Joint Budget Committee

Tuesday, April 21, 2026·▶ Watch / Listen

The Joint Budget Committee spent an upon-adjournment session introducing two new bills — a Colorado Works/TANF overhaul and a community corrections budgeting measure — while working through a raft of long-bill conference committee decisions on the so-called orbital bills. Every motion cleared unanimously, but the debate over whether the TANF bill went further than the agreed two-year COLA pause and how much money could actually be swept from OIT drew the sharpest exchanges.

Key Actions

·tanf-colorado-worksNo vote

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Notable Quotes

“I find it amazing that the state said they couldn't get this information when almost all this information is probably within CBMs.”
Barbara Kirkmeyer — Kirkmeyer's skepticism that the department genuinely lacked county cost data drove the committee to add an RFI requiring the state to produce its own administrative cost figures.

+ 5 more quotes

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TranscriptPreview

It's. The Joint Budget Committee will come to order. Welcome back friends and colleagues. We have a number of items on the docket today. Director Harper. It looks like we are starting with tab one, consideration of potential legislation. Mr. Dermody. Thank you. Madam Chair. Tom Dermody, Joint Budget Committee Staff starting you off with potential legislation. Packet number 19. The first up is a bill draft we discussed. Excuse me. Or you had sent a draft on March 25 regarding the TANF program, also known as Colorado Works. There was substantial back and forth during figure setting between staff and the Department of Human Services on their proposal regarding TANF and TANF addressing the sustainability of tanf. So just by way of background, the department did a comeback based off of the committee's action. Staff and the department worked together to pull together essentially the committee's wishes for this bill going into that comeback. You approved the comeback. This is the draft that results from that comeback. Long story short, there are four primary elements in this draft. It pauses the COLA adjustments for TANF Basic Cash assistance for two years, after which point those will be adjusted based…

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