Colorado Legislature gives final OK to next year’s $34.1 billion state budget

The Colorado Legislature on Friday gave final approval to the $34.1 billion state budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1.

SB21-205 needs only the signature of Gov. Jared Polis to become law. He has the authority to veto any line item in the bill, but state budget writers say they don’t expect him to use that power.

The budget calls for about $4 billion more in spending for the 2021-22  fiscal year compared to this one, a bump is attributed to an unexpectedly swift bounce-back for the state economy that briefly plunged in the early pandemic.

Before the bill received its final votes, Republicans in both chambers criticized the Joint Budget Committee for failing to accept an amendment to increase funding for police body cameras from $3 million to $6 million for next year.

That plan had received bipartisan support, and Senate Assistant Minority Leader John Cooke, a Weld County Republican, said he found it “really disturbing” that Democrats on the budget committee rejected the will of the broader legislature and cut out $2 million on Thursday.

Republicans tried to force the budget committee to reconsider that move, which would have held up the budget bill’s passage, but Democrats in the majority would not oblige.

Sen. Dominick Moreno, a Commerce City Democrat who chairs the budget committee, cited The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” in explaining why the committee rejected that extra $2 million. He said doing so would have required the committee to cut that amount from somewhere else in the budget.

“Welcome to the budgeting process, colleagues,” he said. “Tradeoffs are made.”

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