With six days left until the Colorado legislature adjourns its regular session, lawmakers are working Friday to move bills through key votes. Several ongoing debates remain unresolved. Our reporters are providing updates on action in the Capitol.
This story will be updated throughout the day.
4:52 p.m. update: After its morning scuffle and some quicker floor work, the House has been debating an immigration bill for much of the afternoon.
would expand state law that prohibits state employees from working with federal immigration authorities to include local officials, agencies and law enforcement. Among other changes, the bill would prohibit immigration authorities from entering nonpublic areas of public buildings without a warrant. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could enter a hospital waiting room, for instance, but not a hospital room.
The bill’s Democratic sponsors argue the bill is important to preserve due process for undocumented immigrants and to check the Trump administration’s efforts to rapidly deport people.
“In Colorado, neighbors look out for each other. In Colorado, we care about our communities and value the contributions of immigrants,” said Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Glenwood Springs Democrat who was born in Mexico. “And we know we need to act now in order to continue rebuilding communities’ trust in the vital institutions, to add to the safety and quality of life for all.”
Republicans have opposed the bill. They ran an early amendment Friday that would invalidate the bill — should it become law — if the Trump administration were to strip funding from the state as a result of the bill’s passage.
It was unsuccessful, but that’s been a common tactic from House Republicans this year: They’ve attempted to amend several controversial bills to essentially give the federal government veto power over state laws with which President Donald Trump may not agree. They argue it’s a way to ensure the cash-strapped state isn’t punished for adopting Democratic policies that run afoul of Trump’s agenda.
“If we go down this path, we deserve to lose federal funding,” Rep. Chris Richardson, an Elizabeth Republican, said of the immigration bill.
Rep. Ron Weinberg, a Loveland Republican, said GOP members don’t want Trump to take away funding but that Democrats are “begging the Trump administration to come in here and slap us upside the head.”
The threat of federal retribution isn’t idle: Trump and his lieutenants have taken unprecedented steps to punish states, cities, law firms and universities that don’t comply with his wishes. , Trump signed an executive order to pull funding from so-called “sanctuary cities,” and Trump’s border czar “wait to see what’s coming” when asked if federal authorities would arrest municipal leaders from those cities.
Republicans here are essentially trying to leverage that retributive tendency to argue that Democratic legislators should kill their priority policies because Trump may retaliate. While Weinberg noted that Trump has been “duly elected” by American voters, so, too, have the near-supermajority of Democratic lawmakers in the Colorado Capitol.
Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat co-sponsoring the immigration bill, questioned why “passing policy that says we’re a sovereign state … and any sort of federal immigration enforcement has to respect due process is antagonistic to the president of the United States.”
“That itself is a problem,” she said.
3:14 p.m. update: The Colorado Senate gave initial approval this afternoon to a measure that would ask Colorado voters to bolster their support of a universal free school meals program approved in 2022.
The Healthy School Meals For All program has struggled to meet demand since its inception, leaving its future in jeopardy. The program guarantees that all Colorado students can eat free breakfast and lunch at school.
, if it passes, would send two ballot measures to voters this fall. One would let the state retain about $12.4 million that was collected over projections laid out in Proposition FF. The second measure would ask voters to increase taxes on high-income households by limiting how much money they can write off from their income taxes.
Proposition FF limited income tax deductions for Coloradans with annual incomes over $300,000 to $16,000 for joint filers. This ballot measure, if approved, would limit the deductions for people over the income threshold to $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for joint filers. It would raise an expected $105 million per year.
The bill passed the Senate on an initial voice vote without any debate. It still needs a formal vote. It has already cleared the House, but an amendment passed by the Senate will send it back for concurrence. Sponsor Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Commerce City Democrat, described the change as technical.
“(This bill) is not only imperative to help address the hunger crisis, but helps ensure our kids are successful in school,” Sen. Katie Wallace, a Longmont Democrat sponsoring the bill, said.
3:05 p.m. update: , which would allow churches and educational facilities to build housing on their properties, is still up in the air. The measure — dubbed the YIGBY bill, for “Yes in God’s backyard” — is intended as a way to help ease the housing shortage in Colorado.
But opponents say they fear it will affect local governments’ ability to have control over land use in their communities.
The House approved the bill in March. It cleared a Senate committee soon after, but since then, the sponsors in the Senate have repeatedly postponed a vote on it. With the session winding down, timing is increasingly becoming a problem for the bill’s passage. As of 2 p.m. today, it was still on the calendar to be considered on the floor, but sponsors said they’re likely to postpone it again.
One of the sponsors, Sen. Tony Exum, a Colorado Springs Democrat, said they lack two more votes it needs to pass. Among holdouts they’re trying to convince is Sen. Janice Marchman, who is absent today, and Sen. Dylan Roberts. Both are Democrats.
