The bipartisan bill — — was introduced earlier this year with the intention of slowing gambling habits after a group of politicians heard warnings about increasing gambling addiction since Colorado legalized online sports betting in May 2020.

But mounting pressure from the gambling industry and a state budget crunch led the bill’s sponsors to remove the section that would have banned bets on individual athletes’ performances, which are the most popular wagers for gamblers because they come with higher payouts and are a big moneymaker for the sportsbooks because they come with higher odds.

Sen. Matt Ball, a Denver Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsors, said prop bets and the ability to bet on every pitch in a baseball game or every pass in a football game are like having “slot machines in your pocket.”

“That perpetual availability is something that is very addictive,” he said.

Ball agreed the bill had a better chance of passing this session if the prop bet prohibition was removed, but he vowed to revive the legislative debate again. He wants to have a more holistic conversation about prop bets and parlays, and how they trigger compulsive gambling habits.

In prop bets, a gambler could bet on how many points Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray might score in a game or how many touchdown passes Denver Broncos quarterback Bo Nix might throw. Gamblers can place these bets before a game starts, and they can bet mid-game on things such as whether a Major League Baseball pitcher will throw a ball or a strike.

Sports-betting apps also allow gamblers to combine multiple prop bets to form parlays, which further increase odds in favor of the sportsbooks, but are wildly popular with gamblers.

Colorado already bans prop bets on college athletes’ performances.

Public health advocates believe prop bets lead to more addictive behavior, especially since gamblers can place the bets mid-game. Ball also worried that prop bets could impact the integrity of games because the high stakes put pressure on athletes and lead to harassment from gamblers when they fail.

The prop bet prohibition was removed, in part, because of the fiscal impact, Ball said. Tax revenue from sports gambling pays for water projects across the state.

The elimination of prop bets would decrease revenue by more than $2 million per year, according to the produced by the Legislative Council Staff. With the prop bet prohibition removed, the predicted revenue loss from the bill is an estimated $800,000.

Ball and public health advocates believe the bill still can help curb addiction.

The bill would also attempt to slow gambling habits by eliminating credit card usage on sports-betting apps, limiting the number of deposits a person can make into an account, curtailing television commercials and banning push notifications to cellphones from betting companies such as DraftKings and FanDuel.

It would also require sportsbooks to provide data to the state in an attempt to determine certain metrics, such as gambler demographics.

Joshua Ewing, executive director of , an advocacy group that pushes for better health policies in the state, said the remaining sections of the bill still could have an impact on gambling addiction.

“Those are all really important pieces that get at those problem gaming aspects,” Ewing said. “We wanted to be as strong as possible, but we still think the bill would be one of the strongest in the nation.”

The bill is expected to be debated on the Senate floor on Monday.

Two other bills addressing gambling are pending before the legislature.

would have barred the from developing an internet lottery scratch-off game, but that provision was removed. Now the bill only prohibits lottery players from buying tickets with credit cards. Critics, including Colorado’s casino operators, say the Lottery’s online scratch-off games will become online casinos rather than traditional lottery games.

would restructure the bodies that regulate gambling in Colorado. It would repeal the , which regulates horse racing, and put its duties under the supervision of the Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission, which oversees casinos and sportsbooks.

The gaming control commission’s size would be expanded under the bill.

DO YOU HAVE A GAMBLING PROBLEM?

The Problem Gambling Coalition of Colorado helps people who are addicted to gambling. Call 303-955-4682 or visit cogamblerhelp.org for help.

The Denver Post reports on the impacts of gambling in Colorado and wants to hear your stories about betting on sports. Please contact reporter Noelle Phillips at nphillips@denverpost.com if you are willing to talk about your experience.

The PUC’s decision in favor of Xcel’s plan to build about 48 miles of lines and other equipment in the county as part of a $1.7 billion project cited a state law requiring that local and statewide interests be balanced.

The Elbert County Board of Commissioners unanimously rejected the permits in 2025 on grounds that Xcel’s application was incomplete and didn’t meet the county’s regulations. The commissioners and residents also wanted Xcel to build the transmission line farther east where they said it would disturb far fewer landowners, residents and wildlife.

Xcel, which said it evaluated 500 miles of routes in Elbert County, sued the county and asked the PUC to overturn the county’s action.

The PUC issued its decision on Elbert County last Monday and is expected to decide by April 29 whether to overturn El Paso County’s rejection of permits that Xcel needs to build a portion of its Colorado Power Pathway The project will include 550 miles of new double-circuit transmission lines spanning 12 counties, primarily on the Eastern Plains.

“This is not a great position to be in,” PUC Chairman Eric Blank, said of overturning Elbert County’s decision.

He said he was empathetic to concerns voiced in an hours-long meeting by the PUC in Kiowa in December that drew more than 200 people opposed to overturning Elbert County’s denial of the permits to Xcel. Blank added that “it certainly seems like there may be substantial room for improvement” in the company’s outreach to landowners, residents and local agencies.

“At same time, however, we clearly have an obligation to examine and balance the local concerns with the statewide need for the new transmission line,” Blank said. “Overall, I think the record evidence is clear that the state needs this specific transmission line to maintain reliability and resource adequacy in a timely and affordable way.”

The PUC gave the green light to the Colorado Power Pathway in 2022. The commission said then that the proposal came at a critical time as Xcel Energy works to transform its system “and the ways in which it reliably generates and delivers electricity for its customers.”

The project, being built in five segments, is seen as key to increasing renewable energy on the electric grid and improving the system’s resilience and reliability. Xcel, the state’s largest electricity provider, has obtained land-use permits from three of the six jurisdictions in the segment that includes Elbert County.

Construction is complete in two segments that run through Washington, Kit Carson and Cheyenne counties.

Elbert County can ask the PUC to reconsider its decision on the permits. The county’s staff and outside counsel are reviewing the decision and “will be better positioned to offer a response once a thorough review of the order is complete,” county spokeswoman Wendy Holmes said in an email.

Elbert County resident Kerry Jiblits and member of the , which opposes Xcel’s chosen transmission route, hopes the county commissioners keep fighting the plan.

“The fact that a board of people who have been appointed by one man can overturn a decision made by a group of commissioners who are elected by the citizens, I think that’s a travesty,” Jiblits said.

PUC board members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.

The county commissioners didn’t deny the need for the transmission project, Jiblits said. “They just wanted a say in where it went.”

The PUC decision on the Elbert County permits said Xcel Energy began outreach in March 2021 on the transmission line route, followed by 23 public meetings and an evaluation of more than 4,000 square miles to identify the route in the application submitted in 2024.

The route Xcel selected will have impacts on wildlife, forested areas, property values and people’s views, Jiblits said. The route will run along Colorado 86, the main highway in the county.

Jiblits pointed out that  in March designated the highway’s path through the county as the Plains-to-

Pines Scenic Corridor, extolling its “unrivaled views of the east-facing Rocky Mountains range.”

The county commissioners urged Xcel to build the transmission line farther east where it is more sparsely populated and where the line would parallel existing transmission lines serving its Rush Creek Wind Project.

The county questioned why Xcel approached people about acquiring easements on their land before the county considered its application for permits. The commissioners said Xcel didn’t adequately address wildfire risks.

Xcel has acquired some of the land and has filed condemnation proceedings on other properties.

The utility argued that it shouldn’t have to pay Elbert County $2.5 million in fees for impacts from construction because the permits were denied. The PUC ordered Xcel to pay the fees before starting construction.

PUC board member Tom Plant said that the public meeting in Kiowa was critical to understanding the concerns about the development’s impacts.

“As this project goes forward, I do hope the company treats the community with the respect and the understanding that they deserve,” Plant said.

Updated April 20 at 11:05 a.m. to correct counties where transmission project is completed.

After all that work, the Lakewood City Council finished the job in December, passing final changes to the city’s land-use blueprint designed to pave the way for the construction of more diverse and dense housing, like triplexes and quadplexes, anywhere in Colorado’s fifth-largest city.

“It was very condensed, very intense in terms of the time we put into it,” Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom said.

Fast-forward to the April 7 special election brought to a ballot by residents unhappy with the changes. When the initial results popped up on the city’s website at 8 p.m. — showing — Strom was dumbfounded.

“In that first 10 seconds when you get those results, it was a pretty good kick in the gut,” she said.

How Lakewood might proceed from here is anything but clear. The special election result was just the latest twist in a yearslong battle over how to make housing more affordable for Coloradans, especially those in low-income and working-class families who have largely been priced out of the market.

The election also highlighted a battle that has played out in other Colorado communities in recent years. In , Steamboat Springs and Littleton, among other places, attempts by elected leaders to spur housing price relief through zoning changes or affordable housing initiatives have run headlong into residents’ desire to keep their communities as they are.

Lakewood’s mayor is still committed to changing the city’s zoning code, but she acknowledged that she and her colleagues may need to take a different approach.

“The code is so complex — it’s hard to expect a voter to understand it to that degree,” Strom said.

Karen Gordey headed up the Lakewood Citizens Alliance, one of several issue committees that formed last year to collect signatures for a citizen ballot initiative to repeal the city’s zoning updates. The 15-year Lakewood resident said the city tried to do too much all at once, while failing to appreciate how important the look and feel of a neighborhood is to those who live there.

“The hope is that this election sent a strong message to the council — to listen to the citizens and not make radical zoning changes,” Gordey said. “This went way too far.”

State Rep. Rebekah Stewart, a former Lakewood councilwoman, worked on earlier iterations of the code changes that voters spurned. She said the city’s leaders crafted ambitious ordinances that provided the tools and incentives to alleviate Lakewood’s housing shortage.

