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)

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.