The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee voted this afternoon to take $2 million from a cash fund in Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office, money he had wanted to keep and spend in his own agency.
On a 6-0 vote, the JBC decided to sweep $2 million from the fund. Former Secretary of State Bernie Buescher, a Democrat, last year had offered up $3.5 million in surplus money from the cash fund to help balance the state budget, and former Gov. Bill Ritter’s administration had built that money into its proposed 2011-12 budget. The state is facing at least a $1.1 billion shortfall.
But when Gessler, a Republican who defeated Buescher in November, took office, he reversed the transfer of the $3.5 million, saying he wanted to keep at least part of it to help fight business identity theft. He pointed out that the Secretary of State’s office receives no money from the state’s general fund and is funded almost entirely by fees imposed on businesses.
The money should stay in the office and be used to provide services to businesses, he argued. Some Democrats argued that many other business fee-generated cash funds across state government had also been swept.
Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, had called on Gessler to release at least part of the funds, saying it was “hard to imagine we’re going to have any surplus money that we can let sit around in a reserve fund somewhere.”
Lawmakers, though, still had the power to sweep the cash fund, and that’s just what JBC did today. Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver, moved that the committee sweep $3.5 million from the fund, but Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, offered a compromise to take just $2 million.
That motion passed unanimously, and the $2 million sweep will be added to an overall cash fund transfer bill JBC staff is now drafting.
In a statement to The Denver Post, Gessler said he saw the vote as at least a partial victory, since the JBC didn’t sweep all the money.
“This is a pretty good result,” Gessler said in the statement. “I’m glad the JBC recognized that ultimately business fees do not belong to the General Assembly, but to Colorado’s businesses.
“Unfortunately, our state still needs to get its financial house in order, rather than create backdoor taxes on Colorado businesses. If we want Colorado to have a sustainable budget and if we want our private sector to create jobs, then we need stop relying on one-time budget gimmicks.”