Colorado Senate president rebuffs legal opinion on hospital fee, road funding
Feb 16, 2016, 5:23pm MST
Ed Sealover Reporter Denver Business Journal
A new bipartisan legal opinion regarding the constitutionality of a plan to boost Colorado transportation funding has failed to move Republicans in the state Legislature on the issue.
That makes it appear increasingly likely that House and Senate leaders will be unable to agree on a solution to what Gov. John Hickenlooper has called one of the most pressing problems in this session.
Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman points on Jan. 6, 2015 to an oversized copy of a… more
Ed Sealover | Denver Business Journal
The plan involves excluding the state’s hospital provider fee from revenue limits set by the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, as a way to create more room in the general fund for transportation and education spending.
Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, said Tuesday that he gives no credence to an opinion issued last week by Jon Anderson and Trey Rogers, who served respectively as legal counsels for former Republican Gov. Bill Owens and former Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter.
The Anderson-Rogers opinion stated, in contrast to one issued in December by the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Legal Services (OLLS), that turning the hospital provider fee into an enterprise fund — thereby excluding it from TABOR’s terms — would be constitutional because the fee serves the business purpose of helping hospitals defray their cost of providing patient care.
Cadman, however, said that the only reason that the attorneys produced the opinion is because they were paid to do so, though he did not identify any groups that may have funded the effort. Continue reading