The budget, past the headline

Before you look at the budget

What the state owes, and what it holds back.

Colorado is about to appropriate tens of billions of dollars. Whether that is prudent turns on three facts, and this page puts them first. The first is what the state has borrowed. The second is what it holds back for a bad year. The third is how much of this year’s revenue it already owes back to taxpayers. Every figure below comes from the state’s own records, and each one names the quantity it is.

What these figures are as of. These figures are not all from one moment. The reserve and the refund are projections. They rest on the March 2026 forecast by the Governor’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting. The Joint Budget Committee prints them in its Long Bill narrative of 7 April 2026. The debt is audited, and it is a year older. It is the state’s position at 30 June 2025, from the Annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

The reserve — Is the state keeping anything back?

Reserve projected at year end FACT

$2,174.1M

the total year-end General Fund reserve the state projects for FY 2026-27, including the $500 million held at PERA under S.B. 25-310 — a projection on the March 2026 forecast, not a balance anyone has audited · FY 2026-27

Reserve required FACT

$2,173.4M

the dollar amount statute requires the state to hold in FY 2026-27, quoted from the Joint Budget Committee’s own table rather than recomputed from the percentage beside it · FY 2026-27

Required share of the General Fund FACT

13.0%

the statutory reserve requirement as a percentage of General Fund appropriations, as House Bill 26-1363 sets it for FY 2025-26 and FY 2026-27 · FY 2026-27

Above the requirement in force FACT

$0.6M

how far the projected balance clears the 13.0% requirement House Bill 26-1363 put in place — a margin, not a surplus · FY 2026-27

Below the requirement that stood before FACT

$340.1M

how far the same projected balance falls short of the 15.0% requirement that was in force before House Bill 26-1363 lowered it · FY 2026-27

Reserve projected the year before FACT

$2,241.2M

the same projected total year-end reserve for FY 2025-26, the first of the two years the lower requirement covers · FY 2025-26

The reserve is money the state does not spend. It is there so a recession or a wildfire does not become a mid-year crisis. Colorado sets its own requirement by statute, and for these two years the legislature lowered it. House Bill 26-1363 cut it from 15.0% of General Fund appropriations to 13.0%, and the budget balances to the lower number.

That is worth reading twice. The projected balance does clear the requirement now in force. The margin is six hundred thousand dollars, on a requirement above two billion. Against the requirement that stood before the bill, the same projection falls short. Both sentences are true of one projection, which is why every figure here names the requirement it is measured against.

The debt — Has the state borrowed, and what does it owe?

Principal outstanding FACT

$11.47B

every dollar of principal still owed at 30 June 2025 — notes, revenue bonds and Certificates of Participation, plus leases and subscription arrangements — across the whole state government · FY 2024-25

Of that, money actually borrowed FACT

$10.82B

outstanding principal on notes, revenue bonds and Certificates of Participation alone, leaving out the leases and subscriptions the headline includes · FY 2024-25

Interest still to pay, over thirty-five years FACT

$5.30B

interest owed across the entire remaining life of the borrowing that already exists, scheduled out thirty-five years — a lifetime figure, never an annual one, and never added to the principal · FY 2024-25

Interest recorded in the year FACT

$0.47B

interest the state recorded as a cost during the year ended 30 June 2025 — interest only, so it is less than the state paid out, because it leaves out principal repaid · FY 2024-25

Debt service for the year ahead NOT PUBLISHED

—

Colorado publishes no statewide annual debt service. Its annual report schedules next year’s principal and interest in four separate tables and never adds them, so any single figure here would be our arithmetic under the state’s name.

Colorado cannot borrow the way most governments can. Its constitution allows general obligation debt in only three cases. One is buildings for state use. One is defending the state or the country in time of war. The third is an unforeseen revenue shortfall. So none of what follows is backed by the power to tax.

The certificates are secured by buildings and vehicles, and the revenue bonds by pledges of future revenue. The report says the state’s other forms of borrowing are small beside those two. About $6.6 billion of the principal sits in the state’s business-type activities rather than with the agencies this budget funds. Most of those revenue bonds are the higher-education institutions’, and the report says so.

Note which number is which. The headline includes leases and subscription arrangements. Accounting rules put those on the balance sheet, and nobody would call them borrowing.

Money owed back to taxpayers — How much of this money does the state have to give back?

