COLORADO LEGISLATIVE STRATEGIES NEWSLETTER - Special Session

“I don’t make the rules, ma’am. I just think them up and write them down.”
– Eric Cartman, South Park
 
After a special session where procedural rules came into focus on multiple occasions, Eric Cartman’s perspective on rules felt especially appropriate to summarize the week. Because South Park has recently received criticism for the highly-anticipated new season focusing on politics, it’s easy to forget there once was a time when people understood that South Park was satire and offended everyone – regardless of political party or any other identifying characteristic for that matter. 
 
South Park is based on Fairplay, Colorado, which is a town in Park County. The show had humble beginnings, with the first episode being shot over 70 days using stop motion and construction paper in 1997. 
 
The creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, and have depicted the CU campus four times throughout the series. Colorado’s Capitol building has also appeared in seven episodes throughout the series. However, the most iconic appearance of a Colorado landmark came in the seventh season, in the masterpiece episode titled “Casa Bonita”.
 
The episode focuses on a real-life restaurant called Casa Bonita in Lakewood, Colorado. Over the years, Casa Bonita was always well-known by Colorado locals as a fun experience, but not-so-good food. When the restaurant went under during COVID, Matt Stone and Trey Parker purchased Casa Bonita, giving its tie to South Park. The restaurant reopened after COVID with much better food, and even has a shrine honoring Eric Cartman, to commemorate one of the best South Park episodes of all time. Now, Casa Bonita only books reservations six months out. 
 
During the special session, Democrats also seemed to honor Eric Cartman’s wisdom, keeping true to his quote that even if one doesn’t make the rules, one will still think them up and write them down.
 
Senate Appropriations Shuffle
 
As noted in the previous update, the General Assembly had been positioned for a showdown on artificial intelligence during the special session. On the Senate side, Majority Leader Rodriguez sponsored Senate Bill 4, and on the House side, Representative Lindstedt sponsored House Bill 1008 – both bills competing to address stakeholder issues stemming from 2024’s Senate Bill 205, also Rodriguez’s bill. Of the two introduced bills, Lindstedt’s bill was viewed as the more “business friendly” proposal.
 
When it was time for Senate Bill 4 was set to be heard in the Senate Appropriations committee, Rodriguez made major changes to the committee make up, to ensure his bill passed out of committee. Rodriguez added one more Democrat to the committee and took a Republican off, giving Democrats a 5-2 majority rather than the previous 4-3 majority. This called into question Senate procedural rules. Although it’s allowed, this is a highly unusual (and often frowned upon) action for the Majority Leader to take.
 
One of the members taken off the committee was Joint Budget Committee (JBC) Chair, Senator Bridges.. The bill ended up passing out of committee on a 4-3 vote, with Senator Amabile, one of the Senate sponsors of HB 1008, voting with Republicans against the bill.
 
Read more – Top Senate Democrat shuffles committee to overcome opposition to measure tweaking Colorado’s first-in-the-nation AI law
 
Coming to a Compromise
 
After working through the weekend and what was almost a deal during second reading late on Sunday night, the General Assembly returned to the Capitol on Monday morning without compromise on the artificial intelligence issue. By Monday night, Majority Leader Rodriguez had agreed to amend his bill down to simply an extension in the implementation timeline of Senate Bill 205 during third reading. This allowed for the bill to then make its way over to the House for committee and second reading late last night, and for a third reading vote in the House today. 
 
Although this doesn’t necessarily resolve concerns from Senate Bill 205 expressed by the technology and business community, this is certainly a huge win as the original implementation deadline was set for February 2026. 
 
Read more – Colorado lawmakers abandon special session effort to tweak AI law,will push back start date to June 2026
 
Bills Passed to Address the Budget Shortfall
 
The artificial intelligence issue certainly stole the show for most of the special session, but the legislature also passed five bills during the special session to address the state’s budget shortfall, which was the reason for a special session being called in the first place. 
 
Nonpartisan fiscal analysts have projected $253 million to be raised by the state for this fiscal year, and $315.6 million next fiscal year with the five bills passed during the special session. The $253 million for this year makes up roughly one-third of the state’s $783 million budget gap. In addition to that, whatever isn’t raised will come from the state’s reserves, which would reduce the current reserve level by about two percent, according to the Governor’s Office of State Budget and Planning (OSPB). The Governor also has the authority to make spending cuts. His budget experts will be meeting with the JBC on Thursday to present their plan on budget cuts.
 