The state had an estimated shortfall of 106,000 homes and apartments in 2023, the most recent year available, and needed to build at least 34,100 housing units per year, not counting vacation homes, over the next 10 years to keep up with slower population growth, according to .

Despite a recent slowdown in metro Denver home prices that have surged upward for a decade or more, the median sale price of a single-family home came in at $630,000 in February — up 2.4% from January’s $615,000.

Price relief won’t come, Stewart said, if everything simply stays as it is.

“This has been years and years of work and community stakeholding that was undone in a single night,” she said of the Lakewood council’s redrafting process during the last half of 2025. “We have a problem, and the election didn’t solve that.”

Complying with state housing law

Voters’ decision earlier this month may also have raised another problem: Lakewood’s compliance with state laws passed in 2024 and last year that aim to increase and diversify housing stock across the state.

The bills, passed by legislative Democrats, broadly require cities — especially those on the Front Range — to implement various zoning changes and undertake detailed planning to ease and incentivize housing development. The measures push accessory dwelling units, the packing of more residential units around transit stops and a reduction in the square footage that must be devoted to parking.

“I do believe Lakewood is now out of compliance with state laws, which is really unfortunate,” Stewart said.

But Strom isn’t convinced that her city is crosswise with state law. The mayor is confident the city can tweak its code less comprehensively to ensure it is complying with the state’s housing mandates.

“There may be instances where we can do little one-offs (to come into compliance),” Strom said.

A shows 18 cities out of compliance with one or more of the housing laws passed over the last two years. Lakewood is not one of them, but the list is current as of April 1, which preceded Lakewood’s special election.

Cities and counties that don’t comply with the laws run the risk of losing out on tens of millions of dollars in state grant funding, Gov. Jared Polis’ office has said.

Several metro Denver cities sued the state last year over the laws, claiming that the mandates encroach on their home-rule authority to manage land-use policies as they see fit. Several of those plaintiff communities, including Aurora, Westminster, Lafayette and Centennial, appear on the state’s list as being out of compliance with the state statutes.

The Lafayette City Council is in the homestretch of , an effort that began last year. A survey conducted by the city showed mixed support for the proposed changes, with about 48% of respondents backing “missing middle” housing in a limited way, particularly if it’s paired with strong design standards to maintain neighborhood character, according to .

Missing middle refers to housing of slightly higher density, including duplexes, triplexes and attached townhomes, that might fit near single-family homes without being as imposing as large apartment buildings.

The Denver Post requested an interview with the governor, or an adviser on housing policy, to ascertain what effect the special election results could have on Lakewood’s standing. Polis’ office provided a statement instead.

“The governor is committed to working with Lakewood and other local governments to reduce or eliminate government imposed barriers and red tape that block or increase the cost of housing and we are assessing the impacts of this election,” said Eric Maruyama, a spokesman for the governor.

Max Nardo, a housing and smart growth senior associate with the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, said it wasn’t clear what price communities might pay if they don’t comply with state housing laws. Colorado, he said, didn’t really start addressing housing and zoning issues at the state level until about three years ago. And many of the measures passed by the legislature, he said, are still being rolled out.

The problem is bigger than mere compliance with state laws, Nardo said. Lakewood had gone beyond what the state required, he said.

“Lakewood was doing more — its reforms included smaller homes on smaller lots throughout the city,” Nardo said. “It followed a two-year process and had favorable polling in the community. What more can you ask for?”

His organization put out a news release two days after Lakewood’s special election, calling it a “low-turnout” election that didn’t accurately reflect the will of the city of 156,000 people. The release noted that just over 22,000 voters overturned the zoning changes, “roughly 20% of all registered voters in the city.”

“Research consistently shows that the residents most likely to participate in local zoning debates and special elections tend to be older, wealthier homeowners who bought into their communities years ago at much lower prices, and have more time and capacity to engage in public processes than renters, essential workers, or young families,” the organization said in its release.

Housing policy is necessarily a statewide issue because the housing market is not confined to any one community, Nardo said.

“This outcome underscores that this is a collective action,” he said. “A city cannot solve it by acting alone.”

‘Checks and balances’

Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, called the notion of local governments in Colorado needing to defer to state lawmakers on the subject of housing policy “hogwash.”

Cities and towns are best equipped to know what is needed inside their borders, he said, not part-time legislators who convene for less than five months a year in Denver. The housing laws that the General Assembly passed over the last couple of years created pressure and artificially accelerated a process that takes time and public input, Bommer said.

“If folks at the state Capitol hadn’t pushed this forward with mandates, the municipalities could take the time to work with their citizens and come up with a long-term vision,” he said.

It didn’t surprise him that residents would revolt when they didn’t feel their elected representatives were taking the right approach to overhauling zoning codes in a way that could potentially impact their neighborhoods.

