This week, State economists will present an updated forecast on State revenues that are expected to result in major cuts to the State budget.

The talk has been that the forecast will show the State short $2 billion to $3 billion for the 2020-21 budget. It will be the largest cut in the State budget in history, easily dwarfing the recession years after 9/11 and the Great Recession.

And those cuts will come largely from about one-third of the State budget, the portion known as general fund. That’s revenue from individual corporate and income tax and sales taxes.

The State budget is made up of three parts, more or less equal: federal dollars, with Medicaid funding the largest chunk; general fund and cash funds, which are the fees that go to directly supporting state programs. That’s fees like those you pay at state parks, for example.

During the past week, the Joint Budget Committee, six members who write the State budget every year, have been pouring over the books, trying to find enough to cut from the budget that they won’t need deeper cuts.

But they also began looking at the areas where deeper cuts — to cover the bulk of that $3 billion shortfall — will come from.

In the first week of budget decisions, the JBC looked for balances in cash funds that could be transferred to the general fund and for cuts in the general fund portion of the budget. They also trimmed programs that have been authorized by lawmakers in more recent sessions.

What got cut: merit aid for college students, a frequent go-to in recession times. Colleges and universities have their own sources of merit aid, according to JBC staff analysts and the cut was $5 million.

Also cut from higher ed: the Colorado Kickstarter program, a 2019 law that puts $100 into a college savings account for every child born in Colorado beginning Feb. 18. That saves somewhere around $12 million, less any obligations from children born since the program went into effect.

Programs that cross higher ed and K-12 education, especially in teacher training, went by the wayside during the week. That includes the Grow Your Own Educator program, which was designed primarily for rural schools, but which has never gotten a single application, according to JBC analysists. That’s just over $1 million. Rural teacher incentive grants ($500,000) and retaining teachers grants ($2.5 million) also got cut.

Money for low-income students to take the Advanced Placement exams, at $280,000, also got cut.

State employees lost an expected three percent across the board raise for 2020-21, which saves the State $72 million. Salary increases for social workers, corrections officers and contract attorneys also got cut, to the tune of nearly $15 million.

By the end of the week, after sometimes emotional discussions, the committee came up with less than $1 billion in total cuts.

But JBC Chair and Representative Daneya Esgar, a Pueblo Democrat, explained that the big ticket cuts will wait until they see the forecast.

What got left on the table and is under consideration once the forecast comes in:

A $225 million balloon payment to the Public Employee’s Retirement Association, the State pension plan.

$220 million to fund full-day kindergarten. A signature priority for Governor Jared Polis, last year, the General Assembly authorized the State to pay for full-day kindergarten, which went into effect for the 2019-20 school year. Prior to 2019, the State covered about 60 percent of the cost of a full day, with parents picking up the rest or school districts paying for it out of property taxes.

Reinsurance: another 2019 law, the reinsurance program lowered the cost of health insurance premiums for individuals who buy health insurance in the individual market. The premium reductions averaged 18 percent statewide, with bigger reductions in rural communities. In 2020, the average decrease was expected to be 20 percent. On the Eastern Plains, the average drop in premiums was nearly 28 percent in 2019. But a second year of the program will cost the state $360 million. This is another signature priority, both for the governor and for Western Slope lawmakers, where the average drop in 2019 was 30 percent.

The Colorado Department of Transportation has a $50 million annual payment due in 2020-21, tied to 2017 legislation — Sustainability of Rural Colorado — that allowed the State to borrow against state assets, such as buildings, to fund road and highway repairs. The department has said it could cover that payment tout of its existing resources.

But what members of the JBC are most concerned about: furloughs and layoffs of State employees. When the committee began reviewing budgets, they were presented with options for “deep cuts,” across-the-board cuts of 10 or 20 percent. The committee didn’t impose those cuts, because that would mean layoffs or at least furloughs.

The only time that State employees have been furloughed was in 2009, when then-Gov. Bill Ritter ordered all State employees to take four days of unpaid leave late in the year.

The budget cut that Ritter was trying to address, during the height of the Great Recession, was $604 million. It also resulted in the closure of two State prisons, including the Fort Lyon facility in Bent County.

Due to the pending forecast, Democratic leaders of the General Assembly on Saturday announced they would postpone lawmakers’ return until Tuesday, May 26 to give the budget writers more time to figure out where to cut. But they failed to notify their Republican counterparts.

Senate Republican Minority Leader Chris Holbert of Parker said Saturday that "like many of you, we learned of the extended adjournment of the Colorado General Assembly through the media and online. We were not notified in advance."

Senate Republicans “have heard from constituents across the State who have rightly demanded that their voice be heard and that balance be restored in our State government,” Holbert said Saturday.