more and some are charging less. The reason to just say this is the way it's going to be going forward is because otherwise they will not have a way to budget to an expectation. So we're hearing today, well, you cut this thing and, you know, it was sudden. And they are sudden. but this way they know we're not going back. We never had to do that and now we're in a budget situation where we kind of have to. We use the money to balance the marijuana cash tax fund and without it we won't be able to balance the marijuana cash tax fund. And marijuana revenue is not going up, it's going down. It may be leveling off but probably not. I think some people here in this building are running bills that are going to be devastating for the marijuana cash tax fund. So the amount of revenue is going to continue to go down, and our state budget woes are not going to be getting better next year. We're not going to be in a better place than we are this year. So I think it's better for the local governments to understand we're not going to get this anymore. And not every locality sells marijuana, so it doesn't really impact every local jurisdiction. So basically I get from your answer it was just a JBC decision to stop the allocation to local governments here going forward. Not, yeah. Okay, because I'm hearing from local governments your answer was that we'll teach them how to budget with less money. That's kind of a decision that JBC is making. but what about looking at it every year if we need it for the budget? Barb might have said that, but I don't think the rest of us said we're just going to teach local governments how to... That's not what this is about. This is that there are programs funded from the Marijuana Tax Cash Fund that make a real difference for folks here in our state. And if given the sort of slow downward trajectory that we're seeing, maybe we're leveling off, maybe we're hitting bottom, Maybe we're not hitting bottom. The choice is, do we eliminate this share back with local governments who are fully capable of implementing their own taxes on marijuana and making that money back up if they so choose? Do we eliminate that $6 million that we're giving to local governments? Or do we cut programs inside MTCF? So what I would suggest is if you're looking at future years, than you as a legislature, right? The legislature is always welcome to give any money that it would like to really anyone that it likes, so long as that give is in accordance with law and constitution. And so you could in a future year restore this, but to have it in law that just every year we're like, only this year, maybe next year, not next year, oh, maybe next year, I think it gives a false hope to those local governments that they can count on that revenue. I would rather that if there happens to be some big uptake, some big uptick in how much it is that people are paying for marijuana in the state and that the revenue dramatically increases that that sort of like an unexpected bonus for local governments if the legislature chooses to use the dollars that way, as opposed to them being constantly disappointed year over year that they're not going to get those dollars. There's not, the future outlook for MTCF is bad. All signs point to bad for next year and the year after and and for many years in the future. That is something that I hear both from our folks in government and from the folks who work in this sector. So I think just saying it's a pause for this year and we'll revisit it next year, I think creates false hope and is extraordinarily unlikely to pan out. All right. Any other questions from the caucus or points to raise before we adjourn? Senator Lindstedt.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to let people know on 1374 and 1373, I have a series of amendments I picked up from the House. I promised not to run any budget amendments, and then the foster families reached out to me, and I couldn't say no. So what the amendments will do is just provide them notice of the pretty serious cuts coming to the kinship providers and those families. It will also preserve the data collection and make sure that these cuts don't apply to existing contracts. They got on the House in a bipartisan manner, and I'll be carrying them with a Republican in the Senate. They don't have a fiscal cost, but do provide that clarity and fairness that I think those foster families deserve, especially given the situation they're in.
Yep, sounds very reasonable. Please vote no. Senator Kipp.
And even though I have a longstanding opposition to most budget amendments, I did agree to carry the one to pause multimodal transportation for a year, I mean, so that we don't take it out of statute, because it was a lot to get that stuff into statute, so we don't want to totally eliminate the program. We're fine with, like, not having the funding this year. We get it. Just want it, I mean, take it away again next year. I do get it.
