FILE – This Jan. 4, 2020, file photo, shows the exterior of the State Capitol in downtown Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
Kimberly Williamson, a union steward who works in Kaiser Permanente’s claims department, uses a bullhorn to lead chants with employees during a strike outside the Kaiser Permanente Aurora Centrepoint Medical Offices on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, in Aurora, Colo. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
Denver City Council has been busy this year and some of their most notable pieces of legalization will take effect in the new year.
Customers play slot machines in Cripple Creek on Jan. 11, 2020, just before the pandemic began to close closure of casinos in the state.
Rep. Bob Marshall speaks to media before Gov. Jared Polis signs Senate Bills 23-303 and 23-304 on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at the home of Joe Lloyd Medina in Commerce City, Colo. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
Figuring out the state budget will be a big task in 2025 with the general fund expected to be down by an estimated $1 billion.
Kaiser Permanente licensed practical nurse Angelica Martinez, right, casts her vote to either authorize a strike or not at a tent set up by Service Employees International Union Local 105 Denver, outside of the Kaiser Permanente Franklin Medical Offices on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, in Denver. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
A Kaiser Permanente employee who requested to remain anonymous casts their vote to authorize a strike at a voting tent set up by Service Employees International Union Local 105 Denver, outside of the Kaiser Permanente Franklin Medical Offices on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, in Denver. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis delivers the 2024 State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature at the Colorado Capitol in January.
** ADVANCE FOR MARCH 26-27 ** Flags fly in front of the State Capitol in downtown Denver on Friday, March 25, 2005. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
FILE – This Jan. 4, 2020, file photo, shows the exterior of the State Capitol in downtown Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
Kimberly Williamson, a union steward who works in Kaiser Permanente’s claims department, uses a bullhorn to lead chants with employees during a strike outside the Kaiser Permanente Aurora Centrepoint Medical Offices on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, in Aurora, Colo. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
Kaiser Permanente licensed practical nurse Angelica Martinez, right, casts her vote to either authorize a strike or not at a tent set up by Service Employees International Union Local 105 Denver, outside of the Kaiser Permanente Franklin Medical Offices on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, in Denver. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
A Kaiser Permanente employee who requested to remain anonymous casts their vote to authorize a strike at a voting tent set up by Service Employees International Union Local 105 Denver, outside of the Kaiser Permanente Franklin Medical Offices on Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, in Denver. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis delivers the 2024 State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature at the Colorado Capitol in January.
** ADVANCE FOR MARCH 26-27 ** Flags fly in front of the State Capitol in downtown Denver on Friday, March 25, 2005. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Fresh from an election, the Colorado General Assembly will kick off its session on Jan. 8, when lawmakers will begin to tackle major fights in 2025, notably over union laws and criminal policy.
In addition, lawmakers will need to figure out a way to govern with new leaders — and dozens of new members.
The Colorado House will welcome 22 new members. Democrats will hold 43 seats, three fewer than last year. Republicans will have 22 members.
Meanwhile, eight new members will join the state Senate, with seven coming over from the House. The chamber will consist of 23 Democrats and 12 Republicans, the same as the 2023 and 2024 sessions.
However, three vacancy elections are also on tap to replace two Democratic and one Republican senators, who all resigned in December.
Here are some expected hot topics in 2025.
What supporters are calling the “Worker Protection Act” is expected to be the most divisive measure in the 2025 legislation. The proposal seeks to eliminate the requirement for a second election under Colorado’s Labor Peace Act in order to require non-union members to pay a union fee.
Established in 1943, the Labor Peace Act outlines the state’s unionization and collective bargaining process.
While other states only require a single election among workers to decide whether or not to begin discussions on “union security” agreements, Colorado requires two: the first requires a simple majority to unionize; the second must receive a 75% favorable vote to pass.
Businesses argue that the Labor Peace Act sets Colorado apart from the rest of the country in a good way, providing a competitive economic environment that draws new businesses to the state. Unions, meanwhile, contend that the second election requirement is a significant barrier to unionization, which they say positively affects both workers and the state’s economy.
The measure is sponsored by Sens. Robert Rodriguez, D-Denver, and Jessie Danielson, D-Wheat Ridge, and Reps. Javier Mabrey, D-Denver, and Jennifer Bacon, D-Denver.
Rodriguez told Colorado Politics he is introducing the bill to show the working class that his party is committed to fighting on their behalf.
“I think, at least for me and my caucus, that it’s time to show that we’re fighting for rights for workers and middle-class people that are getting squeezed out of everything,” he said.
Business organizations, including the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, vowed to kill the bill, saying it would negatively impact business growth.
“I think what we’ve seen in the past few years is a decline in our competitiveness, and I think from that perspective, when we look at doing away with the Labor Peace Act, there’s just no way that that doesn’t further impact our competitiveness and further limit the opportunities that we have to bring great jobs and businesses to Colorado,” Carly West, the chamber’s vice president of government affairs, told Colorado Politics.
