2016 Winter Five Star Journal

LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
Split Legislature
remains after election
Governor’s budget request falls short of
fully-funding K-12 education
The Colorado General Assembly will convene on
Jan. 11, 2017 with a new set of members and a
split Legislature. The Republicans continue to
maintain control of the Senate on a narrow 18-
17 margin. The House Democrats will resume
the majority and picked up three seats in the
process. They now hold the House by a 37-28
margin.
The House and Senate Democratic and Republican
caucuses met on Nov. 10 to vote in their
new leadership. Representative Crisanta Duran
(D-Denver) was elected by the House Democratic
Caucus to lead as the next Speaker of the
House and Senator Kevin Grantham (R-Canon
City) was elected by the Senate Republican Caucus
to serve as President of the Senate.
The respective caucuses will develop their legislative
agendas over the coming weeks and at
that time, we will know more about any future
legislative initiatives on the education front.
Legislators have bill deadlines to meet in December
and will need to determine their own
priorities for bills they want to run. The newly-appointed
leadership will make committee
assignments over the next few weeks and there
will be changes to both the House and Senate
Education committees.
On Nov. 1, Governor Hickenlooper released
his budget request for fiscal year 2017-18. This
is an extremely challenging and unusual budget
year. The economy in Colorado is experiencing a
slowdown in General Fund tax revenue growth
and the September forecasts reflected lower expectations
for the future.
The Governor had a $500 million funding gap
to address in the request. As a result, the impact
to K-12 education statewide is as follows:
• The Negative Factor will increase by $45.4
million and is estimated to total $876.1 million.
While funding for K-12 education would
increase, this budget request only partially
funds inflation and enrollment growth; and
that’s the reason for the increase in the Negative
Factor.
• It would require an additional $52.17 per student
or $45.4 million to keep the Negative Factor
flat.
• The request increases per pupil funding by
$182.02 for a total of $7,606.68 (an increase of
2.45 percent).
• The State Education Fund is expected to have
a modest reserve of $104.6 million due to recent
transfers to reduce the Negative Factor
and support K-12 education.
• Under the proposal total program funding will
increase to $6.614 billion statewide.
There are two budget forecasts forthcoming
that will influence the final budget that the Joint
Budget Committee (JBC) will deliver to the Legislature
in March 2017. The Governor’s Office has
warned that if the next forecast is weak, additional
budgetary cuts will need to be taken. The
first forecast will be Dec. 20, 2016. The second
forecast will be delivered on March 20, 2017 and
will be the forecast that the JBC balances to. •
page 18 | Winter 2016