{"id":113367,"date":"2015-04-09T17:49:17","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T23:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/budget-talks-begin-in-house\/"},"modified":"2015-04-09T17:49:17","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T23:49:17","slug":"budget-talks-begin-in-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/budget-talks-begin-in-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Budget talks begin in House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado lawmakers in the House began formal discussions Wednesday on the state\u2019s $25 billion budget.<\/span>Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 The Colorado House on Wednesday debated several amendments to the $25 billion state budget, revisiting issues such as birth control and education.<\/p>\n

The budget must still receive a final vote by the House \u2013 expected Thursday \u2013 before likely heading to a conference committee to work on a compromise between the House and Senate versions. Spending would be for the upcoming fiscal year that begins in July.<\/p>\n

Ten amendments were passed by the House, more than the three passed by the Senate when the \u201cLong Bill\u201d was in that chamber last week.<\/p>\n

Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, continued his quest to secure funding for birth control, with an amendment that would add $5 million to the Family Planning Program, administered by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.<\/p>\n

The Democratic-controlled House advanced the amendment.<\/p>\n

Coram has also proposed a separate bill that would add $5 million to a program that provides the intrauterine devices, or IUDs, to low-income young women, in an effort to extend the program that has resulted in a 40 percent drop in teen pregnancies. But that bill faces a loss in the Republican-controlled Senate.<\/p>\n

Even though funding passed in the budget, it could be removed during continuing negotiations with the Senate in the days ahead.<\/p>\n

The House also passed an amendment that would add $1 million for film incentives, an issue close to Southwest Colorado, where there is a long history of filmmaking. Quentin Tarantino is currently filming in Telluride.<\/p>\n

Several other amendments, however, failed during the budget debate, including efforts to eliminate funding for certain controversial student assessments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt that the pendulum has swung way too far in favor of testing,\u201d said Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio.<\/p>\n

Budget writers pointed out that several other bills are moving through the Legislature in an effort to reduce testing.<\/p>\n

There was also a proposal to address a looming $20-million raid of severance tax dollars, which are provided to local governments to address impacts from natural-gas and oil development. Budget writers say they need the money to meet refund obligations expected to taxpayers.<\/p>\n

Water issues also lost during the debate, including a measure by Coram that would have added $5 million to combat phreatophytes, a plant that consumes a significant amount of water. Brown then attempted an amendment that would have added $190,000 to study possible water storage areas along the South Platte River.<\/p>\n

Brown was also irked that his colleagues did not advance an amendment that would have provided $15 million for transportation projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must start to take this seriously,\u201d Brown said. \u201cIt is time that we took some leadership and we did something about highways in Colorado.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Funding for birth control and film incentives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[94,13,12],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-113367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-state-budget-and-tax"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113367"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=113367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}