Easy as Pie: The Colorado Budget in Charts

You've probably heard that most of Colorado's General Fund budget goes to just 5 (out of 22) departments. Fascinating, huh? Well it gets even more interesting if you start slicing up the budget different ways. Especially when you factor in the way we've been balancing the budget.

For instance, this year we're cutting costs by furloughing state employees. Furloughs are a tricky way to save money.

Think about prisons. Correctional officers can't just take a day off and leave the inmates on the honor system. Not living by the honor system is what led them to become inmates in the first place.

If we furlough one guard, another has to come in (on overtime) to take his or her place. No savings there.

That's why the governor said right up front that the furloughs wouldn't apply to all state employees. He did say that, and in some detail. Apparently one investigative reporter wasn't paying attention.

In any case, the furloughs don't apply to agencies that have to stay staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Those agencies are Corrections (prisons), Human Services (mental health institutes, e.g.) and Public Safety (State Patrol).

Judicial, by the way, is a separate branch of government and its ability to fulough judges, for instance, is limited by the constitution.

Here's how Personal Services look divided up by department:

(click on the chart to make it bigger)

You can see why some state employees are irritated.  Once you take Corrections, Human Services and Public Safety (and to some extent, Judicial) out of the mix, the furloughs fall pretty heavily on less than a quarter of all state employees.

Judicial Branch JBC Briefing

Decision Items

Budget and Staff Cuts

The Judicial Dept. has a plan to cut 5% from it's budget and 7.5% of it's staff in FY 2010-11:

• Trial Courts: $7,407,811 and 154.0 FTE
• Probation: $6,942,701 and 94.0 FTE
• Supreme Court and Court of Appeals: $682,031 and 10.0 FTE
• Integrated Information Services: $536,214 and 5.0 FTE
• Courts Administration: $317,206 and 3.0 FTE
• Health, Life and Dental benefits: $1,469,600

Delay New Judges

HB 07-1054 created a number of new trial court judgeships around the state. The final 15 new judges were supposed to start this year FY 2009-10. Judicial delayed them until this year and is now proposing another delay. It wants to fill 14 of the judgeships on January 1, 2011 and the 15^th on July 1, 2011.

Courthouse Security Grants

The Department wants to spend an additional $675,000 from the Court Security Cash Fund on court security grants to counties.

Public Defender Cut

The Public Defender wants to make some one-time cuts to its budget:

• waiting four months to hire 40.1 FTE (needed to handle additional cases from the 28 new judges added in (FY 2007-08 and FY 2008-09)
• delay hiring 34.5 FTE that would match 15 new judges this year (Judicial is delaying the 15 new judges)
• cut operating expenses ($241,319)
• cut automation plan ($221,433)
• cut mandated costs ($182,672)
• cut capital outlay ($176,732)

Federal Money

Colorado's getting a lot of money from the federal government under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Just how much is hard to say, because it's coming in a variety of ways and depends on various conditions.

Figuring out how it will help us balance our state budget is a little easier. The money that helps us do that is coming in two forms:

• State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (Stabilization money)

• Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP or "Medicaid match")

Stabilization Fund

We're getting $760 million in State Fiscal Stabilization Funding. Of that amount, 82% has to go to education. Of the 82%, some goes to K-12 and some goes to higher education; the governor decides how much goes to each. His decision is outlined in the table below.

FMAP

The increased Medicaid match gets factored into budget as a savings. Most Medicaid spending is mandatory, so when we get a higher federal match, we can spend less money from the General Fund.

We get the increased match for:

• 3 quarters in 2008-09

• 4 quarters in 2009-10

• 2 quarters in 2010-11

The amount of the federal match increase depends on the state's unemployment rate. For the current year it works out to a 40-60 match: for each 40 cents we put in, the feds contribute 60 cents. We won't know for a while what match we'll get for next year.

Source/Use	Use	Fiscal Year	Amount	Who Decides
Stabilization		2008-09 2009-10 2010-11	$760 million	Congress/President
	Education		$486 million	82% of the total, by federal law
	K-12	2009-10	$149 million	Governor's Decision
		2010-11	$337 million	Governor's Decision
	Higher Ed		$135 million	Governor's Decision
		2008-09	$30 million	Governor's Decision
		2009-10	$53 million	Governor's Decision
		2010-11	$53 million	Governor's Decision
	Other		$138 million	Governor Deciding
FMAP	Medicaid
		2008-09	$196 million	3 quarters
		2009-10	$304 million	4 quarters
		2010-11	$150 million	2 quarters

There's a lot of other federal money that's coming to Colorado through ARRA. Here's some of it. (The online version has links to more information).

