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A legislative panel's finding that the state government needs an additional $8.5 billion a year to fully fund state services has left Republican lawmakers skeptical--suggesting that the jaw-dropping figure is a thinly veiled attempt at scaring the public into another round of tax and fee hikes.

The GOP legislators also are saying that the pleas by state agencies for more cash ultimately will be used as a pretext for undoing the state's popular, voter-enacted taxing and spending limits.

The eye-popping number came up in testimony at a hearing last week before the The Long-Term Fiscal Stability Commission. It reflects the amount that the administration of Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter claims would be needed by state agencies to provide the level of services Coloradans want. The administration's quest for cash includes $2.8 billion more each year for schools, $2.5 billion for highways and $750 million more for higher education.

"Good grief, their wish list is more than double the state's entire operating buget," exclaimed Assistant Senate Republican leader Greg Brophy, who represents the Senate GOP on the panel. "We can see where this is heading--toward trying to make the case for a slate of tax and fee hikes that will dwarf the $1 billion-plus in tax and fee hikes the administration and its legislative allies already imposed this year."

Leading voices in Colorado's General Assembly are pushing back at Gov. Bill Ritter's claim over the weekend that he bears little responsibility for dramatic growth in the state government's bureaucracy. The lawmakers say the claim won't wash with the public as unemployment hits near-record highs amid a crippling recession.

Ritter went on record in press accounts published Sunday downplaying his own role in adding some 4,400 positions to wide-ranging government agencies since taking office in 2007. The governor maintained that many of the added positions were out of his hands. The stance by the first-term Democrat drew a rebuke from key Capitol Hill Republicans who have had a ringside seat in the budget debate.

"The bureaucracy is not supposed to be on autopilot," Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, said today. "He's just adding insult to injury with his buck passing."

"For most of his tenure, there's supposedly been a hiring freeze in place," Harvey said. "That he's now quibbling over the specific numbers shows how badly he misses the point on the whole budget debate. To most people, a hiring freeze means no hiring at all."

Broomfield Republican Sen. Shawn Mitchell, who had helped press last spring for more spending reductions to a budget awash in red ink, charged Ritter with refusing to shoulder responsibility.

"Isn't he supposed to be the chief executive of this state?" Mitchell said, quipping, "Maybe they should give Bill Ritter the Nobel prize for voting 'present' on this huge expansion of state payroll during his tenure."

Already waylaid by the recession and one of the highest tax-and-fee schedules in the region, Colorado's struggling truckers now are being hamstrung by late fees slapped on their vehicles under legislation that the Ritter administration pushed through the 2009 General Assembly, a trucking industry representative said today.

Testifying at the Capitol before the Transportation Legislation Review Committee, Colorado Motor Carriers Association President Greg Fulton told the panel that a sweeping, $250 million fee hike on registering cars and trucks in the state yielded "unintended consequences": putting the chill on idled truckers trying to dig out of the economic slump.

"This penalizes folks who have been hard hit by the recession and have made a prudent and rational decision," Fulton said of often-small trucking firms that took their rigs off the road--their drivers already having been laid off amid economic doldrums--to spare them from thousands of dollars per truck in regisration fees and taxes. Another $25 to $100 in late fees per tractor and trailer not only is unfair but also stymies trucking firms' ability to bounce back.

The testimony girded Republicans on the committee, who with fellow GOP colleagues had unanimously opposed the so-called FASTER bill's fee hikes during the legislative session. It was passed by by ruling Democrats and signed by Gov. Riiter last spring.

"They want to fine these companies for putting people back to work," said Senate GOP Caucus Chair Mike Kopp, of Littleton, who sits on the transportation review committee.

GOP lawmakers challenged the mission today of a panel eyeing the state’s largest insurer for injured workers, and they dismissed talk of investigations and subpoenas as little more than ‘drama’ intended to dupe and distract the public.

The blunt assessment came after the first day of hearings by the Interim Committee to Study Issues Related to Pinnacol Assurance. The committee's creation several months ago, by ruling legislative Democrats, was surrounded by controversy after the majority party had been rebuffed in its attempts to raid Pinnacol’s reserve funds and use them to cover red ink in state spending programs earlier this year. Republicans say the new committee serves as little more than a pretext to lay groundwork for another swipe at the nonprofit insurer next year.

In a bid by legislative Republicans to add some balance to the committee's mission, some representatives from Pinnacol were added to the panel.

However, as reported in today's Denver Post, Aurora Democrat Sen. Morgan Carroll, who chairs the committee, on Tuesday raised the specter of a conflict of interest by the committee members from Pinnacol, and she pointed to the committee's potential use of subpoena power in what she referred to as "an investigation."

Committee Republicans waved off such talk as a smokescreen.

“It’s a study, not a legal proceeding. There’s not a hint of anything amiss at Pinnacol or any credible suggestion that anyone has done anything wrong," said the GOP's Sen. Ted Harvey, of Higlands Ranch.