DENVER – The Colorado House and Senate have passed similar draft versions of a $26.8 billion budget that, by law, must be balanced.

To strike that balance, budget-writers, among other things, drastically cut transportation funding in hopes that lawmakers can deliver a short or long-term solution this session.

Two bills being heard Tuesday by Senate committees could deliver that solution. One calls for asking voters for a state sales tax increase to pay for road infrastructure. The other would issue highway bonds without a tax increase.

Colorado’s draft budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 cuts new transportation funding to $79 million – well short of the state transportation department’s annual maintenance bill, let alone a $9 billion wish list in new construction.

In March, the Democrat-led House passed legislation that, in part, would ask voters to finance $3.5 billion in bonds by raising the sales tax from 2.9 percent to 3.5 percent, or about 3½ cents on the dollar.

The state transportation department would get $375 million a year over 20 years for new roads under the bill, whose co-sponsors include House Speaker Crisanta Duran and Senate President Kevin Grantham.

Only four of 24 House Republicans voted for it. A tax hike is anathema for most. Others demanded to know exactly what would be paid for.

A second bill, being heard by the Senate Finance Committee, has numerous moving parts that could morph as they make their way through the Senate.

At heart, GOP Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg’s bill would raise $1.2 billion in roads bonds by essentially mortgaging certain state-owned buildings to private entities for the next 20 years. The bonds would pay for roads while the state gradually pays back the mortgage over that period.

About $350 million of roads spending would go to rural areas, or roughly 49 counties with populations of 50,000 or less.

To appease Republicans, the bill doesn’t call for a tax hike but does call for lowering how much Colorado’s government can take in in revenue under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. TABOR, as it’s known, is a 1992 constitutional amendment that requires voter approval for any tax hike as well as rebates of excess revenues.

To lure Democrats, Sonnenberg proposes exempting from TABOR payments that Colorado hospitals make to the state. Those payments return to the hospitals with federal matching grants that are vital to their operations, especially in rural areas. To balance the budget, however, the payments were cut drastically, and hospitals stand to lose more than $500 million.

There are more parts to Sonnenberg’s bill affecting schools. But it’s a dramatic twist in a yearslong stalemate between no-new-tax Republicans who insist that bonds can build roads and Democrats who argue the state cannot afford them.

Colorado hasn’t raised a state gasoline tax that’s supposed to pay for roads from 22 cents per gallon since 1991.