The Colorado legislature is set to finish this year’s regular session by the end of the day Wednesday. Lawmakers will spend the last day taking final votes, toasting each other and celebrating-slash-exhaling after 120 days of work.
This story will be updated throughout the day.
1:32 p.m. update: After weeks of languishing on the House’s calendar, a bill that would regulate the sale of gun barrels is officially dead.
House Majority Leader Monica Duran today moved to delay a final vote on until Thursday — effectively a death sentence, given that the legislature will not be in session then. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Meg Froelich, had said she hoped for a final vote on the measure before adjourment, and when Duran announced SB-43’s death, Froelich sat back in her chair in disappointment.
Had it passed, the bill would’ve required people who buy or sell detachable gun barrels to do so in person, and sales could generally only be conducted by a licensed firearms dealer.
The Senate passed the measure in early March and it cleared initial votes in the House shortly after. But it rolled along on the House calendar for weeks. Its initial vote was delayed because key supporters were absent, Froelich said. The vote was then further delayed, in part, because Republican opposition meant it would take hours to debate — and in part because Gov. Jared Polis intended to veto the measure, Froelich said.
Later in today’s session, the House rejected Senate amendments to . The measure would’ve allowed organizations that receive grants from the state to receive advance payments. But the Senate amended the bill Tuesday to block nonprofits that are led by legislators from receiving any advance payments.
That amendment was brought by Republican Sen. Byron Pelton, who said he wanted to curb the “appearance of impropriety.”
The move prompted Rep. Lorena Garcia, one of the bill’s sponsors, to pull her name from the bill — and the bill’s remaining supporters to reject the Senate’s amendments, putting the bill on the precipice of failure. An Adams County Democrat, Garcia is the CEO of the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition, which has received grant funding from the state.
She said the Senate’s amendment was a “direct and personal attack on me.”
“The accusations that came on the floor from the Senate are a desperate attempt to find someone to blame, for who knows what,” she said.
Garcia said her nonprofit group applied for an early childhood teaching grant in June 2022. She said the state gave her group initial approval in October of that year. Garcia was appointed to the legislature through a vacancy committee in January 2023, and the grant contract was formally signed two months later.