“This clearly shows that residents are the ultimate form of local control. And ultimately, they said the vision that was laid out (by the City Council) was one that they aren’t on board with,” Bommer said. “The last time I checked, that was called participatory democracy — it isn’t always pretty.”

Godrey, who led the charge to repeal Lakewood’s zoning rewrite, said the city could find other ways to address the housing shortage without opening up the city’s many single-family neighborhoods to “blanket upzoning.” Converting vacant office space to residential uses is one approach, she said.

“This election was about having checks and balances — and you got to hear the voice of the people,” she said.

Peter LiFari, the executive director of Maiker Housing Partners, says it’s the powerful emotional element that comes with homeownership that makes the issue difficult to solve locally. Maiker is the housing authority in Adams County.

“Homeowners are highly motivated to protect their most precious asset,” he said. “There are some things that we can’t easily make a decision about at the local level because they’re so visceral.”

Despite the council’s loss at the ballot box this month, LiFari said Lakewood’s attempt to address its housing challenges was far from over. Crafting and refining housing policy takes years, if not decades, he said.

But without that thoughtful work, he said, Colorado is never going to fix its affordable housing crisis.

“I would tell Lakewood to go at it again — it takes a couple of bites at the apple for people to get comfortable with this,” LiFari said.

Strom, the mayor, said the issue may go quiet for a little while as she and her colleagues lick their wounds from what was a bruising electoral battle. But the need to adjust the city’s zoning code to account for Lakewood’s evolving housing situation is not going to disappear.

“This is not over — we have things in the code that need to be updated,” she said.

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 what����ap happening in that agency,” Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat, told fellow lawmakers during a meeting Tuesday. “That is why, to a large extent, we are going to do a deep dive into what����ap happening there over the interim.”

In Colorado, , or HCPF, oversees the Medicaid program; its budget last year was $18 billion, $4.2 billion of which came from the state’s general fund. Lawmakers’ frustration with the Medicaid program finally hit its limit last month, when nearly every senator signed on to a draft resolution calling for the top official overseeing Medicaid to be removed from office.

That official, HCPF executive director Kim Bimestefer, resigned shortly after Gov. Jared Polis’ office was told about the resolution. Polis is term-limited and will leave office early next year.

Colorado Medicaid serves more than 1.1 million people. The safety-net program’s costs have surged: Over the past 10 years, HCPF’s budget has doubled (more than half of that total comes from federal dollars). The increase in costs has strained the state’s budgets and prompted difficult conversations about what to cut and what to save.

Lawmakers want the Medicaid working group to meet in the summer and fall, draft a report about the service and come up with recommendations for the next governor, along with the officials who will be appointed to oversee Medicaid under the new administration.

That’s partly because Medicaid costs are expected to continue increasing and place a growing strain on the state’s budget. New cuts and work requirements instituted by the massive tax-and-spending bill signed last summer by President Donald Trump will pile on more cost pressures.

Lawmakers want to figure out how to bring down costs within Medicaid in the long term, rather than continuing to make yearly cuts, and to explore other ways to shore up its funding.

“If this seems bad,” Amabile said of this year’s reductions — which brought some lawmakers to tears — “buckle up.”

Earlier this month, Polis announced former state Medicaid director Gretchen Hammer would serve as HCPF’s new executive director. The agency did not respond to an email seeking comment on the new review on Wednesday.

In a statement, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said the legislative working group would build upon , which will focus on “cost drivers in the Medicaid program and opportunities to control those trends.”

“We are doing a lot of good work with the (Joint Budget Committee) and General Assembly to begin to reduce costs within Medicaid, but there’s much more work ahead to successfully sustain the important care Coloradans rely on,” Maruyama wrote. He added, referring to the measure signed by Trump last year: “This is especially true as the massive pending cuts in federal Medicaid funding, thanks to the Republicans’ H.R. 1, begin to take effect.”

Amabile said in an interview that the working group would also look at where there have been errors in the past and how to prevent them. The group would likely involve representatives from nonprofits and others involved in Medicaid services, and lawmakers may also be involved.

She listed the array of problems identified within the state Medicaid program in recent months. A program that provides health care to children and pregnant women without legal status has cost far more than state officials first projected. Earlier this year, the budget committee learned that Medicaid was paying as much as 10 times the appropriate amount to providers who picked up patients in extra-large wheelchairs.

The Denver Post then reported that the broader transportation program, which provides rides for Medicaid patients to and from medical appointments, was overpaying drivers generally. It did so based on an apparently faulty analysis that compared sedans in Colorado to ambulances in other Western states.

That overpayment went unfixed for years, and a state advisory panel that reviewed payment rates in that period also did not identify the error. While the mistake went undetected, the transportation program was beset by fraud, and its costs tripled to $303 million a year.

