DENVER • Speaking in the shadow of a recession darkening Colorado’s economy, Gov. Bill Ritter delivered a somber state of the state speech on Thursday, warning of “tough choices” to come on state spending.

“We are feeling pain,” Ritter told the legislators, state officials and other dignitaries packed into the House chamber in the Capitol.

Although he asserted that “new energy economy” jobs, health care reforms and education initiatives over the past two years had left Colorado “better off than many other states,” Ritter said that “every place and every person in Colorado is, one way or another, affected by the downturn.”

“Families are making different decisions, setting different priorities, and sacrificing,” Ritter said. “Just like every family in Colorado, we’ll need to make tough choices here in the Capitol as well.”

Ritter offered few specifics on what those choices would be. But next week, his office is planning to recommend cuts of nearly $800 million – 10 percent of the budget – to repair a recession-induced shortfall in state revenues.

With constitutional, statutory and judicial mandates that spare K-12 education, transportation and prisons from the budget ax, the biggest unprotected area of the state budget is higher education. Legislators are warning of big budget cuts or tuition increases at state universities and colleges, or both.

The governor said federal economic-stimulus grants would soon put thousands of Coloradans to work repairing the state’s crumbling roads and bridges, and said that longer-term transportation financing would have to come through added fees and “other financing options.”

Ritter also said the budget crisis presented an opportunity “to address TABOR and the constitutional and statutory straitjacket that makes modern, sensible and value-based budgeting an impossibility.”

TABOR, or the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, is a formula adopted in 1992 that freezes state spending except to account for inflation and population growth.

Rep. Michael Merrifield, D-Colorado Springs, said the TABOR question boiled down to this: “Are you content to be 50th in the nation in spending on transportation and spending on education and spending on higher education?”

“I think people need to understand,” he added, “that we cannot move forward and compete with other states or other countries if we don’t make a greater investment in our services and our infrastructure.”

But the TABOR passage fell on deaf ears among Republican legislators.

“I don’t know if the governor’s been looking at polling lately that shows that 55 percent of the population still approve of TABOR,” said Rep. Amy Stephens, R-Monument.

“He’s on the wrong side of that issue.”

“We have less to cut than California, for example, because we’ve had the protections of TABOR,” said Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs. “If he’s trying to get rid of TABOR, I don’t think the people in the state of Colorado are going to support that at all.”

“It was the only disappointing piece of the speech,” said Mike May, R-Parker, the House minority leader. “Are there things we agree with and disagree with? There are. But what a diversion to take us down, to go back to their old whipping boy, TABOR.”

Republicans in the audience generally seemed to agree with Ritter’s assessment of the economic situation, and several GOP legislators said they were pleased with the governor’s remarks on education.

But Stephens said Ritter’s focus on the “new energy economy” amounted to “window dressing” when renewable energy comprises only 6 percent of the nation’s energy, while 84 percent is from oil and gas.

“Everyone in the Capitol has the same goal – to get the economy moving again,” said Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs. “But some of the things he proposed this morning are going to be new burdens on the economy. That’s going to be where the discussions are this session – are we promoting business or are we imposing new burdens?”

State Attorney General John Suthers said he heard less applause for Ritter than for any other state of the state speech he’s attended.

“I don’t think that’s a reflection on the delivery, I just think it’s a reflection of the lack of money,” said Suthers, a Colorado Springs Republican. “There’s not a whole lot to talk about.”

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Gazette reporter John Schroyer contributed to this report.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, right, shakes hands with Bernie Buescher, back left, the Colorado secretary of state-designate, and U.S. Senator-designate Michael Bennet, front left, as Ritter heads up to deliver the annual State of the State speech. Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS