Joint Budget Committee

Wednesday, February 11, 2026·1h 38m·▶ Watch / Listen

The Joint Budget Committee completed figure-setting for the Department of Labor and Employment, advancing roughly $5.3 million in general fund reductions — a 15% cut — while tabling the most complex item: creation of a Special Purpose Authority to take over Colorado Disability Funding Committee functions, after a live disagreement between JBC staff and the JBC Director over TABOR cap implications emerged on the record.

Key Actions

·R1A/B – Colorado Disability Funding Committee Special Purpose AuthorityFailed

+ 9 more actions

Controversies

Whether to create the Colorado Disability Funding Committee Special Purpose Authority

Senator Kirkmeyer argued against proceeding, citing past experience with the UI enterprise taking 'three years to get that mess fixed' and expressing uncertainty whether the department 'really actually thought this all the way out,' while Senator [UNCLEAR SPELLING — 'Mobley'] and Representative Brown argued in favor, with Brown adding that appropriate guardrails and input from the disability community should be incorporated.

+ 4 more controversies

Notable Quotes

“My first year on the Joint Budget Committee, the Department of labor and Employment had some big grandiose idea about how we move all around our UI funds and do all these different things and create this enterprise. And it took us three years, three years to get that mess fixed. And I'm not sure that we have it fixed yet. So I don't know that they really actually thought this all the way out.”
Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer — Kirkmeyer was expressing skepticism about the department's proposal to create a new Special Purpose Authority to take over the Colorado Disability Funding Committee, drawing a parallel to a prior Department of Labor enterprise restructuring she said caused years of problems.

+ 2 more quotes

Votes

Statewide R6 – Eliminate Hospitality Education Grant (ProStart), ongoing reduction of approximately $426,000 general fund and 0.5 FTEPassed

No (2)Vice Chair Jeff Bridges, Representative Rick Taggart

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TranscriptPreview

All right. The Joint Budget Committee will come to order. We have figure setting for the Department of Labor and employment today, Ms. Kanagaraja. Thank you, Madam Chair. For the record, Phoebe Canagaraja, JBC Staff and I am presenting figure setting for the Department of Labor and Employment. I'll start the committee off at page two, which is the summary of staff recommendations. We'll just dive right in. There are nine requests to go through. The two set of R1 requests are going to be the most complicated and then everything else is a reduction for budget balancing. Yeah, unfortunately R1A is complicated and then it's a downhill from there. So actual summary write up start on page three in the table on page two. I'll just point you that staff recommendation results in a 15% reduction to the department's general fund of about 5.3 million. Most of that is coming through a temporary refinance through the department's R7 request of General fund into the Disability Support fund of about 4.1 million. We'll talk about it when we get to R7, but my projections say that that could last for about four fiscal years depending on how the disability support…

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