By Marianne Goodland | Denver Gazette
The votes are in following House Democrats’ new process for determining which bills would pass, assuming the money is there.
The new process, as outlined by House and Senate Democrats in early April, replaces the “quadratic” voting system that a Denver District Court ruled in January is illegal.
Once the 2024-25 state budget headed back to the Joint Budget Committee, which came with a compromise version approved by both the House and Senate, lawmakers got to work voting on their priorities for the scant amount of money, relatively speaking, that they have to spend on new programs.
The “set-aside” from the Joint Budget Committee, the panel of lawmakers that drafts the state’s annual spending plan, is around $22 million, but some of that is already spoken for. It covers sunset bills that renew certain statutory programs that would otherwise expire.