Colorado’s special legislative session resumed Friday as lawmakers work to address a nearly $800 million budget shortfall caused by impacts from the recent federal tax bill.
This story will be updated throughout the day.
4:57 p.m. update: After discussion of a potential censure roiled the House on Thursday — and led to Republican Rep. Ryan Armagost’s immediate resignation — House leadership was still sorting out today what’s next. It’s unclear whether Democrats will otherwise seek accountability somehow for Republican legislators’ private ridicule of a Democratic legislator’s appearance in a private group chat that included Armagost’s sharing of a photo he took on the House floor.
4:28 p.m. update: After the Senate broke for the day without advancing that chamber’s legislation regulating artificial intelligence, House lawmakers are set to gut their more moderate regulatory proposal. (Update at 5:38 p.m.: That gutting has occurred.)
would require AI developers and the companies that use their tech to notify users, and it would clarify that state consumer-protection and antidiscrimination laws apply to AI. But the proposal, which is backed by Gov. Jared Polis’ office, had faced opposition from other Democrats, unions and consumer-protection groups.
Here’s why the Colorado legislature is now meeting in a special session — and what’s at stake
And now, the bill's Democratic sponsors plan to gut the bill to its studs. Instead, it will propose only a delay of Colorado's existing AI regulations, which will go into effect in February and have been criticized from nearly every direction. Rep. William Lindstedt, HB-1008's sponsor, said he intends to propose a delay to October, which would allow lawmakers another full legislative session to fix the existing regulations early next year.
It's another alternative, in other words, to the proposal by a group of progressive Democrats to tightly regulate the companies, require additional disclosures to consumers, and allow people to sue both tech companies and businesses that use their products over discrimination claims.
Lindstedt said he hoped a deal would come on the other bill, though he also said he wasn't sure if it would happen. Rep. Michael Carter, his co-sponsor, said the underlying regulations needed to be either changed or delayed because hospitals, businesses and school districts weren't prepared to implement rules that lawmakers have promised to amend for more than a year.
Supporters of the other bill, , were trying to lower the estimated costs of their proposal. Any cost is likely untenable, given the state's fiscal situation, and SB-4's is estimated at several million dollars. That's prompted frustration from the SB-4's supporters: Most of the fiscal note comes from implementation projections from the Office of Information Technology -- which is under the umbrella of Polis' office; the governor supports Lindstedt's bill.
In any case, Lindstedt's planned gutting of his bill means lawmakers will now choose between either delaying the state's existing AI rules or adopting SB-4's version of the regulations.
That's how it stood as of this afternoon, of course.
Elsewhere, House Democrats spent much of the day weathering Republican filibustering of the Democrats' revenue-raising budget proposals. That's likely to continue into tonight, once the House dispatches with some committee work (like Lindstedt's bill).
Finally, there's some debate ongoing about how to pay for the state's efforts to lower health care premiums. Currently, lawmakers plan to take $100 million from the unclaimed property tax fund. But there's some consternation about that in the Senate, so Polis' staff members are now working to find other funding options.
3:37 p.m. update: The Colorado state Senate adjourned mid-afternoon with one of the biggest fights of the session still unresolved: How to regulate artificial intelligence.
Lawmakers had been negotiating behind closed doors throughout the day, with no apparent breakthroughs. Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat and backer of one of the two competing AI bills, said at about 3 p.m. that proposed amendments to his bill, , hadn't been finished yet, and he didn't need the rest of the chamber to wait around all day.
The bill, which fiscal analysts tagged with to implement, was scheduled for a hearing by the Senate appropriations committee, where its fate was unclear. Rodriguez said the chamber will continue its work on the issue Saturday.
Rodriguez's bill is seen as having stricter regulations and disclosure requirements for AI use and is backed by consumer advocacy organizations and unions. A competing bill from Rep. William Lindstedt, a Broomfield Democrat, is slated to be heard in a House committee later today.
11:15 a.m. update: The Senate gave formal approval this morning to a bill diverting some general fund money from wolf reintroduction to a state health insurance fund -- marking the sole bipartisan agreement in what has so far been a hyperpartisan special session.
passed 32-3, with Democratic Sens. Lisa Cutter, Tom Sullivan and Katie Wallace voting against it. Wolf reintroduction, narrowly approved by voters in 2020, has divided urban and rural Colorado. Several Western Slope Democrats sponsored the bill, along with Sen. Marc Catlin, a Montrose Republican, but an amendment Thursday stripped out their goal of imposing a mandated pause on further wolf releases this coming winter.
Catlin said sponsors did hope to pause wolf reintroduction in the state, but they saw who was willing to put their money behind the effort if lawmakers wouldn't.
"The goal was to get a pause," Catlin said. "But it was also to stop general fund money from being used to purchase the wolves, and to take those dollars and put them into the insurance enterprise. We accomplished that."
The bill takes $264,000 from the state general fund and transfers it to the Health Insurance Affordability Cash Fund. An amendment Thursday, however, allowed for the hole that would be created by the bill to be plugged with cash from other sources.
Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat, said he voted against the bill not because of a policy disagreement, but because of how the amendment played out. He laid it on Gov. Jared Polis for trying to keep wolf reintroduction ongoing without a fight with the legislature.
"Apparently, in the final moments, the governor's office didn't want to take the chance that (the original bill) might pass, and they would have to pause, or the governor would have to veto," Sullivan said. He added that maybe the legislature should look harder at the governor's budget to fill the $783 million funding gap in the state, if Polis' office can effortlessly fill the void from the wolf dollars.
The Senate also gave formal approval to several other bills, albeit on partisan lines.
Those bills would let state Medicaid dollars go to Planned Parenthood after national Republicans banned federal dollars from going to the organization; change a ballot measure on universal school meals to allow extra money to go to a food assistance program, if voters adopt the measure in November; and to require the governor's office to notify lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee when he needs to cut a certain amount of spending mid-fiscal year because of an unexpected budget crunch.
Those bills still need approval from the House before they go to Polis for final approval.
11 a.m. update: The Colorado House is up and running this morning, with Democratic legislators moving to take initial voice votes on a suite of revenue-raising changes to the tax code, in proposals intended to raise more money from corporations.
First up was . Federal tax law allows for a deduction based on business income. But Colorado has temporarily limited that deduction here in recent years, and HB-1001 would make that limit -- which blocks people who make more than $500,000 a year from taking the deduction -- permanent.
State fiscal analysts project the change would raise $46 million for the state through the rest of this fiscal year, which ends next June, plus roughly $100 million in each of the next two years.
Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat sponsoring the bill, said it was intended to balance out new benefits given to corporations under the federal tax bill, which is what caused the hole in the state budget. The federal changes were passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump last month.
"What we are saying is that if corporations are going to get about 80% of the benefits of (the tax bill) that is gutting services -- like Medicaid and food stamps, taking health care and food from families across Colorado -- what we think is that state tax policy should say, 'Corporations and the wealthy should pay their fair share,' " she said.
Republicans queued up to oppose the bill as debate began Thursday morning and tried to shift blame for the budget shortfall from the tax bill, which is causing the state to lose a projected $1.2 billion in total revenue, to Democratic budgeting practices.
Blaming the Republican tax bill "is blatantly false," Rep. Anthony Hartsook, a Parker Republican, said. "... The malfeasance of the structural deficit goes back seven years," he added, in a reference to when Gov. Jared Polis was first elected and Democrats took full control of state government.
