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 COLORADO LEGISLATIVE STRATEGIES NEWSLETTER April 8, 2022 Happy Colorado Rockies Opening Day! The first game of the baseball season is an unofficial holiday in the Mile High City because the weather is usually beautiful, going to the game or just watching at a bar downtown is a ton of fun, and let’s be honest, it’s usually downhill from there for the actual baseball part. For everyone enjoying the festivities, have fun and be safe, and have one for all the poor souls stuck at the Capitol (or writing newsletters). For the legislative session, we are now in the home stretch. Today is the 87th legislative day of the 2022 session. That means there are only four more Fridays until the session adjourns! Put another way, there are only about 22 working days left, which doesn’t include weekends or Good Friday where the legislature can be in session but usually doesn’t work on those days. And for the real baseball fans, it’s 31 Rockies games until the end of session, which is a ton of games but it’s baseball and they only have a few days off during that time period. At least the legislative calendar isn’t quite that bad.
The state budget continued to make big news this week as it was the Senate’s turn to take on budget week. The Long Bill was introduced at the beginning of the week and the Senate Appropriations Committee started by stripping off all of the amendments that passed in the House. Both chambers always work off the introduced version and the Joint Budget Committee is the ultimate arbiter of what amendments make it into the final version of the budget. The JBC, sitting as the conference committee, will meet next week to reconcile the different versions of the bill that passed in each chamber. Senators prepared almost 40 amendments to the budget and a whopping 21 of them ultimately passed. Some amendments passed by the Chair ruling they passed on a voice vote, which is at the sole discretion of the Chair/majority, and some passed by a mechanism that requires recorded votes at the end of the debate. That process is actually called a COW amendment but it has nothing to do with dairy; second reading is where all the debate and amendments happen and is technically referred to as the committee of the whole, thus they are called COW amendments. In the other chamber, the House prepared nearly 60 amendments and only 12 made it onto the bill. The Senate passed the vast majority of the House amendments and added several others. Here’s a breakdown of all the budget amendments that passed: Amendments approved by both chambers
Amendments approved by the House only
Amendments approved by the Senate only
Reminder, the Colorado Constitution requires the state to maintain a balanced budget every year. So when the JBC meets to decide whether any of these amendments will be added to the final budget, anything they add will necessitate a change somewhere else. This year, the JBC has money coming out of its ears so it might not be a big issue, but it’s something to keep in mind. The budget wasn’t the only news from this week, though. As time gets shorter for the session, time in committee hearings can get a lot longer, and this week was no exception. Several controversial bills took up hours and hours in committee this week. The week started off with the House Finance Committee spending over seven hours on House Bill 1064, which seeks to ban flavored tobacco products. This is after a long first hearing in the House Health and Insurance Committee where there was much debate over an amendment that went on the bill to exempt age restricted retailers. However, that amendment went on over the sponsors objections and the sponsors added an amendment to strip that off the bill. Among other amendments added as well, there was also an amendment that includes an exemption for cigar bars located in casinos. This is especially important for the WildCard Casino, which is part of the CLS family. At the end of the day the bill passed out on a party-line vote and now heads to the Appropriations Committee where they will wrestle with the lost revenue for education stemming from the bill. The long and contentious committee hearings continued on Thursday in the House Energy and Environment Committee. Two big bills were on the agenda and the 1:30pm committee heating did not end until after 2:00am. The first of the controversial bills was House Bill 1244, which seeks to create a new state program to regulate a subset of air pollutants called toxic air contaminants. The bill would make Colorado a national outlier by divorcing the state from the federal Clean Air Act. After a lot of opposition testimony, including the department (CDPHE) throwing a whole lot of cold water on the idea that they even could implement a bill like this, the committee passed the bill on a party-line vote. Several amendments were added and the bill now goes to the Appropriation Committee. The hearing for toxic air contaminants ended around 10:00pm but the committee wasn’t done and still had to take up House Bill 1355, which seeks to create a producer responsibility program for statewide recycling. The bill creates an independent nonprofit board that will create a program that will levy fees on all recyclable packaging on items that are sold in the state of Colorado. Questions are arising about the legality of the bill which means that careful scrutiny is needed. The sponsors continue to try and address the myriad of issues, so in spite of hours of testimony the bill was laid over so the sponsors could continue stakeholder work. The hearing ended after 2:00am without the committee even considering amendments or voting on the bill. Expect long committee hearings to continue next week as well. On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee will be taking up House Bill 1326, the much-discussed fentanyl bill for this session. Law enforcement will be making a big push for increased penalties. On Wednesday, the House Health and Insurance Committee will take up House Bill 1285going after hospitals over new federal transparency laws. Because why not have an unnecessary state law on top of a new federal law? On Thursday, the House Energy and Environment Committee will take up House Bill 1348 about oil and gas chemicals and House Bill 1345 about banning PFAS chemicals. And that’s just on the House side! Lots of things are going to be going fast and furious at the Capitol in the remaining days. Now chug a beer or stuff a hot dog in your mouth and say perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals three times fast! And GO ROCKIES!! Have a good weekend. Comments are closed.
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