Legislators have said budgeting in a time of recession is about prioritizing. If so, a House debate Monday showed that priorities this year include military-area schools and hospitals that care for the poorest Coloradans.

They do not, however, include charter schools.

After a five-hour discussion, the majority of the proposed $625 million budget-balancing package remains intact. Higher education and K-12 education are still set to lose a combined $95 million. In addition, $243 million will be taken from cash funds dedicated to other purposes and an emergency reserve fund will be cut in half.

But legislators made several preliminary changes involving lower sums of money in high-profile areas of interest.

The House, for example, took $1.8 million from a fund for cleaning Superfund sites to boost revenues for school districts seeing an influx of children of military members being transferred into the state. At the same time, it cut $5 million of the $10 million allocated for charter school construction.

House members also backed a move by Rep. Jim Riesberg, D-Greeley, to block a proposed cut of $1.5 million to reimburse hospitals that treat uninsured patients.

The House also approved a compromise plan in which 59,000 small businesses that make less than $10,345 in taxable sales each month will continue to be able to keep 3.3 percent of those revenues as a vendor's fee.

Larger businesses will have that fee reduced to 1.35 percent but will not have it capped at $5,000 a year, as it was in a previous iteration of the budget-balancing package.

Rural Coloradans will get a break after a lawmaker said he will move to kill a bill today that would have increased new well permits from $100 to $665.

Final votes on all of the contentious bills in the budget-balancing package are expected to be taken today.

In other legislative action

* A bill requiring seat belts on school buses is on its way to the House. Senate Bill 29, which requires school bus passengers to wear three-point shoulder and lap safety belt systems on any school bus purchased after June 30, 2010, passed the Senate on a 21-13 vote.

* The Senate delayed debate on outlawing plastic bags at large stores within three years (Senate Bill 156) until today.