Colorado Legislative Strategies Updates 4.22.23

COLORADO LEGISLATIVE STRATEGIES NEWSLETTER
 
April 22, 2023

​Introduction
 
Happy Earth Day. The 104th day of the legislative session turned out to be a day off for the legislators despite all indications that the House would work over the weekend. Instead, the House worked late into the night on Friday and chose to not come in this weekend. 
 
There are now just over two weeks, 15 potential work days to be exact, until the end of session. If they don’t work the next two weekends like this weekend then there are only 11 days left!  
 
However, instead of a bright and sunny Earth Day filled with tree-planting events and community clean-ups, most of Colorado awoke today to a cloudy Earth Day with a few inches of snow. For the Denver area, this is later than the latest snowfall in two of the last three years, but on average the latest snow usually falls around early May (last 10 years ranged April 16-May 21).
 
Instead of today, Earth Day could have been celebrated a month earlier, on March 21, like it is in many other countries. After March 21 was proposed at a United Nations conference in 1969, a senator from Wisconsin proposed the inaugural Earth Day in the US. According to the history, the senator’s office worked with a grassroots team of college students, who picked April 22, 1970 because they thought it was the perfect intersection of fair springtime weather and suitability for a college student’s semester schedule. 
 
Now that you have some fun facts about late snowfall and Earth Day to dazzle your family and friends, here’s a roundup of the big news from the Capitol this week you can boreenlighten them with too.

​This Week
 
The third to last week of the session was a busy one. Several nights stretched very late with both long committee hearings and long floor debates. The end is in sight but they are trying to pack a lot in before the end. And they keep introducing new bills! 
 
Below are short blurbs about several big items, everything from the ousting of an administration official, to big bills both dying and passing out of committee, and even a 4/20 festival right in front of the Capitol building. This week had a lot, so let’s dive in.
 
Head of the BHA ousted
On Monday, Governor Polis ousted the head of the Behavioral Health Administration (BHA) after just 15 months on the job. Dr. Morgan Medlock had been the BHA’s head since early January 2022, when the BHA had just been established. Polis’ announcement didn’t give very much information as to why Dr. Medlock is no longer with the administration, but some recent internal staff changes might have been contributing factors. The Governor named Michelle Barnes, the current Executive Director of the Department of Human Services, as the head of the BHA while the administration conducts a nationwide search for the next leader of the BHA.
 
However, even a person publicly ousted from their job didn’t have as bad of a week as Fox News. On Tuesday, the company settled a lawsuit with Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems over statements made after the 2020 election for an eye-popping $787.5 million. Moral of the story, it costs (a lot) to tell lies statements the judge ruled were indisputably false.
 
Tensions flare on the House floor
The legislature kicked off the week with tensions flaring in the House on Monday morning. While Representative Epps was speaking during a debate on one of her bills about the minimum age for charging kids criminally, she stopped mid-sentence to make a comment about white men speaking over her. Well that comment didn’t sit well with several members of the GOP, and one Republican shouted from his seat in response. Speaker McCluskie gaveled Representative Epps down immediately and the House went into a half hour recess while leadership met to address the issue.
 
Land use bill passes committee with changes
On Tuesday, Governor Polis’ gigantic land use bill came up for action after a 14 hour hearing a week and a half earlier. Part of the reason for delaying committee action on the bill was concern over whether the bill had the votes to get out of committee. Senator Roberts, a Democrat from Avon, represents some of the most prominent resort communities in the state. Because mountain towns could be negatively impacted by the bill as introduced, Senator Roberts was the swing vote that could’ve killed the bill in committee.
 
After negotiations with Senator Roberts and other members of the committee, 18 amendments were added to the bill. Although Senator Roberts voted in support of the bill as amended, he indicated there are still more negotiations to be made. Highlights from the amendments adopted on Tuesday deal with watering down the “middle housing” section of the bill, protection for affordable housing efforts that already exist, and removing requirements for accessory dwelling units in resort communities. The bill passed out of the Senate Local Government and Housing committee on a party line vote of 4-3.
 
School Finance Act introduced, passes committee
Also on Tuesday, the annual School Finance Act, Senate Bill 287, was introduced and was heard in committee on Wednesday. The bill boosts K-12 funding next year to more than $9 billion, and was even more than was described in the Long Bill. Average per-pupil spending will reach $10,579, a 10 percent increase from this year. The bill will also lay out a two-year process where the state will completely buy down the budget stabilization factor. 
 