Among the bills that passed to help alleviate the budget shortfall: House Bill 1001 would permanently limit people who make more than $500,000 per year from taking the federal business income tax deduction; House Bill 1002 addresses money held in foreign tax jurisdictions; House Bill 1003 eliminates a tax incentive for insurance companies with home offices; House Bill 1004 allows the state to sell tax credits to insurance companies and c-corps ; and House Bill 1005 eliminates a program for businesses to retain money in exchange for collecting sales taxes, commonly called the “vendor fee.” Finally, House Bill 1006 raises revenue for the Health Insurance Affordability Enterprise (HIAE) through the sale of insurance premium and income tax credits and a one-time, $10 million transfer from the Refinance Discretionary Account. 
 
Although there’s been some criticism around whether the legislature could be doing more to address the budget shortfall, for the time being leadership and top Democrats have vowed to revisit the budget situation during the regular session, saying the special session was “just the start” of many more cuts to come.
 
Read more – Democrats are nixing about $150M in tax breaks to address Colorado’s $750M budget hole. They could be doing more.
 
Censure of Former Legislator
 
The special session ended with fireworks, as one of the House’s final actions before adjourning was a censure vote against former Representative Armagost. As a reminder, Armagost resigned last week at the beginning of the special session to avoid a censure, although he had already announced plans to resign in September. This was another instance during the special session where procedural rules came into question, as to whether a former legislator could be censured.
 
Back in April, Armagost had taken a picture of Representative Zokaie without her knowledge and sent the picture in the House Republicans group chat. This prompted responses in the group chat talking about Zokaie’s clothing. The picture was leaked to the public in April and several anonymous accounts on Twitter picked it up, to which many more inappropriate comments about Representative Zokaie were made online.
 
Earlier this month, a story broke that Democrat leadership in the House reviewed security camera footage of the floor from around the time the picture was circulating social media, and found Armagost was responsible for taking the picture. On the first day of the special session, Democrats announced plans to bring a censure vote against Representative Armagost, and hinted at the possibility of a censure vote against Minority Leader Pugliese for mishandling the situation by allowing Armagost to continue to serve as chair of the House Workplace Harassment committee.
 
Today, House Resolution 1001 was brought to the House floor by Democrat leadership as a formal vote to censure Representative Armagost. The conversation was very emotional on both sides of the aisle, and the tension from the floor could be felt all the way out in the lobby. Members of the Senate also joined in the House as moral support for their respective parties.
 
Representative Zokaie spoke at the well first, sharing how the incident has impacted her and her family, particularly what was posted online. She also called the ordeal a “coordinated harassment campaign” by Republicans. Majority Leader Duran and Assistant Majority Leader Bacon followed with their own speeches, comparing the situation to domestic violence against women and reiterating the importance of respect for women in the workplace. For this reason, many of the Democrats wore purple to bring awareness to domestic violence.
 
Then, Minority Leader Pugliese gave a fiery speech defending herself and her caucus, saying the Democrats were undermining her character and integrity by accusing her of mishandling the situation. At one point in the discussion, Republicans also offered an amendment to make the resolution focus on encouraging the chamber as a whole to treat each other better. The amendment was not adopted, and the resolution to condemn former Representative Armagost’s actions passed 59-2 vote, with two Republicans voting against the resolution. 
 
Read more – In private group chat, GOP lawmakers made crude jokes about a Democratic colleague’s clothing
 
Read more – Democrats will debate resolution condemning former Rep. Ryan Armagost for photo scandal
 
What’s Next 
 
The legislature officially concluded their business today, with another special session in the books. The JBC is scheduled to meet on Thursday of this week for a presentation from OSPB on proposals for future cuts, as well as evaluating what’s left to address in the budget shortfall accounting for the bills passed during the special session. As conversations with the JBC are ongoing in coming weeks and months, this will largely shape the landscape for the regular session, beginning in January. Keep an eye out for updates on new developments from the JBC.
 
Have a good rest of the week.