The final legislative session of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis’ eight-year tenure was marked by another $1 billion budget deficit, predictions he’ll set a personal record for vetoes, and lawmakers openly sitting on bills in the hopes of a more receptive executive next year.
The budget limited much of what lawmakers could accomplish in the 120-day annual session, which ended Wednesday night. Philosophical differences — despite Polis overseeing unified Democratic control of the Capitol throughout his tenure — killed more efforts.
But Polis, whose final term ends early next year, will also leave office having checked off some issues that have lingered for years.
“I’m so proud of everything we’ve done so far,” the governor said Thursday during a post-session event. “Itap been really a great honor to work with you all.”
Here are several takeaways from this year’s session.
‘Must-fix issues’ get focus
Lawmakers finally ended the two-year debate over artificial intelligence regulations, while passing a bipartisan measure that attempts to ease the state’s ongoing problems with criminal defendants who are deemed too incompetent to proceed in the criminal justice system.
The majority Democrats passed bills intended to curb the federal governmentap impacts on the state. They also advanced a smaller package of housing bills — including one that would give money to affordable developers and cities working on transit infrastructure and another intended to ease the rising cost of homeowner’s insurance.
“We tackled the must-fix issues facing us,” House Speaker Julie McCluskie said Thursday. “… And we did it all with federal attacks and a billion-dollar deficit nipping at our heels.”
In past sessions, the budget served as something of a legislative sun. Legislation and lawmakers revolved around it in a predictable, if not always passive, pattern. This session, though, the budget felt more like a black hole.
Very few bills with even a modest price tag survived its horizon, limiting lawmakers’ ambitions. And the weight of the cuts it required sapped both the lawmakers who drafted the budget and the broader legislature as a whole.
Because of those dire fiscal straits, the 2026 session lacked the sweeping policy debates of prior years. Some of the most consequential debates — over data centers, immigration enforcement, tax policy and more — ended either with bills dying or being heavily amended. And as they strained to find ways to respond to President Donald Trump, the Democrats who control the chamber wrestled with the limits of their own power and of their own unity.
Lawmakers passed bills requiring college campuses to stock abortion pills and banning pet stores from selling cat and dogs. They worked to ease mounting prison population issues. They made it easier to sell homemade food and, in a contentious vote, made it harder for farmworkers to get overtime pay.
But after successive years of the Democratic majority largely rallying around gun control and abortion proposals, Democrats this year had fewer marquee red-meat policies around which to coalesce.
Instead, the 2026 session felt at times like a legislature catching its breath.
Case in point: While lawmakers passed a bill making it easier for nonprofit organizations to build housing, two other measures in Polis’ yearslong land-use reform push died for lack of support. One bill’s sponsors cited a legislative land-use fatigue — and a desire to slow down while recently approved policies go into effect.
Polis puts stamp on final session
While Colorado won’t know for weeks what the final veto tally is, several lawmakers expected Polis to break his personal record for the number of vetoed bills — 11 last year. More than a dozen are rumored to be on his shortlist for axing, after several more were voluntarily killed or amended to avoid the gallows.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it was north of 20 (vetoes),” Rep. Kyle Brown, a Louisville Democrat, said.
On Thursday, Polis wouldn’t say how many bills he might reject. He said he’d defer to his usual multi-tiered analysis to determine if the bills are “good for Colorado” before signing or killing them.
Several lawmakers have been explicit about waiting for the next governor to run bills that Polis opposes. Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat, said he had delayed some bills related to Colorado River usage because he couldn’t reach an agreement with the Polis administration. The two Democratic contenders to be the next governor, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Attorney General Phil Weiser, are more aligned on needing to be proactive about likely cuts, Roberts said.
“You can sense that there’s a change in mood coming in this building, knowing there’s going to be a transition on the first floor,” Roberts said.
Republicans have found plenty of reason to criticize Polis, and did so again this year. House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell, a Colorado Springs Republican, joked that Polis’ penchant for self-identifying as a libertarian mostly serves to anger libertarians for “damaging the brand.”
But he appreciates when the governor has broken with the Democratic majority.
“He has vetoed some really bad bills, and he has been kind of a backstop in certain cases,” Caldwell said.
Budget misery — again
Lawmakers walked into the Capitol in January knowing the budget outlook was bad. As the session progressed, the prognosis only worsened.
For the third time in two years, lawmakers needed to find some $1 billion in program cuts and new revenue to balance the budget. The deficit sucked much of the policymaking air out of the Capitol.
