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Highway bonding plan gets bipartisan support — for 2019 ballot

Separate Republican amendments added clauses that the $500 million must be spent on ready-to-go highway expansion projects and that the state can add tolling lanes in these expansions only as last options required for fiscal or safety reasons.
Credit: Austin Humphreys/The Coloradoan
Traffic flows down Big Thompson Canyon on U.S. Highway 34. The road will be closed for nine months beginning Oct. 17

A plan to ask Colorado voters in November to approve $3.5 billion in bond sales for transportation needs took a detour late Wednesday.

DENVER BUSINESS JOURNAL - State Senate Democrats, teaming with two Republicans and the chamber’s lone unaffiliated member, amended the much-debated Senate Bill 1 to push back a ballot question regarding the bonding to 2019.

The move was made to allow one of two potential business-led tax-hike initiatives to go to the ballot first this year and to find language that could get the bill through the Democrat-majority House, where leaders have spoken against it since the start of the legislative session.

An amendment placed onto the bill by Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada, also decreases the annual amount set aside to repay bonds to $250 million and increases the Colorado Department of Transportation’s budget for the next fiscal year by $500 million. That mirrors a request made by Gov. John Hickenlooper Monday following a budget forecast predicting that the Legislature will have a $1.3 billion surplus to spend beginning on July 1.

Read more about this program at the Denver Business Journal.

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