Exum plans to bring several amendments to see if he can convince the pair. The amendments will make small changes, including adding height restrictions for the housing built and changing the permitted deed restriction time period for them.
“We want to share these with them to see if this will get them there — or (see) if they need something else,” he said.
Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat, said the bill could be considered over the weekend.
“As this body has decided time and time again, housing and the lack of available affordable housing is increasingly a matter of statewide concern,” she said.
12:03 p.m. update: A House Republican spent the first chunk the morning blocking a five-page bill that would allow people to identify themselves as Middle Eastern, North African or South Asian on government forms.
Rep. Ken deGraaf, of Colorado Springs, said was the “definition of racism.” He repeatedly attempted to amend it to add a list of other groups that people could identify as, to allow people to fill in whichever demographic identifier they chose and to remove demographic boxes altogether.
House leadership eventually called a recess to sort out a path forward, and the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Rep. Yara Zokaie, agreed to let debate proceed on another deGraaf amendment that would’ve effectively gutted the bill.
DeGraaf said he wanted to “focus on the content of everybody’s character rather than the color of their skin” and added that getting rid of demographic check boxes would help end systemic racism.
The amendment was then soundly defeated. Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat, said people identifying their ethnic backgrounds on government forms was not systemic racism.
“The definition of racism is with intent to harm — to use power structures, to use tools to harm people. To say you want to be seen is not harm,” she said. “And if you believe that, then I question, why does it harm you to recognize other people’s values?”
Zokaie, who is an Iranian-American from Fort Collins, said the bill was something her community has been seeking “for a very long time.”
“Being force to check a box for ‘white’ my entire life has not reflected my experience in this country,” Zokaie said. “I am going to guess that not many of you are told (you’re) from al-Qaeda, that they’re a terrorist, that they’re serving the ayatollah, that they should be taken back to Iran and raped.
“That was in the last week for me.”
The bill then passed on a party-line 42-22 vote. It now heads to Gov. Jared Polis for passage into law.
11:12 a.m. update: Amid the debate and infighting over one transgender-rights bill, the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee last night advanced another. would enshrine access to gender-affirming care in state law and prohibit health plans from denying or limiting treatment that’s deemed medically necessary.
After clearing its first Senate vote last night, the bill now needs two floor votes in the Senate in the next five days. It needs some cleanup work in the House after that before moving to Gov. Jared Polis’ desk.
The HHS Committee also advanced a contentious bill related to sperm donors and in vitro fertilization. would enshrine IVF protections in state law, amid challenges to the fertility treatment in other states. But it would also undo some regulations on sperm banks that kicked into effect in January.
That’s drawn support from reproductive health advocates and a large donor clinic that argues the regulations are too burdensome. But donor-conceived people who supported the original regulations, as well as the state legislator who drafted them into law, have opposed HB-1259 as an unnecessary attempt by the sperm donor industry to deregulate itself.
Before the committee vote, the bill’s Democratic sponsors removed language from the bill criticizing the current regulations, and they restored some record-keeping provisions that HB-1259 would’ve stripped.
The bill now heads to the Senate floor.
(Update: House Bill 1259 passed a first voice vote in the Senate later in the afternoon.)
10:29 a.m. update: Senate Democrats this morning decided against attempting to override a veto by Polis on a bill that would have reformed the Colorado Open Records Act.
, which Polis rejected April 17, generally would have given local governments more time to respond to records requests. It would have created separate classifications and deadlines for open records requests depending on who submitted them, including a separate process for journalists that required faster responses.
Transparency advocates opposed the bill, saying it would give the government power to decide who is and is not a journalist.
In a statement, the bill’s sponsors said that while they won’t try to override the veto, they will continue to look for ways to “find solutions that are both transparent and fair to everyone.” They added that the volume and complexity of records requests have increased in recent years and that the cost to fulfill them isn’t covered by the fees charged.
“While we believe our bill is reasonable and fair to both records requesters and those who must fulfill records requests, we also acknowledge the concerns raised by the Governor, the press, and a coalition of groups who want to ensure their access to public records is not compromised,” according to the statement from Sens. Cathy Kipp and Janice Rich and Reps. Michael Carter and Matt Soper.
Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat, moved to postpone the veto override until after the legislative session ends, effectively killing the effort.
Overriding a governor’s veto requires support from a two-thirds majority in each chamber.
This was the second potential veto override to fizzle this week. On Monday, the House abandoned an attempt to override a social media regulation bill, three days after the Senate voted to override that measure. The sponsors said they lacked enough support to reach the threshold.