Source/Use	Use	Fiscal Year	Amount	Notes
Transportation			$500 million
	CDOT		$329 million	Map of ARRA projects
	Denver Regional Council of Governments		$55.9 million
	Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments		$13.1 million
	North Front Range MPO		$5.8 million
	Transit		$103 million	Distribution of transit money
Unemployment Benefits & Job Training			$174 million
Food Stamps & Food			$178 million
Housing Help			$68 million
Additional Money for Education			$319 million
Water Projects			$66 million
Public Safety			$35 million

Rags to Riches

It's rare, especially these days, that a Negative Supplemental turns positive. But it just happened.

"Negative Supplemental" isn't just the name of this blog, it's the JBC's oxymoronic term for a change to the state budget that takes money away from a department.

When we passed the Long Bill last year (2008), we noted $445.5 million in Federal Funds for the Dept. of Transportation's (CDOT) Construction, Maintenance and Operations line. (The total amount in the line, including $814 million from the HUTF, was $1.3 billion).

This year, CDOT sent over a negative supplemental to cut $88.6 million from the line. It wanted to make clear that the federal government was stiffing us for that much money. The federal highway fund was going broke and U.S. DOT was taking back earlier promises of money.

The department was just making a point. The legislature doesn't have any control how CDOT spends the money, so the line in the budget is just for information purposes. Changing it would, therefore, be just for informational purposes.

And the information got interesting. Between the time CDOT submitted the supplemental and when we got to it, Congress changed from being tight-fisted to downright profligate. The feds sent CDOT a surprise gift of just over $400 million.

Our staff changed the negative number to a plus $315 million. (the new money minus the earlier cut).

Food Stamp Penalty

The JBC just approved a $2.8 million penalty payment to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. It's hurts, but it's also a relief.

When the state suddenly switched to a new, and unfinished, computer system in 2004, a lot of people lost benefits to which they were entitled. It led to outrage, a lawsuit, and an overcorrection.

The computer system was the infamous CBMS -- the Colorado Benefits Management System. Years in the making, years in the fixing, and years in the mopping up after all of the trouble.

Back in ought-4, Stung by the criticism, the state erred on the side of generosity and, when in doubt, handed out food stamps. That led to people getting benefits who weren't entitled to them.

When the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture later audited us, it stuck to the rules and imposed sanctions. To date, we've handed over nearly $10.5 million in repayments for overpayments and interest. The JBC today OKed another $2.8 million in repayments. It should mark the end of our penance to the USDA.

Vacancy Savings

The JBC and the Executive Branch have struggled for years over how to handle vacancy savings. That's the money that builds up over time in a department's Personal Services line. The JBC considers that excess money that should return to the budgeting process for appropriation. Departments claim it's not as much as the JBC thinks, and they wind up spending it on things that legislature should, but doesn't appropriate money for.

Usually, the JBC imposes an across-the-board cut to every department's Personal Services line to sweep out accumulated vacancy savings. The amount clawed back has ranged from 0.2% to 2.5% of the department's Personal Services line. It's step six in the mysterious Option 8 method of calculating Personal Services.

Why Vacancy Savings Accumulate
Vacancy savings are the result of unfilled jobs. Say the legislature approves a new job in a department and appropriates $30,000 money to pay for it. The state's fiscal year starts July 1st, but the department department has to write a job description, publish the job, receive applications and interview candidates before actually hiring the person. That takes three months.

The legislature appropriated $30,000 to pay a year's salary, but the new employee is only going to work nine months. The department has saved $7,500 by not paying anyone for the first three months.

The same thing can happen when someone quits or retires. Retiring can generate some big savings. Let's say a 30-year veteran employee retires. The job stays open for a couple of months, then the department hires someone new, but at the bottom of the pay scale instead of the top. The department saves money from the vacancy, then saves even more by paying a lower salary to the new employee.

Departments with a lot of employees and a lot of turnover can build up considerable sums of money in their budgets. That's money we might want to appropriate for something else.

Why They Don't
Of course the departments have a different view of the situation. Take the retiring senior employee scenario. The department will acknowledge the difference between the senior salary and the starting salary, but argue that the money doesn't accumulate.