Even if the bill passes both chambers, it’s uncertain whether it will garner the approval of Gov. Jared Polis. Last session, Polis vetoed three labor measures. The move drew protests from progressive Democrats and labor unions, who called Polis “a relic of Colorado’s corporate-controlled past”.
In response to a protest at the Capitol, the governor’s office released a statement saying he is “committed to fighting for hardworking Coloradans.”
“Gov. Polis reviews every bill, and was clear in his vetoes that, while each of the bills had good aspects, their final form were not in the best interest of the state, and our requests to the legislators to improve the bills were rejected,” the governor’s office. “He remains open to working on each of these policies ahead of the next session to craft laws that support the objectives of the sponsors
Read more about the Worker Protection Act here.
Denver City Council has been busy this year and some of their most notable pieces of legalization will take effect in the new year.
Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, D-Pueblo, along with Senator-elect Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, and Representative-elect Michael Carter, D-Aurora, are proposing a measure that would prohibit city courts from filing criminal charges against defendants who fail to attend their hearings.
The bill is another iteration of proposals introduced at the state Capitol under the “harm reduction” banner. Broadly speaking, such measures seek to lessen or ease the penalty for criminal offenses, with proponents believing that the status quo disproportionately affect people of color and the tough-on-crime approach ultimately doesn’t work. The opposition, often coming from the law enforcement community, argues that such proposals defang criminal laws, rendering them effectively useless and leading to more crime.
While most city courts in Colorado file bench warrants if an individual fails to appear in court, cities like Pueblo and Aurora sometimes charge them with contempt of court, a criminal charge that can carry a sentence of up to six months in jail and fines.
According to Hinrichsen, most of the crimes the individuals in Aurora and Pueblo are initially charged with are low-level offenses, often carrying maximum sentences of less than two weeks. While Pueblo has since stopped the practice after being sued by the ACLU of Colorado last fall, Hinrichsen believes its proponents have already accomplished their goal of showing residents that the city is taking a “tough on crime” approach, which he believes is causing harm to some of Pueblo’s most vulnerable residents, which he described as homeless, mentally ill and low-income people.
In Hinrichsen’s opinion, the contempt charges for failure to appear are entirely political and serve as a temporary solution to a highly complex problem.
“It’s a way of saying we put people away for longer and we’re getting really tough, but not in a strategic way that makes the community any more safe or reduces crime,” he said. “In fact, I think we’re already seeing that it increases crime, or at least hinders the ability to reduce crime long-term because it’s so damaging to these individuals and their ability to get back on their feet and be productive. It creates more harm than good and I don’t think that there’s really an interest or care about that beyond the consequences.”
The ACLU is supporting the measure, and while no organization has officially come out in opposition to the bill, Hinrichsen said he expects the Colorado Municipal League to campaign against it. Hinrichsen said he has not yet spoken to the governor’s office about the bill.
Local governments likely to oppose proposal on sentencing
Another proposal, backed by Denver Democrat Rep. Javier Mabrey, will also likely spark heated debate about local control.
Mabrey’s bill would prohibit local courts from imposing more severe sentences than state courts for the same crimes. If there is no comparable state offense, the maximum punishment for city offenses would default to the state’s petty offense sentencing guidelines of up to 10 days in jail and/or a $300 fine.
In addition, the bill says municipal court defendants have the same right to counsel as defendants going before a state court. This is a response to a news report saying low-income and homeless defendants in Grand Junction were coerced into pleading guilty without having an attorney present, a violation of their constitutional rights.
Colorado’s 2020 police accountability law, Senate Bill 217, reduced maximum penalties for low-level, nonviolent crimes in state courts. Municipal courts were excluded from the measure because they’re not part of the state judicial system.
Some court cases have arisen from this issue, including a recent case in Aurora, in which a woman was charged with trespassing under Aurora City Code, which carries a maximum sentence over three times greater than the state’s sentencing guidelines, along with a fee that more than tripled what the state would impose for the same crime. That case is awaiting trial before the Colorado Supreme Court.
Aurora officials, who have passed tougher penalties for retail theft, car theft and “dine and dash” offenses, have long maintained that a tougher approach is needed to curb crime. The Aurora police said car theft in the city dropped 22% since the ordinance went into effect, a downward trajectory seen statewide.
Local governments and organizations like the Colorado Municipal League and Colorado Counties, Inc., are likely to oppose the legislation. The governor has not yet stated his position on the measure.
Customers play slot machines in Cripple Creek on Jan. 11, 2020, just before the pandemic began to close closure of casinos in the state.
A proposal to allow online gaming, such as casino-style games, is already causing consternation for one of the lawmakers who represents the three mountain communities — Blackhawk, Central City, and Cripple Creek — with casinos.
Sources told Colorado Politics the governor is supportive of the proposal.
Two tribal casinos in southwestern Colorado could be affected.
Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Summit County, whose district includes Gilpin County, told Colorado Politics the bill, which would require voter approval, would decimate the economies of Blackhawk and Central City, which are 90% reliant on tourism and casino revenue.
He also said there’s been no information about where the revenue from taxes paid on gaming would go.
“There’s been no stakeholding on this,” he said.
Representative-elect Lesley Smith, D-Boulder, has also been left out of the loop regarding discussions of the legislation, she said.
“It’s news to me,” she said.
It is not immediately clear how the proposal would affect the community colleges, which have received gaming tax revenue since voters approved casinos in 1990. That tax revenue generates about $13 million annually for the community colleges.
The most recent change in state gambling law took place in 2019, when voters approved a measure referred to them by the General Assembly allowing sports betting, with tax revenue paying for state water plan projects.
Gambling measures on the ballot have been among the most expensive campaigns in state history.
Figuring out the state budget will be a big task in 2025 with the general fund expected to be down by an estimated $1 billion.
The biggest headache for lawmakers in the 2025 session is the state budget.
In September, members of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee were told by state economists that they face a $1 billion shortfall in general fund dollars, which is the discretionary money lawmakers use to start new programs and fund existing obligations, from K-12 education to corrections to paying state employees.
That number got just a little smaller, briefly, with the December revenue forecast, but a voter-approved ballot measure on public safety added another $350 million obligation, although without a set timeframe for funding it.
Gov. Jared Polis has already voiced support for funding that public safety obligation in the 2025-26 budget. That obligation led the JBC Chair, Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, to bemoan that the state is now right back at $1 billion in the hole.
In addition, the governor’s Nov. 1 budget submission called for rolling back provider rates for Medicaid services from the 2024-25 budget, privatizing the state’s workers’ compensation insurance of “last resort,” and restructuring the new school finance funding formula by extending its implementation from six to seven years.
The budget crisis comes at a time when thousands of low-income Coloradans have been booted off Medicaid services provided during the pandemic and when the voter-approved new early childhood education program has more demand than money to pay for it. The cost of educating immigrant children who came to Colorado in the 2023-24 school year, after the Oct. 1 count, also required lawmakers to spend an additional $24 million in the 2024-25 budget.
Rep. Bob Marshall speaks to media before Gov. Jared Polis signs Senate Bills 23-303 and 23-304 on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at the home of Joe Lloyd Medina in Commerce City, Colo. (Timothy Hurst/Denver Gazette)
Two Democratic state senators’ decision to resign in December, just weeks after winning landslide elections, is heightening calls for changes to the vacancy process, in which party insiders pick a district’s next lawmaker.
In the 2023-24 session, 28 lawmakers out of 100 had gained their legislative seats at some point during their time under the Gold Dome.
The process works like this: after a lawmaker resigns, a vacancy committee for the political party and district comprises elected district committee people, and the party’s elected central committee meets to select a successor.
But in some cases, those committees have been as few as four people and rarely more than 100 — to pick someone who will represent a House district of 88,800 people each or a Senate district of 165,000 each.
After Democratic Sens. Chris Hansen of Denver and Janet Buckner of Aurora resigned in December, calls for changes grew louder, including from the state Democratic Party.
Sen. Kevin Van Winkle, a Republican from Douglas County, also resigned in December. He was elected to the Douglas County Board of County Commissioners in November and had two years left in his Senate term.
Vacancy committees for Buckner’s seat will meet on Jan. 6 and Jan. 7 for Hansen’s post. Republicans in Douglas County will choose Van Winkle’s replacement on Jan. 4.
There were efforts to consider changes both at the legislature and through the citizen ballot initiative process in 2024, but none made it to the voters.
Rep. Bob Marshall, D-Highlands Ranch, introduced a bill in the 2024 session allowing the vacancy committee to choose a successor. Under the measure, that person would not be eligible to run for the seat in the next election, serving only as a placeholder. That bill didn’t make it out of the House. He told Colorado Politics he plans to carry the same concept in a bill in 2025.
“Anything other than special elections would be just cosmetic changes” that would preserve the status quo, he said.
Shad Murib, chair of the Colorado Democratic Party, is also working on various ideas around vacancy reform with Democratic lawmakers in both the House and Senate. Some of those ideas include broadening the number of people who can participate in the vacancy committee process, possibly to include people who aren’t already elected to the party structures.
Another idea focuses on more transparency for vacancy candidates.
Currently, vacancy candidates are not required to file with the Secretary of State’s TRACER campaign finance system, which allows them to spend unlimited amounts of money without disclosure of where that cash comes from. Murib said vacancy candidates need to be more visible to the public, and that’s one way to raise that visibility.
Murib pointed out that in Tennessee, for example, the rules around vacancies differ depending on the year. Different rules apply in a two-year legislative term depending on the year the person resigns.
He said there aren’t any set ideas yet, noting that election bills generally take place later in the session, so it could be a while before some of those concepts make it into the bill process.
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