Forecast refund, before the package bills FACT

$711.1M

the FY 2026-27 TABOR refund obligation on the March 2026 forecast, before the bills in the budget package that reduce it — stated identically in two separate tables of the same document · FY 2026-27

Projected to remain, after them FACT

$417.8M

what the Joint Budget Committee projects will still be refunded once the budget-package bills take effect, paid out in the following year — quoted as the total its table prints, not summed from the lines above it · FY 2026-27

Cut by budget-package bills FACT

$110.7M

the reduction in the FY 2026-27 refund obligation the narrative attributes to the budget-package bills, published as the estimate it calls itself · FY 2026-27

A later forecast, by a different body FACT

$329.9M

the same FY 2026-27 refund as Legislative Council Staff forecast it in June 2026, two months after the budget document beside it — a projected $483.0 million surplus less the $153.1 million adjustment under House Bill 26-1419 · FY 2026-27

Under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, revenue above a constitutional cap is refunded rather than spent. An appropriation is money the legislature sets aside to spend. A refund obligation is the opposite of one, and it is never added to one on this site.

Read the three forecasts as three moments, not as one answer. In March the state forecast a refund before this budget’s bills. In April the Joint Budget Committee projected what would remain after them. In June, Legislative Council Staff forecast the year again and came out lower still. All three are official and none of them is wrong. A forecast is a claim about a year that has not happened yet.

A fiscal year’s surplus is refunded in the year after. So whatever this figure settles at reaches taxpayers in FY 2027-28. The last year with an audited, certified refund is FY 2024-25.

FY27 pressure points

What shaped this budget, as the Joint Budget Committee (JBC) states it in its own narrative FACT

Medicaid: medical forecast caseload & cost, all funds+$1.86B
Medicaid: provider rates the 2.0% cut is $222.0M of it−$289.0M
Medicaid: prior supplementals not carried forward−$305.5M
Year-end reserve, against the 15% rule it replaced$340.1M
K-12: Kids Matter Account the narrative's own estimate+$213.3M
TABOR refund obligation, reduced by package bills$110.7M

The first three are changes inside Health Care Policy & Financing, measured against its adjusted FY 2025-26 appropriation — the money that department was given for last year, after the mid-year changes the legislature made to it. They are not statewide figures, and are never added to the budget above. Budget Package & Long Bill Narrative, April 7, 2026

How Colorado's mix compares to all states

Spending mix by function, Colorado vs. the 50-state average FACT

This is a different measure from the $100 receipt above, on purpose — self-reported expenditures for fiscal 2025 (estimated), not Colorado's own enacted FY 2026-27 appropriation. Read entirely from one publisher on both sides, so nothing here compares two different bases. NASBO 2025 State Expenditure Report, Table 4.

Where Colorado's mix differs most

One bar per function: Colorado's share of its own spending minus the 50-state average share, in percentage points. Right of the line is a bigger share of the budget than the average state spends; left is a smaller one. CALC Each bar is the two shares printed beside it subtracted; nothing here is a figure the table below does not also print.

Medicaid

34%

30.7%

+3.3 pts

K-12 education

17%

18.2%

−1.2 pts

Higher education

15.9%

8.8%

+7.1 pts

Transportation

4.5%

7.8%

−3.3 pts

Corrections

2.7%

2.5%

+0.2 pts

All other

26%

31.9%

−5.9 pts

Function	Colorado	All states	Difference
Medicaid	34%	30.7%	+3.3 pts
K-12 education	17%	18.2%	−1.2 pts
Higher education	15.9%	8.8%	+7.1 pts
Transportation	4.5%	7.8%	−3.3 pts
Corrections	2.7%	2.5%	+0.2 pts
All other	26%	31.9%	−5.9 pts

"All other" is a bigger, coarser bucket than the receipt's — NASBO has no Human Services or Courts category of its own; both fall in here nationally.

What the pension fund is short

Colorado PERA runs the pension for state, school, and local government workers. Both figures below are on PERA's funding basis, valued at 31 December 2025.

Unfunded liability, funding basis FACT

$30.1B

What PERA has promised in future pensions, beyond what it holds to pay for it.

Funded ratio, funding basis FACT

69.1%

Assets as a share of that promise. PERA holds about 69 cents of every dollar owed.

This is not the yearly PERA payment. The state also sends PERA a fixed sum every year, listed under “Already spoken for” above. That payment is money leaving this year's budget. The figures here are the whole gap behind it, built up over decades. Adding the two together would count one promise twice.

PERA adds five separate trust funds to reach these numbers, and says so itself. Its report calls the combined figure “for informational purposes.” Each fund's assets, it says, “cannot be used by another fund.” The School Division is 66.1% funded and the Judicial Division is 90.3%, on the same date. So 69.1% describes none of the five.

FACT Source: Colorado PERA 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report · for the year ended December 31, 2025 · ingested & validated Aug 22, 2026

What a day costs

Per-person daily rates, printed in the bill itself.

Community corrections (residential)$71.48

Local jails & Bent/Crowley prisons$77.16

Other in-state private prisons$115.74

A halfway-house bed costs less than a jail bed on the state's own printed rates. Residents "may be charged a daily subsistence fee up to $20.00."