House Appropriations advances Senate Bill 3 after debate over fiscal changes, background checks and implementation

The Colorado House Appropriations Committee voted 7-4 to send Senate Bill 3 to the Committee of the Whole after extended questioning over sharply changed fiscal notes and how the bill would be implemented.

Committee members homed in on two major drivers that altered earlier fiscal estimates: the removal of a planned fingerprint background-check process tied to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and shifting implementation responsibilities to Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW).

Representative Taggart said committee staff had compared fiscal notes and found “what in heaven's name happened? Because those are very significant changes on 1 bill,” referring to a March 3 fiscal estimate that showed roughly $4,000,000 in costs and a TABOR impact and a March 14 estimate that reduced costs to about $1,400,000 and removed the TABOR effect.

Sponsor Representative Bassenacker told the committee the difference resulted from judiciary-committee amendments that removed the CBI fingerprint background-check requirement and assigned implementation duties to CPW. “What we amended out of the bill was the fingerprint background check that CBI was going to need to implement,” Bassenacker said, adding that removing CBI from the process eliminated the revenue stream that would have been TABOR‑covered because CPW…