The Colorado Senate on Thursday approved the state’s $38.5 billion budget for 2023-24 on a bipartisan 28-7 vote. 

Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, is one of five new members on the six-member Joint Budget Committee that has spent the last four months crafting the budget.

He talked of that experience prior to the final vote. 

He called the budget contained in Senate Bill 214 “a moral budget,” one in which provider rates will go up to provide vital care, and so that kids can get a good start with pre-K.

“We worked for independence, from poor decisions made by lower basin states like California, by investing and protecting Colorado water with lawyers, researchers and negotiators,” he said. 

To keep Coloradans safe, he said, the budget invests in fire protection, public safety, school security and in the National Guard. “Unlike DC, even with the restriction of TABOR,” it’s a balanced budget, he said. 

At every turn, the budget writers asked how that dollar would improve the lives of Coloradans, he added.

“This budget will do that.” 

JBC Chair Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada, noted the tight budget and what’s to come, warning there “is a challenging budget to be written in the years ahead” with a looming fiscal cliff, and existing and ongoing programs propped up with one-time and temporary funding. Future lawmakers, she said, will have to make choices about what to cut. 

Zenzinger noted the budget’s biggest increases are in the Medicaid match, with the general fund having to fill the gap as the federal public health emergency expires and the federal government reduces its Medicaid match. That’s $844 million, which budget writers claimed was about two-thirds of the increase in the 2023-24 budget. 

Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer of Brighton, the JBC’s Senate Republican member, also in her first year on the committee, noted the long hours, which she said led to crankiness at times. She thanked Zenzinger for leading a team of “newbies, and she did an excellent job,” along with showing restraint and patience when needed.

This is a “get ‘er done” budget, Kirkmeyer said. The JBC worked as a team on issues such as how to pay off liabilities and not to incur new ones; to hold departments accountable, to set high expectations for those agencies and to require them to be transparent when those agencies are in front of the committee. 

The budget was balanced without pre-pays and with an desire to avoid leading the next team into the structural deficit.

“We pay our bills,” Kirkmeyer said.

One-time monies went to one-time needs, such as capital construction and controlled maintenance. They added dollars in excess of the governor’s request to keep tuition increases at 5%, she said. 

Higher education and education were at the top of the list, she said. “When asked by the chair what our goal was with regard to the state budget” back in December, every member said buying down the budget stabilization factor with an eye to eliminating it completely. “That’s still our goal,” she said. 

This budget is fiscally prudent, Kirkmeyer said, urging a solid “aye” vote from her Republican colleagues. Five Republicans did vote for the budget. 

Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen of Monument was among the “no” votes. He said he was voting against the bill, not in “strenuous objection” to the budget but in a call for the budget to honor its primary priority, the full funding of K-12 education. Lundeen and 10 GOP senators tried a trio of amendments Wednesday to require the budget stabilization factor, at $321.2 million, to be paid in full through the budget. Those amendments were rejected, in part because the budget stabilization debt is covered under the School Finance Act, which has not yet been introduced.

Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, had concerns as well, with hers focused on the Department of Corrections. This budget includes 740 more beds, which Gonzales called an incredible increase. Combined with the mid-year adjustment that added more beds, that puts the department’s budget above $1 billion, she said. But she is grateful for the discernment of the JBC and its staff, which funded what the department asked for but also worked through the initial request and to find instead a different path forward. 

Gonzales’ continued concern is that through the budget DOC will add beds but that staffing vacancies continue, some 1,300 vacant positions. Lawmakers should watch closely prison population management in the year ahead, she said.

The Senate also approved the accompanying “orbital” bills that help balance the budget.

Wednesday’s action on the budget included 17 amendments that added $85.5 million to what was initially a balanced budget.

However, those amendments won’t last. The bills now head to the House, where JBC members will decide which amendments to keep. Usually, it’s none of them.

The House is expected to begin its budget process with the Long Bill’s introduction on Monday.