Colorado State Budget Faces 'Tough Tradeoffs:' Polis

By John Herrick for The Colorado Independent. Gov. Jared Polis stood in the Greenlee Elementary School library to announce that free, all-day kindergarten — his No. 1 campaign promise — was on its way to reality.

“Every single child deserves a strong start,” the governor said late last week as he was flanked by lawmakers, educators and students. The current kindergarten system doesn’t treat students equally, he said. “What you get depends on chance — where you live, how much money you have.”

Polis’s announcement came after the Joint Budget Committee (JBC) set aside $185 million in next year’s budget, which he says is enough to fully pay for projected enrollment across the state.

But it took the JBC weeks to find room in the $30 billion state budget for the plan, lawmakers say, and it came at the expense of K-12 education, repairs to government buildings, and other state programs Democrats consider to be underfunded.

“The governor, with the kindergarten request, put pressure on every part of the budget,” said Rep. Chris Hansen, a Democrat from Denver who serves on the Joint Budget Committee. “So we’re having to make some tough trade-offs.”

A revenue forecast released earlier this month projects a $1 billion-plus surplus for the 2019-2020 fiscal year, which begins in July, due to continued economic growth. Despite the size of the surplus, economists doubt it will be large enough to trigger refunds under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR.

Most of the $1 billion surplus is already spoken for. On top of the $185 million for all-day kindergarten, budget writers want to spend $336 million on K-12 public schools, which Democrats say remain underfunded; $230 million on transportation, a dent in the multi-billion dollar backlog; and $121 million on higher education tuition, which will hold tuition flat. Those expenditures — combined with inflation and population growth, and some smaller budget line items, such as expanded mental health services — eat up all but about $40 million of the surplus.

That $40 million will have to stretch far and wide, Democrats and the governor are discovering less than five months after they swept into office. Initiatives Democrats promised during their campaigns, including criminal justice reforms and efforts to expand health care and opioid use disorder treatment, will be competing for cash.

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