DENVER – A second state spending bill has been hijacked by politics, this time in the name of immigrants in the country illegally.
The Colorado House last weeky gave initial approval to a Department of Revenue spending bill that was amended to include funding for a driver’s license program for immigrants living in the country illegally.
The $166,000 needed to keep the program fully operational – already available through a $50.50 fee charged to applicants – was rejected earlier in the legislative session by Republicans on the Joint Budget Committee.
An attempt to restore funding through an amendment in the Senate to a Department of Revenue spending bill also failed.
House Democrats, however, appear poised to send the bill back to the Senate with the money for the program, though it is unlikely that Republicans who control the Senate would agree to the driver’s license funding. The House could take a final vote as early as Wednesday.
If the Senate sends the bill back to the House without the funding, Democrats would need to make a tough decision to let the spending bill pass without the driver’s license supplemental, or kill the entire bill, which would cost the department $2.3 million in supplemental funding for the current budget year.
“The supplementals are needed, because you need to provide additional services for expanded need in the state,” House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst of Boulder said Tuesday, suggesting the bill is too important to die over politics.
“There are all kinds of important things in that supplemental bill. It’s important that we pass it,” the Democrat said.
Services lost would include additional staff for looming budget refunds; marijuana-enforcement needs; and dollars for driver’s license hearings, including revocations related to DUIs.