Becker, Sonnenberg begin session with full plates

    This week, Rep. Jon Becker of Fort Morgan and Senate President Pro Tem Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling will head back to the state Capitol full-time for the legislative session that begins Wednesday, Jan. 10.
    Both Republican lawmakers have full plates for the 120 days that ends on May 9.
    Becker’s priorities are simple: “Make sure we’re taking care of transportation.”
    December revenue forecasts from the governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting showed the state would have about $200 million more in revenue in 2018-19, and the governor responded on Jan. 3 by asking the Joint Budget Committee to direct $148 million to transportation.
    The extra dollars, according to OSPB, are due to increased revenue from individual income taxes, the result of passage of the federal Tax Cuts and Job Act, which President Donald Trump signed into law in late December 2017.
    Becker, however, cites several other factors that help: The economy is doing well, and the passage in 2017 of Senate Bill 17-267, which he and Sonnenberg co-sponsored. The measure converted the state’s hospital provider fee into an enterprise, a sort of government-owned business.
    The provider fee is a fee hospitals pay on the number of outpatient services provided and overnight patient stays. That money is pooled, matched with federal dollars, and then redistributed to hospitals to pay for uninsured care and low-income health care.
    The fee, however, counted under the state’s TABOR revenue limit, and according to SB 267 supporters, pushed the state over its revenue limit. By reclassifying the fee, those dollars no longer are applied to the revenue limit, leaving more room for state spending on things such as education and transportation.
    “SB 267 cleared up the room so that we could take care of transportation without costing the taxpayers another dime,” Becker said. “We have to take care of transportation, and not just along the Front Range.”
    One of the great failures of the 2017 session was an effort by the Senate president and speaker of the House to push through legislation that would have asked voters for an increase in state sales taxes in order to pay for about $30 billion in repairs to roads and bridges and to improve transportation infrastructure. But the measure never got out of the Senate.
    Becker said the passage of SB 267 means “we can do transportation without increasing sales taxes, and that can be done easily.”
 

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