As lawmakers were learning about those problems, federal regulators announced that Colorado Medicaid overpaid nearly $78 million for autism services in 2022 and 2023. The federal Office of the Inspector General recommended the state repay $42.6 million.

In addition to setting up the working group, the budget committee set aside money so that Medicaid staff could conduct a review of claims within the autism program, as well as the transportation service, with an eye toward clawing back money from providers who were overpaid. They also cleared the auditors to use a specific type of statistical analysis to analyze the claims and potential overpayments, and that the review would return at least $36.6 million over the next three years.

Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat and the chair of the budget committee, said Wednesday that if the state has to repay autism service funding, “providers who were overpaid should be contributing to this payment.”

Sirota said Medicaid and HCPF staff worked to give legislators information on where costs were increasing and how those costs could be curbed. But, she continued, if lawmakers were going to “keep coming back to this well of Medicaid, we should all be taking a deeper dive together.”

“Clearly,” she said, “things have gone on in this department that require a second look.”

Since opening about two years ago, the residential facility — which houses people transitioning from a hospital setting in a pair of adjacent buildings — has had dozens of police runs. Some of those have been for violent incidents, Mayor Meredith Leighty said.

“We recognize and support the critical need for expanded mental health services,” she told The Denver Post in an email. “But good intentions on their own are not enough, and cannot be enough, when the safety of our communities is at stake and the state does not take those concerns seriously.”

Before the facility opened its doors at 11255 and 11275 Grant Drive, a group of Northglenn citizens rose up in opposition to the state’s plan to house some sex offenders in the 32-bed facility.���ճ�� state backed down after the outcry.

But there are still too many problems at , said Leighty, who declined an interview Tuesday because of an illness. In an email, she wrote that since the facility opened in 2024, police have received 78 calls for service.

“That far exceeds what we would expect from comparable residential settings,” she said. “These are also not minor incidents. They include disturbances, assaults, and repeated welfare checks, each placing a sustained and growing strain on our officers and surrounding neighborhoods.”

The most alarming incident, Leighty said, came in January when one resident of the transitional facility stabbed another and then tried to attack responding police officers. The two-building complex is close to an elementary school and a playground.

“This was not an isolated failure,” the mayor said. “It exposed deeper systemic issues: inadequate screening, insufficient on-site supervision and an overreliance on law enforcement to manage complex behavioral health crises.”

Stephanie Fredrickson, a spokeswoman with Colorado’s Office of Civil and Forensic Mental Health, said her agency was taken aback at Northglenn’s ire. Negotiations over how to handle things at the facility are still underway, she said. The office is under the Colorado Department of Human Services.

“The state has extended and memorialized its statewide internal policy to not admit individuals who are required to register pursuant to the Colorado Sex Offender Registration Act… for at least the next five years,” Fredrickson wrote in an email.

Bonnie Wright, the division director for the Mental Health Transitional Living Homes program, was not available for an interview Tuesday.

The facility is part of a program that the legislature created in 2022 to help people with mental illnesses transition from hospital settings to a lower level of care as they reenter the community. The legislation called for the state to create, develop or contract with providers for 125 beds statewide covering different levels of care.

The agency, Fredrickson said, had been working with Northglenn officials to draft an agreement to implement safety protocols and improve operations at the mental health transitional home on Grant Drive. She said the latest discussions were last week.

“The state has engaged in these meetings in good faith and considered them productive interactions, which have addressed all of Northglenn’s stated objectives,” she said. “The state remains committed to working with the Northglenn community to provide excellent service for those in need of transitional services, and would appreciate the same commitment to good faith collaboration from the city.”

Lawmakers at the state Capitol that would bar any sex offenders from being housed in a mental health residential facility that is located within 1,000 feet of a school. Stukey Elementary is less than 1,000 feet from the Northglenn transitional living home.

“I’ve never seen the community engage on an issue as much as this one,” said state Sen. Kyle Mullica, an Adams County Democrat and a co-sponsor of .

Codifying the sex offender prohibition in state law, he said, is necessary to establish safety in the community.

“The question comes back: Why not codify it and make it permanent?” Mullica said. “I think the community has a right to ask for that.”

One of the people to testify in favor of the bill during a hearing Tuesday was Northglenn Police Chief James May. There’s not enough accountability being asked of the clients at the Northglenn transitional home — to the detriment of the community, he said.

“If you don’t give them structure, they’re going to do what they did that led them in this direction,” May said. “They need to do a better job of core management.”

Under consideration are cuts, big and small, that would affect areas including assistance for families that adopt children, health care for immigrant children without legal status, grants for solar energy projects in agriculture, compensation for health care providers, raises for state workers and substance abuse programs.

Those programs — and dozens more — are likely victims of a “structural deficit,” in which costs in must-spend areas are far outpacing how much money the government has to spend. That comes both in the trickle-down aftermath of federal tax cuts made last year through H.R. 1, commonly known as President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” and under the general growth constraints imposed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR.