The School Finance Act also sets up a task force to continue working on the idea of reworking the funding formula. This came after a push to include rewrites this year was quashed. But the topic of reworking the formula isn’t going anywhere, the task force will make recommendations for changes to the formula for 2024-25.
 
Long Bill error
On Wednesday, the Joint Budget Committee met to discuss an error with the Long Bill. There was an error of a measly $10,000 in the multi-billion dollar budget. Options included re-opening the Long Bill conference committee and having to repass the bill in both chambers. Since that would have opened up the possibility of the minority threatening to read the Long Bill at length the JBC chose to take no action and later said they figured out a way to administratively fix the error that does not require re-opening the Long Bill. 
 
Guns (again) – Assault weapon ban killed in committee, Ghost guns ban passes committee
Two more gun bills came up in committee this week. On Wednesday, House Bill 1230 was finally heard in the House Judiciary committee, over a month after introduction. The bill would have banned manufacturing, purchasing, or selling “assault weapons” in Colorado. Although the Governor introduced his own gun bill package this year, he was less enthusiastic about this bill because of its broad definition of “assault weapon”. 
 
Over 500 witnesses testified on the bill in committee on Wednesday - possibly a new record for testimony in a committee hearing. Three Democrats joined Republicans in voting against the bill and it was postponed indefinitely on a 8-5 vote.
 
Senate Bill 279, a ban on “ghost guns,” was heard in the Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs committee on Thursday. The bill would ban guns without a serial number, which are likely assembled by hand or 3-D printed, instead of bought from a manufacturer or retailer. With the support of some law enforcement, the hearing was shorter than other gun bills and the bill passed out of committee relatively quickly on a party line vote of 3-2.
 
Mineral rights pooling bill killed
One week after being laid over for action, the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources committee voted on Senate Bill 201. The bill would’ve put new requirements in place for forced pooling practices within the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. After attempted negotiations between the bill sponsors and Democrats on the committee, the bill was postponed indefinitely on a 5-2 vote with two Democrats joining Republicans in voting no. 
 
The bill sponsor even cried as she delivered her closing comments knowing that the bill would die. This won’t be the end of the conversation however because President Fenberg has vowed to hold more robust stakeholder conversations over the interim with the intent of bringing forth a new proposal in 2024.
 
Utility regulation bill passes committee
Senate Bill 291, which would put additional regulations on energy utilities to address volatile price swings in utility bills, was heard in the Senate Finance committee on Thursday. This bill comes after the Joint Select Committee on Rising Utility Rates met several times earlier this year to address rising costs in utility rates. Specifically, the bill addresses how ratepayer money is to be spent by utility companies. The bill is heavily opposed by regulated utilities and passed out of committee on a party line vote of 3-2. 
 
Extreme air quality bill passes committee
House Bill 1294, or Pollution Protection Measures, also passed out of committee late Thursday night. The bill would give the Air Quality Control Commission significantly more oversight and make changes to permitting requirements. Although the committee adopted a strike below amendment offered by the sponsors, the bill has a huge fiscal note. Governor Polis isn’t particularly excited about the bill either, and the clock is ticking to get something like this through. That being said, the bill passed out of the House Energy and Environment committee on a party line vote of 8-3.
 
Festival by the Capitol during committee hearings on psychedelics and safe injection sites
Senate Bill 290, which deals with the legalization of psychedelics in Colorado after the recently passed ballot measure, and House Bill 1202, which allows local governments to operate safe injection zones, were up for hearings in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee and House Public and Behavioral Health and Human Services committee on Thursday, which just so happened to be on 4/20. Because both chambers had several big bills up for consideration on Thursday, the Senate HHS committee meeting was held across the street from the Capitol in the Legislative Services Building. 
 
Right as the hearing for safe injection zones was about to start, it became difficult to hear in the committee room and the building shook a little bit… Wiz Khalifa had just taken the stage at the 4/20 Festival about a block away in Civic Center Park. The committee then moved the remainder of its meeting back across the street to the Capitol for the hearing on safe injection zones, where it was a little easier to hear and the building was shaking a little less. 
 
Conclusion
Lastly, both the House and Senate worked through lengthy floor work calendars on Friday, with the Senate working until 7:21 pm and the House working until 10:15 pm. There could be plenty said on what happened during those long debates, but this is a lengthy newsletter already. Expect more long nights in the few remaining days ahead. 
 
Next Week
 
With Monday marking two weeks left of session, both the House and Senate have packed calendars for next week. As of Friday, legislators are inexplicably still introducing new bills that will race against the clock to make it through the legislative process before Sine Die. 
 
Have a good weekend and snowy Earth Day ❄️🌎