COLORADO LEGISLATIVE STRATEGIES NEWSLETTER

Introduction
Every day is the Super Bowl for some bill or someone at the Capitol. With every bill there are winners and losers. When a bill is up all eyes are on it. And when it comes to the budget, the numbers are big. 
This year’s Super Bowl is between Kansas City and Philadelphia (gross) but at least there are commercials and halftime. All commercial time slots have been sold out for months, with most costing $7 million per 30 second ad and the final slots sold costing a record $8 million. 
Last year CBS raked in an estimated $695 million in total ad revenue; so even if FOX decided to give all of the ad revenue they make this year to the cause of the Colorado state budget deficit, the budget would still face steep cuts. 
It goes from the millions to the billions when it comes to betting on the big game. Last year it was estimated that 68 million people wagered over $23 billion on the game, and this year it is expected to be even higher.
Maybe next year the Joint Budget Committee can do some figure setting on prop bets to balance the budget. 
Here’s the news from the Capitol this week to know before you start your Super Bowl weekend. 
News
The General Assembly has officially entered the second month of session, and committees are in full swing. After a slow start to the week, the Capitol saw lots of action take place throughout the rest of the week.

On Wednesday, thousands of protestors gathered at the Capitol building as part of a nationwide demonstration against the Trump Administration. The demonstrations were organized through a grassroots effort in which protests were to take place at state Capitol buildings in all 50 states on Wednesday. In Colorado, the State Patrol estimated the crowd to be around 4,000 people at the beginning of the protest, which lasted until about 8 P.M. Wednesday night. 
Read more – Thousands gather at Colorado Capitol as part of nationwide protests against Trump policies
On Thursday, floorwork in the House took much longer than anticipated, which pushed morning committee meetings into the afternoon, and afternoon committees into the early evening. Bills that were the focus of debate included House Bill 1084, which removes gendered language in Title 35 of Colorado Revised Statutes, and House Bill 1027, which updates disease control statutes. The minority even took the step of having a bill read at length for a while. 
When the House finally wrapped up floor work on Thursday afternoon, the House Education committee took action on House Bill 1041. The bill deals with “name, image, and likeness” (NIL) contracts for collegiate athletes. The committee originally heard testimony on the bill last week but laid the bill over for action because of opposition from media and press organizations over transparency. However, the bill passed on a 9-4 vote with bipartisan opposition and support. 
Read more – House bill to allow Colorado’s public universities to compensate student-athletes passes committee 
Also on Thursday evening, the House Business Affairs and Labor committee considered House Bill 1010, which builds on price gouging legislation from previous years. Currently, price gouging is prohibited in Colorado during a declared emergency. This bill would expand on that by prohibiting a business from increasing the cost of a product by more than 10 percent at any time, not just during a declared emergency. Although the sponsors added a few amendments in an attempt to ease some concerns from the business community, the bill is still viewed to be problematic. The bill passed on a 7-6 vote and is headed to the House floor for second reading debate next. 
Read more – Is a 10% consumer-goods price hike gouging? A Colorado bill would define it so.
This morning, the General Assembly honored our military with several joint resolutions for Military Appreciation Day. This is an annual tradition for lawmakers to recognize Gold Star families, those who are currently serving, or those who have served. The joint resolutions also included recognition of service from the Latino, Native American, and African American communities. This year, House Joint Resolution 1015 was a new joint resolution introduced to recognize those who served in the Korean War. The resolution’s bipartisan sponsors noted that the Korean War is often the “forgotten war,” and vowed that the sacrifice of those who served at that time will never be forgotten again.
Read more – Colorado honors Korean War veterans with resolution on Military Appreciation Day 
Also this morning, the controversial Senate Bill 3 was scheduled to be on the Senate floor for second reading. This is one of the big gun bills this year which would ban the manufacture or sale of guns that use detachable magazines. The bill is likely to pass, but several moderate Democrats have received pressure in recent weeks to vote against the bill. For example, Senator Marc Snyder recently took his name as a cosponsor off of the bill due to push back from his rural senate district. That being said, the bill needs 18 yes votes to pass the Senate, and there are 19 Democrats who have confirmed to local news outlets they would vote yes to pass the bill out of the Senate.
Read more – Colorado bill banning manufacture, sale of semiautomatic guns loses Democratic backer, but is still set to pass Senate
Budget
This week the focus of the budget was on the supplemental package getting introduced and moving through the Senate. It was a mostly uneventful process except one instance where the full Senate decided to overrule what the JBC wanted. The issue came up in the Department of Safety supplemental over DNA retests that a former analyst mishandled (and has now been charged criminally). The JBC had said no to the department but Senator Mike Weissman ran an amendment to extend the spending authority that drew sharp opposition from JBC members.
Read more – State Senate at odds over CBI spending authority for rape kit backlog
Supplementals move to the House next week and the JBC will continue with figure setting hearings for next year’s budget. Too bad it will be just too late to backfill the deficit with the parlay to end all parlays. 
​Conclusion
Have a super weekend.