The Capital Development Committee unanimously advanced three supplemental funding requests — one for Colorado Mesa University's performing arts building and two for the Department of Human Services' forensic mental health facilities — after pointed questioning about a last-minute DHS request tied to an ongoing federal consent decree costing the state up to $12 million per year in fines.
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Madam Vice Chair (Story) challenged Senior Director Joseph directly: 'I'm a little bit baffled about why we are here at the 11th hour for a crisis situation that I think we've potentially known about for a long time, like today is the day that everything's due to JBC,' further pressing whether 'it just happened in November or October or September that suddenly you had this population of people that you had to address.' Senior Director Joseph responded that a new state law went into effect approximately a year prior that accelerated the release of permanently incompetent individuals, that in May 2025 'this wasn't on my bingo card,' and that the problem became apparent to the department beginning in the fall of 2025, with DHS notified about the hearing 'on Tuesday or so of this week.'
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“Literally, it's taken off the books. For the state has an obligation to restore individuals to competency. Next slide, please. So this is an important piece to understand the background of this supplemental request at the state hospitals, which, as you all know very well, we have two, One in Pueblo and one in Fort Logan. We admit every year a number of people needing those competency services. We are also under a federal lawsuit because we have not been able to admit to the state hospital quickly enough. And we have individuals who are waiting in jail, unable to. The trial's been stalled. They're not able to get into the state hospital yet, and they are waiting for their day in court.”
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Sign in to subscribeCapital Development committee will come to order. Ms. Forbes, please call the roll. Senators and Representatives Henriksen excused. Lindsay excused. Pelton B. Present. Winter here. Story here. And Mr. Chair here. Welcome. This morning, members, we have two items on our agend agenda. The first is the consideration of a regular supplemental request from Colorado Mesa University. Is Kent Marsh with us or online? You want to pull them up for us? Good morning. Yes, I am online. Good morning. Vice President Marsh. Do you want to start us off? Absolutely, it's my pleasure. I'm here this morning to do a couple of things. The first is to update the Capital Development committee on the progress of construction of performing arts. And we are in fact well underway and expect to be ready for the start of the summer semester. So we had it offline last summer, but we're going to be ready for the start of all of the summer camps that they have in our performing arts building. Really, the primary purpose of my conversation and my request this morning is to seek spending authority and increase in spending authority that would allow CMU to complete numerous deferred…
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