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)

More Cuts

These are the cuts Gov. Ritter is planning to make in order to rebalance the FY 2009-10 budget to the latest revenue forecast. There are a few notes after the spreadsheet that are important to understanding the HCPF numbers.

Department	FY 2009-10 GF (Long Bill)	Gov. Cuts (Balance to June Forecast)	Cuts as a Percent	Layoffs (Annualized)
Agriculture	$6,860,955	-$694,765	-10.1%	0.0
Corrections	$677,839,527	-$25,809,462	-3.8%	-29.3
Education	$3,239,416,000	-$33,022	0.0%	0.0
Governor and Energy Office	$14,283,355	-$1,105,650	-7.7%	-9.0
Health Care Policy & Financing	$1,587,903,164	-$457,136,848	-28.8%	-0.5
Higher Education	$660,575,732	-$80,935,058	-12.3%	0.0
Human Services	$670,638,807	-$19,913,782	-3.0%	-186.2
Judicial	$336,357,516	-$10,090,725	-3.0%	0.0
Labor and Employment	$0	$0	0.0%	0.0
Law	$10,008,042	-$300,241	-3.0%	0.0
Legislature	$35,162,475	-$1,054,874	-3.0%	0.0
Local Affairs	$11,889,613	-$778,013	-6.5%	0.0
Military and Veterans Affairs	$5,862,332	-$422,754	-7.2%	0.0
Natural Resources	$29,680,331	-$2,729,440	-9.2%	-6.3
Personnel and Administration	$6,291,404	-$271,294	-4.3%	-8.0
Public Health and Environment	$28,232,074	-$1,520,308	-5.4%	0.0
Public Safety	$83,212,852	-$2,159,794	-2.6%	-6.6
Regulatory Agencies	$1,666,729	-$189,549	-11.4%	-1.0
Revenue	$75,719,920	-$1,803,535	-2.4%	-19.7
State	$0	$0	0.0%	0.0
Transportation	$0	$0	0.0%	0.0
Treasury	$1,933,721	-$28,900	-1.5%	0.0
Total:	$7,483,534,549	-$606,978,014	-8.1%	-266.6

That $457 million cut for Health Care Policy and Financing isn't as big as it seems. Part of the federal ARRA program is giving states a higher match for the money we spend on Medicaid.

We put that money into hte budget as a GF cut. It is a cut in GF, but it's replaced with the federal money. (We could put the higher Medicaid match in the budget as revenue, but that would mask the fact that we'll have to replace it with GF when ARRA ends).

The ARRA part of the HCPF cut is $345.8 million. That means the actual cut to Medicaid is $111.3 million or 7%.

Steps to Balancing the Budget (2009-10)

The June revenue forecast from Leg Council showed that we would have to cut more spending to balance the FY2009-10 budget. In response, Governor Ritter started the process of reducing spending. Here are the general steps:

• June 22 - direct agencies to cut travel and some operational expenses
• June 25 - direct state agencies to develop plans to cut 10% from their budgets (due to OSPB by Julu 20)
  
• July 7 - OSPB sent specific cost reduction goals to agencies
• July 20 - OSPB reviews agency cost cutting plans
• Aug 18 - present cuts to JBC
• Aug 24 - deliver actual supplementals and other information to JBC
• Sept 1 - most cuts take effect
  

The most unkindest cut of all

The Joint Budget Committee today voted unanimously to cut and additional $300 million from state colleges and universities. This would be on top of nearly $100 million cut earlier in the year.


If the legislature agrees with the recommendation, the budget for higher education will be cut in half. It's unlikely that the state could keep open all of the existing colleges and universities on that amount of money.


We've spent the last month scraping the state budget for things to cut and for ways to add revenue. We have not found a way to avoid this terrible decision.

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