First, they'll say, they have to pay for the retiring employees unused vacation and sick leave. That will eat up part of the savings. Then, they'll point out that losing a senior employee costs them a lot of accumulated knowledge. To minimize the effect of that, they'll hire the new employee before the existing employee actually leaves to allow time for training and mentoring. All of that, they say, is more likely to leave them in the hole rather than sitting on excess cash.

Those are the general arguments. Each department has it's own specific reasons why we shouldn't try to take back vacancy savings. The general opinion among departments is that taking back vacancy savings is an arbitrary cut imposed by the JBC to free up money for other things.

Saving the Savings - Their View
This year OSPB tried to do away with the across-the-board Personal Services reductions. It argued that after years of reclaimed "vacancy savings" departments had lost so much Personal Services money that they don't have the minimum amount they need to do their jobs.

Saving the Savings - Our View
The JBC responded by imposing a 1% across-the-board reduction and waiting to see what departments came back with requests for exemptions. Applied to every department, the 1% clawback would have brought in $12 million ($7 million GF).

Negotiations
All of them asked for exemptions, via an OSPB Personal Services comeback.

Human Services said the 1% reduction would force them to hold open 31 jobs, leaving places like the Mental Health Instiute in Pueblo and the Wheat Ridge Regional Center dangeroulsy understaffed.

Corrections argued that most of the employees they lost last year were in their first five years on the job. That means the new employees hired to replace them will be earning about the same salary. And while the positions are empty, someone will be earning overtime to cover the shift. The department said it's already operating at or below minimum staffing requirements and the clawback would eliminate another 87 employees.

OSPB argued that it's Budget Balancing Package of negative supplementals already took out vacancy savings, so the additional 1% was both hurting departments and discouraging them from volunteering cuts to account for open positions.

Truce
This year the JBC relented. OSPB had some good arguments -- especially since we were reclaiming a lot of Personal Services money from the hiring freeze.

The issue isn't resolved, though. The state constitution prohibits the legislature from telling the governor how many people to hire; we just control how much is in the budget. That means truing up the Personal Services budgets with the amount actually paid as salaries will alway be a cat-and- mouse game between the legislature and the executive branch.

Regional Centers

The Regional Centers serve people who can't live in the community, even with support. In general, they serve people with developmental disabilities who also have:

• a history of sex offenses
• severe behavioral or psychological issues
• severe medical problems
  

Many of the people in the RCs would otherwise be in prison.

The Regional Centers

Colorado has 3 regional centers. They're in:

• Grand Junction
• Wheat Ridge
• Pueblo

The Regional Centers offer two kinds of services:

• Institutional services called Intermediate Care Facilities for the Mentally Retarded (ICFs/MR)
• state-operated group homes that serve 4-6 people

All three of the centers have state-operated group homes. Grand Junction and Wheat Ridge also have institutional ICF/MR facilities.

High-needs Patients

The Department measures capacity, the number of people it can serve in Regional Services, in "beds." For licensing purposes, the beds in Regional Centers fall into different categories:

• Home- and Community-Based Medicaid waiver (HCBS-DD) (295 of these beds)
• Intermediate Care Facility for the Mentally Retarded (ICF/MR) (108 beds)

Over the past few years, the level of services required for people at the centers has gone up. That's forcing the Departent to adjust its staffing ratio (the number of staff per patient) to the more severe patients.

No one knows for sure why we suddenly have so many people with severe problems. It spiked in the Spring of 2007 and has stayed high ever since. It may just be a statistical anomaly.

They're concentrated at the Regional Centers partially because it's hard to keep them in the community and partially because of changes in policy:

• Since April 2003, the regional centers have used the following admissions criteria:

• extremely high needs requiring very specialized professional medical support services
• extremely high needs due to challenging behaviors
• pose significant community safety risks to others and require a secure setting

• Since April of 2008 the Regional Centers have required CCBs to remove someone from a center in order to send a new person in, which means the CCBs have been swapping lower-need patients for higher-need patients.

Regardless of the reasons, the Regional Centers have a larger number of people who need intensive services. Normal staffing is 3-to-1; three patients per employee. Some high-need patients require 1-to-1 supervision 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

One-to-one staffing for one patient requires 5.4 full time employees; that's 3 people per 24-hour day over 7 days, plus reserve staff to cover sick/vacation days.

