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Economy on the High Plains
Colorado legislators discuss budget
We have to first answer the question of how you want to deal with the anticipated shortfall we still have which is around 240 million dollars. I guess there are 3 ways you can deal with this, you can choose to live within your means and make spending reductions, you can choose to do what I'm hearing the Democrats at the state capitol are wanting to do which is go after a bunch of tax credits and tax exemptions and take those away from folks effectively raising taxes to raise revenue to fill in this 240 million dollar gap, or you can do what the governor is doing and hide under your desk and hope the numbers get better before you have to do anything.
Brophy says republicans favor spending cuts. Of course, this year's shortfall is not the only budget problem, the 2010-2011 fiscal year's budget will need cutting as well the Governor's Office of State Planning and Budgeting says the general fund available for appropriation is anticipated to fall below this fiscal year's levels. Brophy says the legislature needs to look at what's funded by the general fund and make cuts there, the major areas include health and human services, k12 education, department of corrections, and higher education. He thinks higher ed has been taken back as far as it can and he doesn't want to make additional cuts there.
The Department of Corrections has some areas where we can make some reductions. I think we need to be looking seriously at moving as many people as possible out of the publicly-owned facilities into privately-owned facilities and closing down and selling some of the publicly-owned facilities and that will save us some money, about 9 million bucks a year for each thousand prisoners that we move.
Senator Brophy says K12 education has gotten all of the money over the last two recessions. He doesn't want to see rural schools trimmed back at all, but he does think there are areas to seek savings in k12 education.
Then you get to the big ones. The entitlement programs under Health & Human Services, I think there's some areas in there where we can definitely make some adjustments, especially when it comes to benefits given to people who are actually still capable of working and are working and I think that we have to look seriously at how those entitlement programs work.
State Representative Cory Gardner of Yuma says they need to target areas of rampant growth and wasteful spending so that K12 and higher education don't have to take severe cuts.
I think you start with the new programs and expansions the governor has led over the past 3 years, you even look at his own office, in the past several years his executive offices have grown from 100 million dollars in funding to 300 million dollars in funding, hiring over 4000 new people. It's simply irresponsible. If you simply eliminate the fees, the dues that the state of Colorado pays to organizations around the country we'd save almost 4 million dollars and that's just in membership fees that the state is paying every year. There's a lot of waste that needs to be cut, that needs to be addressed and it again it needs to start with the governor and his office.
Both Representative Gardner and Senator Brophy think layoffs are a possibility. Gardner wants to look first at furloughs but thinks it will come down to layoffs. Both legislators also point to the fact that one-time money like stimulus funds and borrowed money from cash funds have been used to cover some previous gaps. Senator Brophy says there have been no actual reductions in line items of the budget and he thinks we've reached the time where there will have to be. He has been expecting revenue forecasts to be worse every quarter, but he actually thinks the economy has turned around and we have seen the worst number.
But you can't, you can't live under that assumption, that's kind of like hoping you're going to win the lottery and that's how you're going to pay your bills and it's time that we make the hard decisions and we figure out how to live within our budget.
This is Lindsey Fields, HPPR News.
© Copyright 2012, hppr
(2009-10-13)
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LAMAR, COLO.
(hppr) -
In Colorado the current fiscal year ends June 30th 2010. Governor Bill Ritter says the state has already closed budget shortfalls of 1.8 billion dollars. Based on the September Revenue forecast another 240 million dollars needs to be cut this fiscal year, but a deficit is also predicted for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. Greg Brophy is the State Senator representing southeast Colorado.
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We have to first answer the question of how you want to deal with the anticipated shortfall we still have which is around 240 million dollars. I guess there are 3 ways you can deal with this, you can choose to live within your means and make spending reductions, you can choose to do what I'm hearing the Democrats at the state capitol are wanting to do which is go after a bunch of tax credits and tax exemptions and take those away from folks effectively raising taxes to raise revenue to fill in this 240 million dollar gap, or you can do what the governor is doing and hide under your desk and hope the numbers get better before you have to do anything.
Brophy says republicans favor spending cuts. Of course, this year's shortfall is not the only budget problem, the 2010-2011 fiscal year's budget will need cutting as well the Governor's Office of State Planning and Budgeting says the general fund available for appropriation is anticipated to fall below this fiscal year's levels. Brophy says the legislature needs to look at what's funded by the general fund and make cuts there, the major areas include health and human services, k12 education, department of corrections, and higher education. He thinks higher ed has been taken back as far as it can and he doesn't want to make additional cuts there.
The Department of Corrections has some areas where we can make some reductions. I think we need to be looking seriously at moving as many people as possible out of the publicly-owned facilities into privately-owned facilities and closing down and selling some of the publicly-owned facilities and that will save us some money, about 9 million bucks a year for each thousand prisoners that we move.
Senator Brophy says K12 education has gotten all of the money over the last two recessions. He doesn't want to see rural schools trimmed back at all, but he does think there are areas to seek savings in k12 education.
Then you get to the big ones. The entitlement programs under Health & Human Services, I think there's some areas in there where we can definitely make some adjustments, especially when it comes to benefits given to people who are actually still capable of working and are working and I think that we have to look seriously at how those entitlement programs work.
State Representative Cory Gardner of Yuma says they need to target areas of rampant growth and wasteful spending so that K12 and higher education don't have to take severe cuts.
I think you start with the new programs and expansions the governor has led over the past 3 years, you even look at his own office, in the past several years his executive offices have grown from 100 million dollars in funding to 300 million dollars in funding, hiring over 4000 new people. It's simply irresponsible. If you simply eliminate the fees, the dues that the state of Colorado pays to organizations around the country we'd save almost 4 million dollars and that's just in membership fees that the state is paying every year. There's a lot of waste that needs to be cut, that needs to be addressed and it again it needs to start with the governor and his office.
Both Representative Gardner and Senator Brophy think layoffs are a possibility. Gardner wants to look first at furloughs but thinks it will come down to layoffs. Both legislators also point to the fact that one-time money like stimulus funds and borrowed money from cash funds have been used to cover some previous gaps. Senator Brophy says there have been no actual reductions in line items of the budget and he thinks we've reached the time where there will have to be. He has been expecting revenue forecasts to be worse every quarter, but he actually thinks the economy has turned around and we have seen the worst number.
But you can't, you can't live under that assumption, that's kind of like hoping you're going to win the lottery and that's how you're going to pay your bills and it's time that we make the hard decisions and we figure out how to live within our budget.
This is Lindsey Fields, HPPR News.
© Copyright 2012, hppr
