The Joint Budget Committee advanced a controversial extension and expansion of Colorado's clean drinking water in schools program — overruling staff's denial recommendation — while working through line-item detail and budget-balancing items for CDPHE and the Department of State. The sole contested vote was on the Department of State's Informix database migration, which passed 4-1 over Rep. Taggart's objection.
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Andrew McLear recommended denial, arguing the original $21 million investment fulfilled the state's commitment, that CDC and EPA data shows lower acute lead risk for high school students, and that denial would provide $10 million in general fund relief. [Senator Mabrey — UNCLEAR SPELLING] and Representative Brown both opposed the denial recommendation; the bill sponsor [UNCLEAR identity] argued the program was 'not scope creep but is merely completion of a program with one time dollars and that it is a health, life and safety issue.' Rep. Rick Taggart stated he would put the high school program 'on pause' if funds were insufficient, prioritizing child care.
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“It's absolutely, completely and totally insane, and I think a violation of, like, what it is that fees are supposed to be used for, and probably unconstitutional to be funding our elections with business licensing fees. And we should probably do something about that, which I've been asking for for many, many years, but have been rebuffed by this committee.”
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Sign in to subscribeIt's. Ready, Kim. All right. The joint budget committee will come to order. We are back at work on figure setting. Next we have the Department of Public Health and environment environmental divisions. Mr. McClure. Thank you, Madam Chair. Andrew McLear, JBC staff so I have the administration and environmental divisions. So I. I think just skipping right to page two in the table here you will see the different decision items and requests that I'm making. Recommendations on the unhighlighted prioritized decision items will be discussed in a later presentation by Kelly Shen. So not to bury the lead starting at the. At the bottom of page two, here is just a summary of the recommendations. So I'm recommending a denial of department request R2, which is a continuation of the clean water. The clean Drinking water in schools program. Recommending approval of R3, which is the closed landfill grant spending. I'm recommending approval of Ba1, the mobile home park water quality program reduction. And I'm recommending a partial approval of Ba2, which is the utility shortfall. In addition to this, on the bottom of page three is the beginning of a few staff initiated items. The first of…
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