November 17, 2010 Joint Budget Committee
Two days after the November general election the newly elected legislators that will comprise the 68th General Assembly met to conduct leadership elections. Senate Democrats voted to retain Sen. Brandon Shaffer as the President of the Senate. In the House, term limits and a change in partisan control required a new Speaker to be selected. Also determined that day were the members who would sit on the Joint Budget Committee for the next two years. I was honored to be elected alongside Sen. Mary Hodge to represent my caucus on the JBC.
When the new JBC held its first meeting a week later, my motion to elect Sen. Hodge as the chair of the JBC and Rep. Cheri Gerou as vice-chair was unanimously approved. One year from now those roles will be reversed and Rep. Gerou will become the chair.
The JBC, as its name suggests, is a joint committee comprised of members from both the House and Senate. Each chamber sends two members from the majority party and one member from the minority party to the JBC for a total of six members. With the Senate under Democratic control and the House now controlled by Republicans, this means the JBC has an equal number of members from each party. Bipartisanship will be the key to writing the state’s budget for the next two years.
The Joint Budget Committee meets in the Legislative Services Building, located across the street from the Capitol at 14th & Sherman. All six members have offices in this building adjacent to the committee’s meeting room. I started moving into my new office the Monday after the election and am now starting to feel settled in.
The symbolism of the JBC meeting in a building separate from the Capitol is apt – the committee’s process and rules are different from what goes on under the dome. The JBC doesn’t hear bills (but it does originate quite a few) or take public testimony. Instead we hear from budget analysts, economists and state agency staff. It sometimes seems a little lonely as compared to the hustle and bustle of a typical day in hallways of the Capitol.
Colorado’s budget process is largely driven by the framework of our state constitution. We have a balanced budget requirement, we must pass an annual appropriations bill each year that funds the ongoing operation of state government, and substantive legislation cannot be included in the annual “Long Bill.” State laws sets out deadlines for the executive branch to supply information and requests for the next year’s budget. The 120-day limit for the legislative session requires the JBC to begin its work in November in order to pass a Long Bill by the following spring.
We’ve spent the first week of JBC meetings receiving briefings from our staff on the executive budget request. These briefings are broken down by department and in some cases agencies or divisions within departments. The JBC staff briefs the committee on the programs operated by the department and the requests they’ve made for changes to ongoing appropriations of funding for their programs. Newly passed legislation (state or federal) that changes or adds to a department’s responsibility can prompt discussion of a budget proposal.
As the staff briefs the committee on budget requests and issues they’ve identified about a program or new legislation, we formulate an agenda for the next step of the process, which involves a hearing where leaders from the department or agency come before the committee to defend their budget request and respond to questions from the committee or our staff. Often the member of the Governor’s cabinet that heads up the department will come before the committee during these hearings, usually with their budget directors and senior staff backing them up. Sometimes we grill them, sometimes we pitch softballs or lavish praise, and sometimes we prod the department to be more proactive about serving the public, implementing changes or managing their budgets. It’s an interesting process.
These staff briefings and hearings with departments continue from November through mid-January, when the legislative session convenes. Once the session is underway, the JBC spends some time conferring with the other committees of the legislature about the budget requests for departments they oversee to get their perspective on the decisions that lie ahead. We then go back across the street and begin putting numbers on paper as we draft budget bills. “Supplemental appropriations” bills make mid-year adjustments to the current budget as it was set out in the previous year’s Long Bill. And once the current year’s budget is final, we have the base upon which the new Long Bill is built.
The deadline calendar requires the Long Bill to be introduced in approximately the fourth week of March. It generally takes two full weeks to move through the House and Senate, after which it invariably is referred to conference committee to iron out the differences between the houses. The JBC members comprise the conference committee for the Long Bill, which means the JBC usually puts the final version back into a form that resembles the bill they introduced in March.
Serving on the JBC is a lot of hard work, a lot of tedious attention to detail, and a lot of responsibility. The Governor’s budget request for fiscal year 2011-12 tops the $20 billion mark. The general fund only supplies about $7 billion of this amount , with the remaining amount coming from various “cash funds” and the federal government. Understanding how it all works and making it all balance is a huge challenge, but with six members dedicated to the task and an incredibly capable staff backing us up, the process seems to work quite well. I’ll be writing about it quite a bit for the next two years – I hope you’ll find it interesting, or at the very least, perhaps you’ll be glad to know who’s watching your tax dollars at work.
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