One morning at the State Capitol earlier this month, Democratic Representative Emily Sirota stood before her colleagues on the House floor to present the draft budget bill.
“This has been a very, very challenging, difficult road that we have walked to bring you this bill,” Sirota said.
Sirota co-chairs the powerful Joint Budget Committee, or JBC, the group responsible for combing through all state income and spending each year to ensure a constitutionally mandated balanced budget. This year, the committee has to account for a $1.5 billion shortfall, making that task especially hard.
“There’s no easy way to cut a billion dollars from this budget without touching on some of the key priorities and services that Coloradans care about,” Sirota continued. “Every decision is a trade-off. Every dollar for one area is a dollar less in another.”
Ad:Some of the biggest budget cuts impact the healthcare sector, for instance, a two percent decrease in Medicare provider reimbursements and reduced coverage for undocumented kids and pregnant women.
But dozens of smaller cuts from across government operations made up the balance. State employees will not see cost-of-living raises. There were also cuts to programs helping rural communities, local public health departments and people who need help buying food, to name just a few.
There’s no single explanation for this year’s budget shortfall. It’s one part a slowing economy, one part TABOR restrictions on how much money the state can keep from tax revenues, one part revenue gap stemming from the Trump Administration’s Big Beautiful Bill. Combine that with ballooning costs of programs coming in well above forecasts, and the trouble compounds.
“A lot of the problems we have now is because we overcommitted,” said Democratic Rep. Bob Marshall of Highlands Ranch. “We made promises we can’t keep. But it’s kind of disturbing sometimes, the promises we decide to keep and the ones we don’t.”
Over the past couple of weeks, both chambers of the legislature had a chance to dissect the JBC’s budget proposal, floating dozens of amendments — most of which failed — to tweak the plan. This week, the JBC will reconcile all the changes, and after both legislative chambers approve the finalized budget, it heads to Governor Jared Polis.
The complete budget package is an impressive document — more than 650 pages in addition to dozens of companion bills. Buried in all that paper moving through the legislature are myriad decisions that will ultimately unfold in neighborhoods and homes across the state.
“This budget isn’t just numbers,” Sirota told her colleagues in the House. “This budget is about human beings, the lives of Coloradans.”
Lawmakers say they take that responsibility seriously. But many people facing the brunt of the budget cuts don’t think their representatives fully understand how decisions made at the Capitol deeply impact the lives of their constituents.
The people behind the cuts
While state legislators were considering budget cuts, Abby Christian, a 12th-grader at Skyview Academy, was at home in Highlands Ranch, thumbing through part of her senior project: a little ring-bound book of laminated children’s drawings from a Kindergarten class that she had been helping to teach that year.
She had designed a lesson plan for the class to hone reading comprehension.
“I decided to write a book for them,” she explained. “And then they would draw pictures based on their comprehension of the book.”
“This page says ‘the dog goes to the beach,’” she read. “‘He digs up a yellow hat.’” she read.
Turning the page, she paused on each crayon-colored picture.
“This is Braden’s,” she said. “He drew a bunch of waves in the background, and he said the dog was really dirty because he was digging up so much dirt, and it got all over him.”
By the time she was in 9th grade, Christian already knew she wanted to be a Kindergarten teacher and was elated to learn of a state-funded effort, the Teacher Recruitment Education and Preparation (TREP) program, set up to pay most of the cost of a teaching degree for future Colorado educators.
“I knew going into teaching, I wasn’t going to make a lot of money and I accepted that in ninth grade,” Christian said. “So I came up with a plan. This way, I’ll be able to become an educator like I want to without going into a bunch of financial debt.”
Throughout high school, she worked hard to qualify for the program, taking community college classes and maintaining high grades. Late last year, she learned she’d won the TREP funding and planned to start using it this fall to start her education degree this fall at the University of Northern Colorado.
Those exquisitely laid plans came to a screeching halt this spring, when she learned the funding wouldn’t be there for her after all, after ending up on the budgetary chopping block at the State Capitol.
“ I worked hard. I did everything that I needed to do,” she said, adding that without TREP funding, she doesn’t have enough to pay for college and might end up delaying her education to save up.
“It would’ve been great to know four years ago, so I had time to plan something else.”
Roughly 200 other high school seniors were expecting to start college with the TREP funding this fall. Christian said she feels like lawmakers didn’t consider their predicament when they decided to eliminate the program so suddenly.
But those students should be able to pivot and recover from the loss, according to Republican Rep. Rick Taggart of Grand Junction, also on the Joint Budget Committee, who voted for the cut and said it was one of many heartbreaking calls committee members had to make.
“I realize it throws a twist in their lives, but it can be done,” Taggart said. “There’s not really an alternative to somebody that relies on Medicaid. That’s where those decisions are tough. But I think we’re always consistent that we’re trying to support our underserved population as our first priority.”
But Coloradans who rely on Medicaid weren’t insulated from the spending cuts, either. The JBC reined in several Medicaid programs, including those providing support for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families, including payments for family member caregivers.
Victoria Moul is one of those caregivers anticipating a big pay cut. A single mom with three medically complex teenagers who all have special needs, her children’s constant need for care has made it impossible to hold down a job outside of the home.
“I’m their chef,” Moul said of her children. “I’m their teacher. I’m their PT and OT therapist. I’m their transportation. I’m their case manager. I am the person that’s up with them in the middle of the night if they’re sick. It is 24 hours a day.”
Her family relies on the payments she receives for caring for her children full-time. The budget proposal would cut those hours in half. Her pay rate would also be affected by the reductions to Medicaid provider reimbursements. Altogether, she estimates the budget proposal will eliminate two-thirds of her income, and she’s worried her family won’t be able to keep their home.
“ I’m doing all the things that society says I’m supposed to do as a parent, and I do it alone,” she said. “Because of these cuts, I may lose everything that I have worked so hard to build. It will destroy my family.”
Lawmakers described those cuts affecting the intellectual and developmental community as some of the hardest decisions they had to make.
“These are the kinds of votes that keep me up at night,” said Democratic Rep. Jeff Bridges, who co-chairs the budget committee. “ There were tears, I think, from every member at some point during this last JBC process.”
Lawmakers in the Senate passed a budget amendment that would save the TREP program for one last cohort. Other amendments passed that would restore support for families of people with disabilities, including payments for caregiver hours. The Joint Budget Committee could strip those changes as they iron out a final version this week.
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