A mostly inexperienced group of lawmakers gathered Wednesday to start considering Gov. Bill Ritter’s proposed $19.1 billion budget, and the exiting Democratic governor urged the evenly split Joint Budget Committee to not be guided by partisanship.

“There was a lot of rhetoric during the recent campaigns, but when it comes to budgeting, everything must be on the table and the political posturing must come to an end,” Ritter told members of the Joint Budget Committee.

“This is about finding common ground, forging bipartisan solutions and doing what’s best for Colorado,” he said. “If ever there was a place where Mario Cuomo’s famous line about campaigning in poetry and governing in prose was true, it is here, with you, with this budget.”

Four of the six members of the JBC were just appointed to the panel to write the budget for the toughest year of the worst state budget crisis since the Great Depression. The state faces up to a $1.1 billion budget shortfall in the 2011-12 fiscal year.

Meanwhile, because Republicans have retaken the state House, there is now a 3-3 partisan split on the panel. GOP lawmakers have vowed to restore more than $100 million in tax breaks and incentives that the legislature, fully controlled by Democrats in the 2010 session, eliminated or suspended.

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