Adjusting the Staffing Ratio

The Regional Centers are trying to adjust their staffing ratios to match the new needs. They're doing it in three ways:

• increasing the number of staff
• reducing the number of patients
• converting existing beds to ICF/MR and building new ICF/MR facilities
  

This year the Department is asking for 43 new employees. Over five years, it intends to reduce the number of patients in the Regional Centers from 403 to 307.

Opposition to the Plan

The ARC of Colorado says effects of the Department's plan are "intolerable.

Increasing the staffing level at the Regional Centers by reducing the number of patients they accept means turning away people. That leads to an obvious question: what's happening to people who would otherwise be in the regional centers?

Prison is one obvious alternative. The ARC of Colorado says at least a dozen people are behind bars because they can't get into a regional center. People with behavioral problems often break the law, repeatedly. Without proper care, they wind up in a cycle of increasingly-long stints in jail or prison. It's an uncomfortable fact the putting high-need disabled people in prison is cheaper than caring for them in a regional center.

Others will wind up in hospitals. The ARC says it knows about two such cases already. That's not a good situation for the people with disabilities, and it puts unnecessary pressure on the health care system.

DHS says to get the right staffing ratio while keeping the same number of beds available would take 200 new employees. That would cost -- ballpark -- about $7 million.

The Governor is recommending that we spend $6 million this year to reduce the DD wait list. We could put some, or all, of that money into staffing the regional centers. It's a tough choice. Spending themoney on community services adds services to hundreds of people; spending it on regional centers would help far fewer.

Construction Freeze

"No, really, we've been working on this
already-started project for, like, ever."If you saw department directors or university presidents running around with shovels today, here's why: we're delaying the start of any new capital construction projects (new meaning not started by Oct. 1st) while we assess the state's financial situation. That puts the pressure on the get projects into the "started" category.

Governor Ritter announced the freeze today. It applies to $75 million worth of projects in the FY 2008-09 budget that haven't started and aren't necessary for public health and safety.

A lot of projects are built in phases which means they'll shut down after the current phase is completed. Projects that are already underway or were funded in previous years' budgets will continue. So will controlled maintenance projects.

The projects are officially delayed until January 31st of 2009. Department directors and higher ed CEOs can ask OSPB for an exception to the freeze.

Here's a list of the delayed projects:

Agency	Title	Cost
UCCS	Science/Engineering Building	$7,000,000
FLC	Berndt Hall Reconstruction	$15,699,453
CSU-Fort Collins	Clark Building	$2,000,000
CU-Boulder	Ekeley Renovation	$11,559,536
CU-Boulder	Ketchum	$8,435,946
CSM	Hall of Justice Demo/Classrooms	$3,516,697
PCC	Learning Center	$2,971,482
DMVA	Grand Junction Readiness Center	$3,994,432
Human Services	CMHIFL Cottage A/C	$1,806,035
Human Services	Kipling Village Remodel	$400,340
UNC	Butler Hancock Interior	$3,000,000
CSU-Pueblo	Academic Resource Center	$2,797,436
CSM	Brown Hall Addition	$2,000,000
CNCC	Craig Academic Center	$1,990,056
Corrections	Fort Lyon Expansion	$7,162,494

For a more detailed look at the capital projects, click here.

Hiring Freeze

The state isn't going to be hiring new employees while we figure out how much the financial meltdown is going to lower state revenues.

Gov. Ritter announced the freeze today. It technically takes effect on Oct. 1, but it applies to any jobs that haven't been offered and accepted by Sept 29th.

No General-Funded and Cash-Funded positions can be filled unless OSPB grants an exemption.

The freeze doesn't apply essential personnel including jobs critical to protecting health, life and safety.

The Governor's order only applies to the executive branch, but other parts of the state will probably go along to some extent. Other parts are those run by independently-elected officers, like the Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Treasurer, the Judiciary and Higher Education.

State Employee Raises

Most Colorado state employees will get raises ranging from 3.25% to just over 7% this year (that's the state fiscal year which starts July 1st).

The raises are based on the type of job and the employee's performance. Employees who do their jobs well will get a salary survey adjustment plus a performance pay increase of 1%.

