Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

Tobacco funds would go to health programs

Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News

Published February 6, 2007 at midnight

Text size  

More Colorado Government

More stories »

A bill directing some of the state's tobacco settlement money to health programs - including the University of Colorado's Health Sciences Center - won approval Monday in a Senate committee.

CU's health campus took the sharpest cuts during the state budget crisis in the early years of this decade. Funding is still $17 million below 2002 levels, President Hank Brown told the State, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.

Heavy tuition increases to offset the cuts are driving low-income students from the medical professions, and the campus is still among the most poorly funding in the nation, Brown said.

Under Senate Bill 97 by Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden, CU will get an estimated $11.9 million in the fiscal year starting July 1 and $17.4 million in each of the succeeding two years.

The boost comes from money tobacco companies agreed to pay Colorado and other states during the 1990s to settle claims arising from smoking's effects on health.

During the economic downturn, the state used about $20 million of the settlement for highway projects.

CU health science center Chancellor Roy Wilson cited a "moral rationale" to shift the money to health programs.

"A lot of people got very sick and a lot of people died because of tobacco," Wilson said.

Fitz-Gerald's bill passed 3-2, with all the Democrats in support and all the Republicans opposed.

Sen. Ron May, R-Colorado Springs, said the money is still needed for highways.

or 303-954-5209