Weighing conflicting funding priorities

Right now, the focus is on maintaining the meals program’s near-term solvency and avoiding cuts to other state programs to pay for it.

“I know voters want this, but they also want state government to do all the other things they’ve asked us to do, like paying for K-12, making a fair contribution to higher education, environmental protection, paying for our courts and such,” Bird said. “When people vote for new benefits, I know it doesn’t mean that we want less of these other things.”

Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Brighton Republican who serves on the budget committee, said she wouldn’t support tapping into the state’s general fund because that would mean a de facto cut for other state programs, from Medicaid to the Department of Corrections. She called on the Department of Education to wrangle more federal dollars and to operate the program within its means.

“When this was going through, the voters weren’t told this could cost general fund money,” Kirkmeyer said.

“They were told this would cover the costs of healthy meals for every kid in school. And it doesn’t cover it.”

U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen championed the healthy school meals program while serving in the state Senate. Now in Congress, the Democrat says she’s working to increase and expand the federal reimbursement program for school meals. She highlighted a provision in President Joe Biden’s budget proposal that would put more money into a key funding source for school meal reimbursements.

The voter-approved program has “helped thousands of students and schools across Colorado, and we need to do everything we can to ensure it can continue to get meals to the kids who need them,” Pettersen said in a statement.

The state needs to meet promises it makes to voters — and it also should take greater care to ensure “the numbers work” for measures the legislature puts on the ballot, said state Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat.

“We need to sort of right-size the program or figure out other sustainable revenue sources,” he said. “But it clearly can’t be something that, every single year, we just have to put an additional tens of millions of dollars in it to do what the initial measure said it would do. We have to figure out a more sustainable path.”