In the paradox of government budgeting, the state general fund, which takes in the state’s general tax collections and contains the most flexible money available to lawmakers, grew by 1.2% compared to last year. But rocketing costs in those must-spend areas — chiefly the prison system and Medicaid — necessitated broad cuts elsewhere across many areas and programs. In effect, spending more on Medicaid means less money to spend on other priorities.

Overall, the state expects to have about $17.4 billion to spend in its general fund in the fiscal year that runs from July 1 to June 30, 2027, or about $212 million more than the current fiscal year. The overall budget is about $46.8 billion, with the balance made up by federal dollars and cash fees paid to specific programs.

The general increase for alone, at $213 million, is greater than the total budget increase. That means the general fund budgets for most other departments — 13 of the 22 that receive general fund dollars — would be cut.

Other than Health Care Policy and Financing, which oversees Medicaid and is commonly referred to as HCPF, the only departments that would see general fund increases of more than $10 million are Corrections, at nearly $69 million; Judicial, at nearly $31 million; and Treasury, at $14 million.

But those increases mask a swath of cuts of varying size as the state has grappled with a projected overall budget shortfall of $1.5 billion, driven by spiking costs associated with the prison population and Medicaid.

“The two drivers are HCPF and Corrections. Without question,” said Rep. Rick Taggart, a Grand Junction Republican on the Joint Budget Committee. “If you take those caseloads out, then we’d have actually reduced spending across the board.”

Even in Medicaid, as the overall budget rises, there’s a need for cuts to individual programs to keep surging costs under control. According to from House Democrats, the budget cuts would amount to $270 million in total from Medicaid, $340 million taken from the state reserves, and $150 million generated from cuts across smaller departments. More money would be saved by not giving across-the-board pay raises to state employees and by taking money from cash funds and other prior investments.

Taken together, these and other moves are what would close the $1.5 billion budget gap — the third time in two years the legislature has had to scramble to find money to close a massive deficit.

The formal budget proposal was released Monday, with the House spending much of the week debating the spending plan. During marathon meetings, the body’s members — primarily led by Republicans in the minority — sought to amend the document and move money around to other priorities.

The vast majority of those amendments died; a handful stuck, at least for now. One in particular seeks to shift more money to the Cover All Colorado program, which mirrors Medicaid for immigrant children and pregnant women who lack legal status; its cost has shattered spending projections. The Joint Budget Committee is set to take one more crack at the document to reconcile any imbalance created by adopted amendments.

On Thursday, a House Republican slowed the budget debate’s pace to a crawl. Rep. Brandi Bradley, of Littleton, asked that the entire 661-page budget bill be read at length in protest of how the House handled an ethics complaint. As of Friday afternoon, the computer program being used to read the bill aloud was roughly halfway through the 15-hour task.

The delay set the House up for a likely weekend of work to finish its debate on the budget and to conduct a formal vote.

Once the budget clears the House, the process will begin again in the state Senate this week, before heading to the governor’s desk. That will kick off the final sprint of the120-day legislative session as lawmakers try to pass their priority bills before adjournment on May 13.

‘A lot of very, very painful cuts’

The HCPF department, despite receiving the steepest general fund increase, also faces some of the steepest cuts to specific programs and benefits — more than $162 million that would have otherwise gone to dental benefits, the health care program for undocumented immigrant children, pay for health care providers, and services for people with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Some of the cuts are huge, with potentially far-reaching consequences this year and next.

A general 2% cut to how much health care providers are paid out for Medicaid services is expected to save the state $84 million in general fund dollars, and $222 million in the total budget because of lost federal matching dollars. Medicaid providers, however, worry about what this would mean for their long-term sustainability.

That cut is not universal, however. The budget committee, in its spending proposal, exempted neonatal intensive care units — which specialize in care for prematurely born babies and young infants — and pediatric behavioral therapy for people with autism from the cut. 

Other large cuts include reductions in rates paid for nonemergency medical transportation by $15.4 million in general fund dollars and $51.4 million overall. That program, in which contractors provide transport services for Medicaid patients, has been plagued by fraud. The budget would cut the overall pickup fee for clients from $36.40 to $12.40, but it would leave the mileage fee, which is $3 per mile, untouched.

That proposed cut, however, has met resistance from some members of the legislature’s Democratic majority, who worry it would devastate small businesses. Attempts to amend the budget bill to erase that change, however, failed.

Budget writers are also running a bill that would pare back the new Cover All Colorado health care program for immigrant children and pregnant women. would eliminate long-term services for people who are not already enrolled in those programs, and it would cap dental services, limit behavioral health services and cap enrollment for future fiscal years.

