DENVER – Colorado’s $25.81 billion budget got it’s first painstaking hearing on the House floor Thursday as lawmakers fought last-minute political battles to do things like prevent the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment from implementing President Barack Obama’s legally entangled Clean Power Plan.

That issue has become a political football, and just because Democrats in the House put money back into the department overseeing air quality doesn’t mean Republicans won’t just strip it back out next week.

But the Clean Power Plan isn’t the only political game being played.

Democrats tried unsuccessfully to provide additional funding for inspectors of oil and gas operations and to add money for a homeless prevention program.

Although Colorado’s budget is almost $26 billion, state lawmakers really only hold the strings on about $8.69 billion in the general and cash funds. That money is extremely restricted, both by prior legislation and voter-approved amendments, leaving lawmakers little wiggle room to balance the budget.

State law requires lawmakers balance the budget every year and a bipartisan group of lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee work most of the year to accomplish the feat.

JBC members Rep. Millie Hamner, D-Dillon, and Rep. Bob Rankin, R-Carbondale, both said they were proud of the budget, which averted cuts included in earlier drafts of the budget.

Those members tried to stay out of the political battles and stand by the work of the committee.

Only two of 37 proposed changes to the budget passed Thursday.

One amendment came close to passing, and would have been an unexpected change, but in a case of true political theater, it was undone at the last minute.

Rep. Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, brought an amendment that would charge rent to a for-profit company operating job training programs in Colorado correctional facilities. Seven Democrats initially supported the Republican measure.

Becker estimated the rent his amendment would charge would generate about $1 million in the 2016-17 fiscal year. That money would go to fund a K-12 education rainy day fund.

Rep. Kevin Priola, R-Brighton, said he used to manage a greenhouse that competed with a Colorado Correctional Industries greenhouse program.

“I am an example of how these programs were able to undercut private-sector taxpayers who have not violated the law,” Priola said. “We should level the playing field.”

Rep. Daniel Kagan, D-Cherry Hills Village, urged his colleagues not to support the amendment.

“They are going to have to cut programs, cut back on the number of people who get to do these valuable job building, job training programs,” Kagan said. “You don’t get to pay rent of $1 million more in a vary narrow margin enterprise like CCI without cutting programs.”

He later came back with information that said the change would cost 100 inmates jobs and lawmakers were able to undo the amendment.

The long bill, House Bill 1405, passed on second reading Thursday in an informal voice vote. A formal recorded vote will likely be taken Friday. It will be considered in the Senate next week, where everything could be changed again, forcing conference committees to work out compromises between the two split Statehouse chambers.

Republicans tried to strip $3 million from the governor’s film industry incentives, $2.5 million from a program that provides long-acting reversible contraceptives to low-income and uninsured women, and $14 million for standardized tests given to public school children under the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Those all failed.

Democrats amended the budget bill in committee to restore about $8.5 million to the Air Pollution Control Division. The Joint Budget Committee was divided on providing funding for that department after Republican concerns about the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment moving forward with Obama’s Clean Power Plan weren’t answered.

“What we said was ‘until you can give us basic information we are not going to fund your department,” House Minority Leader Brian Delgrosso said. “I’m kind of confused. We heard our governor publicly came out and said we are going to plow ahead. Plowing ahead means you are doing something. … How much is that plowing ahead is costing us?”

Rep. Dave Young, a Democrat on the JBC, said no additional funding has been provided to the agency and cutting funding will hurt the department’s other important, work like issuing permits for heavy industrial operators.

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Contact Megan Schrader: 286-0644

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