“For the most part, all of us came in here knowing that was the reality, and we were willing to make the choices that we needed to do to get (a balanced budget) done,” Roberts said. “But it definitely made some of the bigger policy ideas or aspirations that some of us may have had more challenging or outright impossible.”
Lawmakers raised tuition for state universities, took an axe to Medicaid and dipped into the state’s savings account to bridge the budget gap. But they were able to preserve some programs, such as Medicaid coverage for immigrant children, and keep K-12 education funding even.
“At the end of the day, even though it was really, really hard, I think we got to as good of a place as we could have gotten. And we did it without a lot of drama,” said Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat on the budget committee.
But this is likely only the latest in a series of deep cuts to balance the state budget. Medicaid costs continue to outpace overall budget growth and whatap allowed under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, as do prison costs — challenges that will likely define the next governor’s first budget and the next Joint Budget Committee’s work.
Before the next batch of elected officials get to work, voters will have at least one chance to directly weigh in. Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 135, a referred measure for the November ballot that would exempt education funding from the TABOR formula used to set state spending caps. It would direct extra revenue — billions of dollars over the next decade — to education. The original version would have freed up money for other state spending priorities, but sponsors narrowed the measure to keep it education-specific.
But the measure, if passed, would also essentially eliminate TABOR refunds, such as they exist after the state uses excess money for other tax credits, for the foreseeable future — drawing sharp opposition from Republicans.
Good year for businesses, law enforcement
Moments after ending his final post-session news conference, Polis signed the AI bill, a negotiated settlement that eased requirements that tech companies had blasted as burdensome. After that, he signed a bill requiring the state to conduct regular reviews of rules and regulations, a priority for the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.
“This is a big step in good government, efficiency and making Colorado more competitive,” the governor said, “and taking a look at Colorado’s laws and regulations to really make sure they’re minimizing red tape and reducing costs for the private sector and all Coloradans.”
The signings were emblematic of a particularly strong year for the broader business community. One of Democrats’ more progressive affordability-focused bills died quickly, while a bill that would have put workplace safety protections in state law fell apart on the session’s final day.
Another bill, proposing to assess fees on large businesses that don’t provide health insurance to all of their workers, failed after passing the House. Bills that would have ended business-friendly tax incentives similarly collapsed or, in one case, were amended to direct money to restaurants.
The Sum and Substance, a blog run by the chamber, wrote Thursday that the business community had entered the year with plans to ask lawmakers to “do no harm” to the private sector. Four months later, “it appears that business leaders not only reached the no-harm bar but exceeded it significantly.”
Law enforcement, which has found the Capitol increasingly hospitable after the major police reform measures from several years ago, similarly chalked up a litany of wins this time.
Opposition led by the state’s elected district attorneys torpedoed legislation that would’ve allowed Coloradans to sue federal agents for civil rights violations. Police criticism killed another immigration bill and three other measures that sought to limit law enforcementap ability to buy and access Coloradans’ personal information and license plate history.
The shadow of Trump
Last year, Trump’s return for a second term dominated the legislative session. As the presidentap agenda began to rapidly roll out, lawmakers responded to his actions often in real time, while also taking proactive steps in areas like elections or healthcare.
This year, Trump’s shadow still hovered over the legislature, and the dizzying pace of national and international news often made the Capitol, and the state-based debates within it, feel like a bubble.
“The world around us shaped, at times, what our agenda might have looked like,” McCluskie said. “There were immigration crackdowns, children being detained, rising political violence, chaos in Washington. And much of that led us to step up and assert our authorities as a state.”
Indeed, Democratic legislators passed bills related to vaccines, immigration enforcement and healthcare subsidies. But they were less unified in how to respond elsewhere — while facing the hard limits of their own powers.
State lawmakers can’t stop federal agents from wearing masks, for instance, so Democrats brought a bill requiring local law enforcement officers to identify themselves — and to intervene if police see a federal agent using excessive force. But that bill died in its first committee, with two Democrats voting against it.
Two more Democrats voted against the “No Kings Act” — the bill opposed by the district attorneys — which would’ve allowed Coloradans to sue federal agents for civil rights violations. The legislature instead passed a more narrow — and more legally endangered — bill that applies only to immigration agents.
Polis has also not said if he will sign that bill, as he preferred the broader version, and his opposition to another immigration bill prompted significant changes prior to its passage.
“We tried” to respond to federal action, said Brown, the Louisville Democrat. “We’ll do our best. But we can probably only cushion the blow, to some degree.”