That bill is running as an orbital to the budget bill, or one of the dozens of proposed new laws that are budget-related but don’t fit specifically in the main budget bill.

That program faced severe cost overruns after enrollment and use far outpaced what analysts predicted. Tens of thousands of migrants arrived in Denver during the Biden administration, including thousands sent to the city by Republican governors of other states protesting federal policy. An Associated Press tally found Denver had the fourth-highest number of migrant arrivals on a per-capita basis.

What forecasters predicted in 2022 would cost the state general fund about $15 million this fiscal year has ended up costing $104 million. Some 21,000 children are enrolled in the program.

“We are in a situation where this program is growing at an unsustainable rate,” said Rep. Kyle Brown, a Democrat on the budget committee. “But ultimately, we are talking about kids and pregnant folks.”

Taggart, the Republican House member on the budget committee, called it “the most painful bill I’ve ever been on” — one characterized by lost sleep and tears as lawmakers have sought a compromise to keep the program going.

“(This cut) tests your value system, and it continues to test my value system,” Taggart said. He worried about children who likely had no say in coming to Colorado now losing health care coverage, as well as about hospitals needing to pay for care without the hope of being paid back.

The budget committee also made a series of changes in the budget proposal to programs for intellectually and developmentally disabled people who need around-the-clock support, amounting to a $17 million savings.

Those include ending automatic enrollment for youth who are aging out of certain child assistance programs, requiring individuals who are able to help pay for residential services to contribute, and reducing waitlist funding. The last one would mean that for every two people who disenroll from the developmental disability waiver program, only one person would be enrolled.

That waitlist is already seven years long, according to nonpartisan staff analysis. 

As cuts like those mount, the overall spending in Medicaid continues to grow. The budget committee is earmarking another $351 million in general fund dollars for general medical spending, $45 million for behavioral health services, and $32 million for the Office of Community Living, which provides long-term support for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The Department of Human Services is facing an $11 million cut, the largest straight cut of any department. (Though the Department of Education is losing $82 million in general fund dollars, that would largely be replaced by money from the state education fund.)

The DHS cuts include cutting funding by half for a transitional jobs program for low-income adults and $2.2 million in cuts to benefits for families that adopt children or provide guardianship as a child’s relatives.

Among moderately sized departments, the Department of Agriculture stands out for taking the largest cut as a percentage of its general fund budget. Its $20.4 million budget would be cut by nearly 10%, to $18.4 million. About $700,000 of the cut is to end or reduce grants for solar energy in agriculture, for conservation and for equine welfare.

“This is a lot to take in,” Rep. Emily Sirota, the chair of the budget committee, told her fellow Democrats while previewing the budget. “These are a lot of very, very painful cuts we didn’t want to have to make. And now you’re being asked to maintain them so we can keep a balanced budget.”

Prison costs draw consternation

Perhaps the most controversial part of the budget, at least among the Democrats, is the Department of Corrections’ proposed increase.

That department����ap $69 million in general fund growth would represent a 6.1% year-over-year increase — easily the largest percentage increase among the so-called Big Six departments that make up the bulk of the general fund budget. The department’s overall general fund budget is nearly $1.2 billion.

The proposed increase, juxtaposed with cuts to a slew of programs for the lowest-income Coloradans, drew frequent comparisons from Democratic members of the House.

“We have this conversation every single year — about more beds, more money for prisons — when today we’re going to be talking about a lot of tough cuts,” Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat, said during a caucus meeting Tuesday. 

The single-largest cost increase outlined in the budget bill is $27.1 million for medical care for inmates. Sirota, from the budget committee, said that about a fifth of the inmates, or about 4,000 people, are at least 50 years old — technically geriatric, per the DOC’s definitions.

The number of people being kept in prison, versus released on parole and for other reasons such as health, has become an increasing frustration for lawmakers. The Joint Budget Committee earlier this year temporarily rejected a request by Gov. Jared Polis for more prison funding because its members wanted to see a plan for lowering the overall prison population.

Polis made a late request to the committee to spend up to $200 million on new prisons to handle the growing number of inmates. The committee rejected that request, opting instead to budget about $13 million for private prison beds in the hopes it would be a temporary solution to a temporary problem.

Sirota told the other Democrats that she shared their “intense frustration” about the increased cost for prisons. But the committee also has an obligation to budget for projected costs based on current law.

“The system is not setting us up for success in terms of reducing the prison population,” Sirota said. “So, if the General Assembly wants to see more people heading to community corrections, I think there needs to be significant discussions and policy changes made.” 

— sponsored by state Sens. Rod Pelton, a Cheyenne Wells Republican, and Nick Hinrichsen, a Pueblo Democrat — comes in direct response to a brewing crisis in the tiny town of Hartman, a community of 30 people in Prowers County near the Kansas border.

In a tiny Colorado town, infighting dissolved the government. Now the water’s running out.

