April 18, 2009 03:04 AM UTC

House Approves $300 Million In Budget Cuts, Senate Approval Looms

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• by: redstateblues

Denver Post:

The Colorado House on Thursday initially approved next year’s state budget in a process many lawmakers called the least partisan they had ever seen [rsb emphasis], filling a final $300 million hole with a combination of cuts and money-generating actions.

The “kumbaya” moment in the House came just three days after a dogfight in the Senate in which Republicans blasted Democrats over a plan to balance the $17.9 billion budget with $500 million from a state-chartered workers’ compensation fund.

By Wednesday that plan had fallen through, and lawmakers from both parties in the House agreed to look for more cuts and ways to raise revenue.

The deal in the House calls for about $255.4 million in revenue-generating measures and about $77.6 million in cuts to fill the final $300 million hole.

Highlights of the current spending plan, which must now go back to the Senate, include saving some $16 million with up to eight days of furloughs for state employees; slashing $58 million in Medicaid fees paid to doctors and hospitals; transferring nearly $28 million from schools to higher education; and raiding $35 million in tobacco-tax money that now goes for anti-smoking and health programs.

The most important part of this bi-partisan bill is that it preserves higher education funding. Many of the representatives had to make painful cuts to programs that were important to them and their constituents. Nonetheless, the first part of solving this crisis is now behind us.

The fact that our representatives on both sides of the aisle were able to work together on this issue, especially during a time when ideological divides between right and left have captured the media’s attention, is heartening. Whether or not the same spirit of compromise and fairness will carry over to the Senate when it takes up debate remains to be seen. They deserve the benefit of the doubt, but it’s been clear this session that the Senate Republicans have been the ones putting the “no” in “the party of no”. A full bi-partisan approval in the Senate would show Coloradans that everyone is united together through this recession.

Aside from House leaders like Speaker Terrance Carroll and Minority Leader Mike May, someone else who deserves credit on the budget is Gov. Bill Ritter. He provided solid leadership on this by ending talks with Pinnacol, expressing to the legislature that they needed to find the money somewhere else, and showing a commitment to public higher education continuing to thrive in the state of Colorado. It’s a welcome turnaround from the decidedly lax leadership he’s shown, at times, in the past.