The actual raises are based on an employee's occupational group. Here's the range:

• ENFORCEMENT & PROTECTIVE SERVICES: 3.69%
• Trooper Subgroup: 7.12%
• FINANCIAL SERVICES: 5.06%
• HEALTH CARE SERVICES (includes Medical): 4.18%
• LABOR, TRADES & CRAFTS: 3.33%
• ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT & RELATED: 4.43%
• PROFESSIONAL SERVICES (TEACHERS): 5.13%
• PHYSICAL SCIENCES & ENGINEERING: 3.25%
  

Exceptional employees will get a 2% performance pay bonus on top of the base increase. The performance pay bonus is non-base-building and will be paid in a lump sum.

State employees' are rated based on their performance. The rating system has 3 levels.

• Level 1 employees get no salary increase.
  
• Level 2 employees get salary survey and performance pay
• Level 3 employees get salary survey, performance pay plus the performance pay bonus

Bad News

America's economy is tanking and it's taking Colorado with it. The good news is that Colorado is doing a bit better than other states. The bad news is that we're still hurting. How bad?

Over the next five years, it cuts nearly $500 million from our General Fund and $200 million from Cash Funds. In one sense, nothing has actually changed. It just means that we're now predicting we'll have less money than we were predicting a few months ago.

By we, I mean the legislature's economists and the governor's economists. Their predictions are in the Legislative Council and OSPB revenue forecasts. They both came out today and they mostly agree on the numbers. (Not that it matters -- they're both projections. Some amount of money will actually come it and it won't be the amount in either projection).

The forecast pretty much wipes our capital construction spending. That's the money we put into new buildings and equipment and some maintenance on existing buildings and equipment.

The forecast cuts capital in the current pending to about $45 million for next year, then eliminates it for the following years. If you want to see the effect of that, look at the list of projects the Capital Development Committee has come up with. The CDC has proposed funding projects down to line 35 (the numbers on the far left are the CDC priority. The next column is the OSPB priority). The $45 million we have now would cut the list at line 17, though we could probably stretch it through 18.

That's not the likeliest thing to happen. The CDC is meeting to reprioritize the list in a way that reflects the new reality. Or new expected reality.

That's the most immediate effect of the new forecast, but it might not be the worst. The $500 million dollar change comes from a 1.3% adjustment to the revenue projection. That's not much, especially when you consider the accuracy of economic forecasts.

Legislative Council Economist Mike Mauer warned that more bad news could easily eat into our SB-1 transfer to transportation and even our GF under the 6% limit.

When money comes into our general fund it first gets set aside in a reserve account. After that's filled, it goes into what we generally think of as the general fund, the money we spend running the state. That GF is capped by TABOR at 6% over the previous years GF. If enough money comes in to let the GF grow by 6%, any excess goes to transportation, what we call the SB-1 transfer. That transfer is capped at around $250 million.

What's next in line for money? We used to call it “excess general fund reserve.” It was a good name, because it implied that the money was just padding our savings account.

In 2002 the legislature passed HB-1310. That essentially spent any excess general fund reserve. It divides whatever money is there 1/3^rd to capital construction and 2/3rds to highways.

It's that last pot of money we're losing now. But it wouldn't take much to drain money from SB-1 and the main GF account.

Higher Education Funding

State Contribution
We're adding $50 million to our budget for colleges and universities this year and another $20 million for financial aid. The money will help schools keep good faculty, maintain their labs, buildings and equipment and help hold down costs down for students. This year we're using a new way of distributing the money. About half of it goes to helping schools with the general increase in their costs; things like salaries, benefits and utilities. That means each schools General Fund revenue will go up by at least 2.2%

The rest of the money will help each college or university move closer to the state funding similar schools around the country get.

Tuition
Colorado's colleges and universities are still a bargain. They offer a top-notch education and low tuition. Here's an example. This chart compares the cost of going to CU-Boulder with the cost of going to comparable universities around the country:

The tuition data is from the CollegeBoard.

It's the same situation for nearly all of our higher ed institutions. Their tuition is low compared to their peers in other states.

But our low tuition still buys good quality. Here's how CU stacks up in the U.S. News rankings:

Rank	University
44	University of Texas -- Austin
75	Indiana University -- Bloomington
79	University of Colorado -- Boulder
85	University of Kansas
85	Iowa State University
91	University of Missouri -- Columbia
91	University of Nebraska -- Lincoln
96	University of Massachusetts -- Amherst
112	Florida State University

The JBC authorized resident undergraduate tuition increases of 9.5% for research universities, 7.5% for state colleges and 5.5% for community colleges. Those are caps. The schools don't have to increase tuition.

