The Joint Budget Committee advanced Department of Natural Resources figure-setting items for fiscal year 2026-27, approving new FTE for mine safety, state land board lease compliance, tribal consultation, and new state parks expansion, while deferring severance tax transfer decisions to the March forecast. The hearing featured repeated objections from Sen. Kirkmeyer over how severance tax operational funds are spent across DNR, and ended with a contested wolf reporting debate that required multiple comeback items.
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Sen. Kirkmeyer argued the position is outside DNR's bailiwick, that History Colorado and the State Historic Preservation Board already have this responsibility, and that work would still need to be handed off to History Colorado anyway, suggesting an additional staff person at History Colorado would be more appropriate. Kyle Brown countered that no specific person is dedicated to this work and that a dedicated liaison to sovereign governments is important for managing historic sites on state lands. Judy Amabile expressed support for the position, noting the Southern Ute Tribe supports the request and that History Colorado is slow to respond, but ultimately voted no alongside Kirkmeyer. The motion passed 3-2 over staff's recommendation of denial.
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“I don't know why the Colorado Water Conservation Board is paid out of here, why they aren't paid out of the perpetual fund, because that's where all the broader projects are in the first place. And so I don't know why we're taking like 1.2 million out of the operational dollars. And the same with parks and the species conservation and the aquatic nuisance. Those don't really relate to the severance tax dollars and where they're coming from, but they can also be paid for out of the department's wild either their wildlife cash fund, their Parks and Outdoor recreation cash fund.”
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Sign in to subscribeThe Joint Budget Committee will come to order. We are figure setting on the Department of natural resources with Ms. Shen. Thank you, Madam Chair. Kelly Shen, JVC staff first, I just want to point out I have a memo for you all that has two additional line items that I left out of the figure setting document, but they relate to common policies and you're deciding on those somewhere else. So I won't talk about those too much, but for completeness, they're there. Okay, to the actual document then. I think if we start on page one. So it has a summary of staff recommendations. And I think just the thing I want to point out on the table here is that if you look at all the decision items, none of them have any general fund increase and there's a slight general fund reduction. And then all the general fund changes are coming from common policies kind of towards the bottom of the table. I'm not going to go into each one right now. I think in terms of buckets of changes, the one I just wanted to highlight was technical adjustments, just so you all are aware.…
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