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Legislative discussion of road-funding tax and bonding heats up

Senate Bill 1, which is expected to be debated on the Senate floor Wednesday, would ask voters to approve such a bond sale on the November ballot.
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One day after a quarterly revenue forecast showed that Colorado legislators could have an extra $1.3 billion to spend next year, discussions are in high gearabout increasing transportation funding in the state.

State officials are considering ideas ranging from a gas-tax-hike ballot measure to a potential bipartisan compromise on a proposed bonding initiative that’s been stalled in the Senate.

Economists from Gov. John Hickenlooper’s Office of Planning and Budgeting and from the nonpartisan Legislative Council predicted Monday that Colorado’s booming economy will leave them with significantly more money for the 2018-19 fiscal-year budget than was predicted even three months ago. Hickenlooper followed that forecast by lawmakers for $500 million in new one-time spendingfor roads in transit for the fiscal year beginning on July 1 — more than three times the $148 million in new spending he sought in December.

But even that request continued to fall short of legislative Republicans’ session-long goal of setting aside $300 million on a recurring basis for transportation projects. The annual funding increase would be used to repay $3.5 million of bonds they would like to sell to expand some of the state’s most crowded sections of highways, including Interstate 25 north of Denver and Interstate 70 through the mountains.

Read more at the Denver Business Journal: http://bit.ly/2u77iKK

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