DENVER — The fiscal picture for Colorado’s state government has somehow gotten even murkier — and potentially much worse.
Lawmakers walked into Thursday’s key economic forecasts pessimistic about what the reports would tell them about the state budget. They walked out of it with one forecast warning they now needed to close a $1.5 billion deficit in the next week or so, an increase over the $1 billion prediction from just a few days earlier. That does not account for some cuts the committee has proposed but not yet finalized.
“We’re doing our best to minimize harm, but the truth is it’s impossible to cut hundreds of millions of dollars year after year without impacting the priorities that Coloradans care about and core services for vulnerable people,” Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat on the Joint Budget Committee, said in a statement.
The economic forecasts released Thursday, one from nonpartisan legislative economists and the other from the governor’s office, are key documents for the Joint Budget Committee as it finalizes the state’s spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year. The forecasts give the committee the dollar figure it must budget to, with the legislators deciding which one to go with. These forecasts have massive divides on how much money the economists expect the state will pull in this current fiscal year and in the upcoming fiscal year.
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