For the research universities, CU, CSU, Mines & UNC, tuition can't go up more than 5% for in-state students with financial need.

A substantial portion of the tuition increases will go toward financial aid, helping to offset the expense for many students.

Financial Aid
We're adding more than $10 million in financial aid aimed at the students who need it the most. It includes a general increase in need-based aid, restoring work-study funding to it's pre-budget crisis level and doubling the size of our pre-collegiate grant program. It's a big increase, but we have a long way to go before we catch up to where we used to be.

Need-Based Aid
The JBC approved a $7,270,600 increase in need-based grants. This money goes to both graduate and undergraduate students attending public and some private schools Colorado. To get the grants, students have to prove that they need the financial help. In 2006, nearly 29,000 students got grants; the average amount of the grants was just over $1,500.

Studies show that students who work part-time on campus do better in school than students who don't.

Institutional Aid
Most colleges and universities offer a substantial amount of financial aid to students using money from their own budgets. They have to put more than 2% of the money get get from tuition increases into financial aid.

Special Programs
Two specialized schools -- CU's medical school and CSU's veterinary school -- have been especially hard hit by the state's tight budgets. They never got much funding and the budget cuts pushed them to the bottom ranks of med and vet schools in the country. This year we're trying to help help them a bit.

CU Health Sciences Center
We're adding $1.5 million to the HSC to make up for the lack of GF support and help ensure that we're training enough doctors and nurses for Colorado.

College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
CSU serves as the main veterinary program for most of the Rocky Mountain West. It's consistently a national leader in ved med and biosciences despite getting far less state support than similar programs in other states.


Want more information on our Higher Ed budget? Click here.

New Plan

The JBC agreed to let DPA switch $1.3 million in capital construction money from plans for a new office building to plans for the overall Capitol Complex. That plan, the Capital Complex Master Plan, will eventually layout thousands of square feet of office space in downtown Denver. .

A year ago we appropriated $1.7 million for a new mixed-use office building. The building was going to have stores on the first floor, state offices above and an attached parking garage.

It was supposed to go on an L-shaped site that stretches between Lincoln and Sherman, between Colfax and 16th. Right now there's a parking lot on the Lincoln side and an empty lot where a parking garage used to be on Sherman (the garage is still standing in the image from Google maps).

The state would issue COPs to pay for the project. The money was for planning and design, COPs were going to pay for construction. Rent from the store fronts and parking fees were going to help pay off the COPs.

DPA spent a little over $300,000 planning the project when a bigger issue came up.

Problems with the state courts building sparked the issue. That's the upside-down-U-shaped building on 14th Street between Lincoln and Broadway. It may have been a sleek design when it was built, but it's not very practical today. For one thing, the bulk of the books and files in the building have to be kept at the ends because the unsupported middle can't support the weight. The design of the overall site makes security difficult.

The odd design also leaves a lot of unused space on the lot. That's becoming a bigger problem as the courts expand and have to lease space in other buildings. The other end of the lot is home to the Colorado History Museum. The museum has its own problems. The sloped shape of the building limits the useable space. A lot of the space that is available is underground and subject to water leaks. It's also getting cramped; as the state's history grows, artifacts accumulate.

The Judicial Dept. hired the Urban Land Institute (ULI) to recommend a new design for the site. The ULI suggested moving the museum somewhere else and putting up a new 660,000 sq. ft. building for the Judicial Department. The Judicial Dept. can pay for the new building from court fees; it can even help pay to move the museum. The problem is finding a new place to put the museum. That's a separate story.

This little subplot plays out within the bigger story of the state's use of land in downtown Denver. We lease space all over -- more than half a million square feet. We pay a wide range of rents. Departments have to grab additional space when it's available, then let it sit empty until they need it. Sometimes, when they need more room they can't find it near their existing offices.

With the new administration, there's a new spirit of cooperation among the state departments. That's opening up opportunities for a more efficient and better designed Capitol Complex. The Capitol Complex Master Plan will examine the needs of all departments, find the most efficient way of grouping them, then build to meet their needs.

The reason for the rush is the growing need to plan the way we use space in the Capitol Complex. Departments are outgrowing their office space, lease rates are going up and state-owned buildings are getting run down. We've seen how things work out when we push ahead without a plan.

DPA estimates it will take a year or so to finish the plan, but that it will have enough information to make a progress report during the 2009 legislative session.