There was one that passed in the House about multimodal transportation. You're looking a little confused. But that's $13.99, and I'm interested in doing that. And then I also had one follow-up question, but go ahead. Okay, I mean, I'll just say that the answer is the same as my previous answer about the marijuana cash tax fund. Things are not looking up for our budget. Things are looking down. And so, again, if people want to budget for these projects, I think they should be budgeting to realistic numbers. And I just don't see next year or the year after that we're going to have a bunch more money to spend on that. And, you know, when I talk to people in our caucus and I say, what's more important to you? and I actually asked our late colleague Faith Winter last year, what's more important to you, transportation, because we knew we were going to impact some of the work that she spent her career here doing or health care for kids And her answer was unequivocally health care for kids So these are the kind of choices we making And if people, you know, again, I understand you all have different priorities, and I fully respect that and admire that about each and every one of you, but there won't be more money next year. And this program is funded in a different way. So the general fund transfer is sort of the icing on the cake for that program. Senator Kitt.
Thank you. And just not really a follow-up question, but I saw in the materials that we were shared from Taylor that there was one of the orbital bills, I believe, died in the House. How is that impacting where we were with the budget and moving forward?
Senator Mobley. So it had savings of about $180,000, and it wasn't actually clear whether we were going to get those savings or not. And, you know, I think we came in like, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand dollars under budget. So it's absorbable. Senator Gonzalez. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I just want to let you all know that we are thinking through a series of amendments that mirror three amendments that were drafted and run on 1411, the Cover All Coloradans orbital, to try to ensure and protect as much of that work that we can and look forward to being able to share those with you all. There would be a different pay-for in these proposed amendments that would not come from the Department of Corrections. Shocker, I know. But we're trying to map that out, and we'll look forward to sharing that with you all once they're drafted.
Senator Amale.
I don't know how much money is in those electric buses. So many electric buses.
So I think maybe is this a good time to mention that if you want to run amendments, they have to be submitted to Mr. Kurtz by 4 o'clock today. and I think most of you know that, but that's the deadline and we won't be extending that. I don't know. Does everybody have your contact information? Does everybody know how to get a hold of Mr. Kurtz? Oh, yeah. We'll put it in the chat. All right. Senator Ball.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. As long as we're doing some amendment show and tell, I want to announce I'll also be bringing a budget amendment It will mirror House Bill 1410, which is on increasing funding for veterans' treatment courts. So we're still working through some of the specifics. It may not match what was in the House exactly but it will be along the same lines You not going to eat the cabin boy Senator Bridges Thank you
Anything else? Senator Cutter.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. They ran an amendment in the House on behavioral health, the trust fund, the cardiac trust fund, and for peace officers and firefighters. And Senator Pelton and I will be bringing that, which, as you all know, does not increase any funding. It takes the cut from this year and just preserves the funding in subsequent years so that if it needs to be reexamined and cut, then it can be. So that one. And then the other one is to do with the Treasurer's Office, allowing, since there's so much talk about the unclaimed property fund, And we're asking for FTEs so that they can, out of an allowable use, right, out of existing funds, so that they can hire people to help get that money back to the people of Colorado.
That sounds amazing. Please vote no. Senator. Anything else?
Senator Hendrickson.
Yeah, sorry, Senator Bridges.
I have sent in a request for an amendment that would take $5 million from the Department of Corrections Housing and Security sub-program to match on the NEMT pickup rate the OSPB $19.67 OSPB combat proposal. Okay.
Is that awful? Strongly disagree. Okay. We are at 1.30. And I know folks need to get ready for afternoon committees and other things. So thank you. Yes, Senator Bridges.
If we're going to do a wrap-up, just real quick. Yes. I know I thank the JBC folks, but there are more here, and I want to make sure we also include, in my mind, Taylor is a part of this group. Taylor and Carl are staff over there from the House and the Senate. OSPB did a great job. If we could give a hand to these folks one more time. Incredible work this year. Thanks.
All right. Thank you both. Thanks to the caucus. This meeting is adjourned. Yes, you have to turn your amendments in by 4 o'clock today to Mr. Kurtz. Thank you. Thank you.