By one vote, Colorado lawmakers pass bill raising overtime threshold for farmworkers
Weeks after renaming a holiday for farmworkers, Colorado lawmakers narrowly passed legislation Thursday that would require many of those laborers to work more hours before they qualified for overtime.
A divided Colorado House approved Senate Bill 121 on a 33-32 vote. The state Senate is expected to adopt changes made in the House and send the measure to Gov. Jared Polis, whose spokesman said he would sign it into law.
The bill would require that farmworkers reach 56 hours of work in a week before they qualify for overtime, an increase of eight hours in the threshold for those workers operating outside of peak harvesting seasons.
Read more
State budget passes Colorado Senate and nears final decision point, with committee weighing changes
The Colorado legislature’s $46.8 billion budget for state government is nearing the finish line, though a final set of key decisions looms before the General Assembly decides on sending the spending plan to Gov. Jared Polis.
The Colorado Senate approved the budget bill 25-10 on Thursday morning. But the body, like the House of Representatives last week, added a number of amendments. Some of those changes might throw the balance of the budget off kilter, while others would redirect spending — and potentially affect jobs — to pay for specific priorities.
Now the Joint Budget Committee will evaluate the 20 amendments adopted by the House or the Senate to decide which, if any, will make it into the final document. That decision is expected early next week.
Read more
After a parade of Medicaid errors and cuts, Colorado lawmakers plan a deep review of health care program
Frustrated with prior management of Medicaid and bracing for more near-term cuts, Colorado lawmakers plan to do a “deep dive” into the state’s massive program.
The bipartisan Joint Budget Committee set aside $500,000 to stand up a working group to lead the effort in the coming months, the details of which are still being sorted out. Lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated with Medicaid as they have repeatedly discovered new multimillion-dollar payment errors within the service — as they simultaneously have struggled to make painful cuts to programs that serve immigrant children and people with disabilities.
Those recurring errors have eroded trust between the Medicaid program and the lawmakers overseeing its ever-increasing costs.
“As the (budget-writing) process wore on, I think we all became less and less sure that the numbers we were looking at were an accurate reflection of whatap happening in that agency,” Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat, told fellow lawmakers during a meeting Tuesday.
Read more
After halting start to budget debate, lawmakers settle in for Round 2 in the Colorado legislature this week
The Senate will begin deliberating on the budget this week, as it was scheduled to, and that chamber should have its work wrapped up by week’s end. After thatap done, the lawmakers who write the budget will gather in committee to consider — and definitely not instantly smite — the various changes their colleagues made to the document on the floor during its two-week legislative voyage.
Once that’s all wrapped up (likely next week), the budget will roll down the Capitol stairs to the governor’s office for signature into law.
Given how much time and energy the budget takes up, expect little else to happen in the Senate this week. The House has a modest committee schedule, with more legislation likely set for debates in the full chamber.
Read more
