The Colorado Joint Budget Committee is a six-member, year-round legislative committee that writes the state’s annual spending plan. It reviews every executive and judicial branch budget request, holds hearings with each department, votes line by line on how much money each program gets, and produces the general appropriations bill known as the Long Bill. Its work sits inside the spending limits Colorado voters wrote into the constitution through the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which gives the committee less revenue flexibility than its counterparts in most other states.
Who Sits on the Committee
State law fixes the membership at six: the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, one majority-party and one minority-party member from that committee, and the same three-seat combination from the Senate Appropriations Committee.1Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 2, Article 3, Section 2-3-201 – Joint Budget Committee Established Splitting the seats evenly between chambers keeps either house from dominating, and the guaranteed minority seats keep a single party from writing the budget alone.
The committee elects its own chair and vice-chair, one from each chamber, and the two swap roles between the first and second regular sessions of each General Assembly.1Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Title 2, Article 3, Section 2-3-201 – Joint Budget Committee Established Incoming members can be designated before a new General Assembly convenes, so the committee keeps working across election cycles rather than pausing.
What the Committee Produces
The committee’s central product is the Long Bill, Colorado’s general appropriations act. It funds nearly every state department in a single piece of legislation, sets staffing levels, and allocates money across hundreds of line items. Once the committee finishes drafting the bill, its members carry it on the floor, defend the numbers, and negotiate amendments until both chambers pass identical versions.
To get there, the committee holds hearings on each agency’s spending plan and can demand detailed financial information from departments.2Colorado General Assembly. The Budget Process Starting in fiscal year 2020–21, the committee has also been required to apply zero-based budgeting to two principal departments each year, cycling through every major department at least once per decade. That approach makes an agency justify its entire budget from the ground up instead of asking for last year’s number plus an increase.
Nonpartisan JBC staff do much of the analytical work. Each analyst is assigned specific departments, writes briefing documents, and recommends funding levels to the committee.3Colorado General Assembly. Joint Budget Committee Staff Staff also produce the Long Bill Narrative, the public document that explains the reasoning behind each funding decision.4Colorado General Assembly. FY 2026-27 Budget Package and Long Bill Narrative If you want to know why a program’s funding moved up or down, the narrative is where the reasoning actually lives; the Long Bill itself reads more like a spreadsheet in legislative form.
The Annual Cycle
The budget year begins on November 1, when the Governor and other elected officials submit prioritized budget requests for the coming fiscal year.5Colorado General Assembly. Explore the Colorado State Budget Staff start taking the proposals apart immediately, and through late fall and winter the committee hears from department leaders defending existing programs and pitching new ones.
Figure Setting
After the hearings, the committee moves into figure setting, the phase where the budget is actually decided. Members vote on every individual appropriation and on the number of full-time employees each department will have, which adds up to hundreds of separate votes over weeks of meetings.6Colorado Fiscal Institute. The Long Journey of the Long Bill The public can watch figure setting but cannot testify during it.
The committee also handles mid-course corrections for the current fiscal year. In January, departments submit supplemental appropriation requests to cover unforeseen costs or shortfalls, and staff prepare supplemental bills, typically introduced in early February.2Colorado General Assembly. The Budget Process
How TABOR Shapes the Numbers
The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, in the Colorado Constitution since 1992, caps annual growth in state spending at the prior year’s inflation plus population growth.7Justia Law. Colorado Constitution Article 10 – Section 20, The Taxpayers Bill of Rights Revenue collected above that cap has to be refunded to taxpayers the following year. TABOR also requires voter approval for any new tax or tax rate increase, so the committee cannot simply raise revenue to close a gap.
In 2005, voters passed Referendum C, which allows the state to retain and spend revenue up to a higher adjusted cap grown from the FY 2007–08 revenue base by inflation plus population growth. Only revenue above that adjusted cap triggers mandatory refunds.8Colorado General Assembly. TABOR A good share of the committee’s work each year is calibrating the budget to stay inside these limits. When the economy runs hot and revenue surges past the cap, the committee has to plan around the refund obligation instead of putting the surplus into new programs. Refunds come out of the General Fund, so every dollar returned is a dollar not available to appropriate.9Colorado Department of Revenue. TABOR
Revenue Forecasts the Committee Relies On
Spending decisions depend on projections from Legislative Council Staff, a separate nonpartisan office that publishes economic and revenue forecasts four times a year, in March, June, September, and December.10Colorado General Assembly. Forecasting The forecasts estimate what the state will actually collect, and the General Assembly uses them to set budget levels, track spending during the year, and calculate how much excess revenue must be refunded under TABOR.
The December forecast lands just as the committee is deep into hearings and approaching figure setting, which makes it the one most likely to change decisions in real time. If it shows revenue dropping, the committee may have to rework assumptions it had been using for months. The March forecast arrives after the Long Bill is usually taking shape, and a divergence from December can force late-session scrambling.
After the Long Bill Passes
When the Long Bill clears both chambers in identical form, it goes to the Governor. Colorado’s constitution gives the Governor line-item veto power over appropriations bills, so the Governor can strike individual spending provisions while signing the rest into law.11Justia Law. Colorado Constitution Article 4 – Section 12, Governor May Veto Items in Appropriation Bills If the General Assembly is still in session, vetoed items go back to the originating chamber, where lawmakers can try to override. The whole process has to finish before the fiscal year starts on July 1.
How to Follow the Process
JBC hearings, department briefings, and figure-setting sessions are open to the public at the State Capitol and the Legislative Services Building in Denver. For anyone not attending in person, the Colorado General Assembly website links to live video on the Colorado Channel and live audio feeds for both chambers.12Colorado General Assembly. Watch and Listen The same site hosts archived briefing documents, the Long Bill Narrative, and meeting schedules, so you can track the budget from the November 1 request deadline through final passage.