Democrats, who will control both legislative chambers, want to craft a bipartisan budget-balancing plan as quickly as possible. Party leaders, including House Speaker Andrew Romanoff and Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, invited their Republican counterparts to discuss possibilities on Monday afternoon. They also invited reporters, mere minutes before the meeting began, surprising the Republicans and leaving them to question whether they'd walked into a political trap. Democrats insisted they were only complying with state open meetings laws...

Romanoff said his only requirement was that the plan must eliminate the structural deficit, meaning legislators won't have to cut the budget again to balance it. But Mark Hillman, Senate minority leader, said later that's still up for discussion among Republicans... Hillman worried later that the meeting may have hurt negotiations.

Fitz-Gerald said voters gave Democrats a budgetary mandate in November, which they'd prefer to carry out with Republican support - but don't have to.