The town has been operating without a local government since January, when its entire Board of Trustees quit following years of bitter infighting and a violent scuffle that sent one of the trustees to the hospital, The Denver Post reported last month. There is no clerk in Hartman to hold an election to replace the trustees, and there are no trustees to hire a clerk.

But Hartman has its own water supply -- and that system is on the brink of failure, with no elected officials to maintain it or hire an operator to oversee it.

Under current law, a town must wait five years before the secretary of state can deem it abandoned. The , introduced Wednesday, allows a county, landowner or registered elector in the town to apply to the state for abandonment when a town has no board of trustees or clerk, is unable to hold an election, and operates critical infrastructure for delivering water to its residents.

The legislation would also open up $100,000 in grant funding to cover the cost of operation and maintenance of a water system if that town is in the midst of applying for abandonment.

Pelton said the governor's office, attorney general's office and Prowers County officials were involved in the bill's drafting.

He said the chlorine that keeps the town's water supply usable is set to run out, and soon. When that happens, he said, the state is prepared to bring in water tanks for residents.

"It hasn't happened yet," he said, "but it can be activated when it's needed."

The bill would insulate Prowers County from any liability attached to Hartman's flagging water supply, which still faces a six-figure fine from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Once the town is abandoned, the county -- which Pelton said wants "nothing to do with" Hartman's water -- could then transfer the system to another entity.

Kevin Bommer, the executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, said the bill was a significant step in fixing Hartman's immediate needs.

"This bill represents the best opportunity for the very serious drinking water system issues in Hartman to be resolved," he said. "But there’s no guarantee that will happen."

Pelton said the nearby Granada Rural Water Authority has declined to step in and take over Hartman's system -- the water authority has "been burnt by them in the past," he said.

He said the bill's drafters wanted to ensure the measure could be used by other towns whose leaders find themselves in similar situations in the future. He said some other local officials are facing the same "social media" pressure that helped drive Hartman officials to quit.

"These keyboard warriors are dangerous people," Pelton said.

State officials are planning a second meeting with residents in mid-April, and Pelton said he hoped some residents would testify during committee hearings. The bill is set for its first hearing on April 22, meaning it's unlikely to pass the legislature until the final two weeks of session in May.

Hartman residents, in previous interviews, remained split on whether the town should dissolve or whether there was any way to salvage it. All agreed that the water situation needed to be fixed immediately.

One local filed a petition in district court last month, asking a judge to order a special election and appoint temporary officers so the town can conduct its business. That case remains open.

The special election vote strikes a blow against those who have been pushing for more density in the state’s fifth-largest city in the hopes of increasing housing supply and lowering home prices.

The four measures passed by nearly 2-to-1 ratios, with more than 15,000 votes in favor of repealing each ordinance and approximately 8,700 votes to keep them, according to

Tuesday’s special election was set in January after a group of citizens gathered enough signatures to get the measures on the ballot as part of an attempt to reverse the city’s zoning changes. Cathy Kentner, who headed the anti-rezoning committee Lakewood For All, said she was “very happy” with Tuesday’s result.

“It’s truly a win for the people over big-money special interests,” she said, noting that her side was far outspent by those pushing for the zoning changes. “I think the voters are saying they expect more from their (city) councilors. They voted for these councilors, and they expect them to represent them. And this zoning change is not representing your constituents.”

Kentner said this was the second citizen initiative put on the ballot in Lakewood in the past decade, a sign the city needs to do a better job talking to its 156,000 residents before enacting big changes to land-use policy.

“To move forward with zoning, they need to talk to the people whose property rights they’re changing,” she said.

Sophia Mayott-Guerrero, a former Lakewood City Council member who serves as campaign manager for Make Lakewood Livable, conceded that the rezoning effort had failed Tuesday.

But she said the special election was a “low-information, low-turnout” election that was marked by “fear-mongering” on the other side.

“I understand if what you believe is that you will lose your home, that you would vote this way,” Mayott-Guerrero said. “But we have a system of housing and zoning that needs to be updated. It’s based on things from 50 years ago, and with this defeat tonight, we will continue to have a housing affordability crisis.”

The City Council passed four ordinances in 2025 that together encourage the construction of more varied housing types, and by extension, greater density — with the ultimate aim of lowering home prices in a notoriously expensive metro housing market.

Despite a recent slowdown in metro-Denver home prices that have galloped inexorably upward for a decade or more, the median sales price of a single-family home came in at $630,000 in February — up 2.4% from January’s $615,000.

The median sales price, however, remains 2.2% below where it was a year earlier.

The changes the City Council made last year allow diverse housing types — duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes and townhomes — anywhere in the city. They also limit new home sizes to 5,000 square feet and encourage the conversion of vacant or underused commercial buildings to housing.

The new rules went into effect Jan. 1.

Opponents of the rezoning effort said the changes would endanger the character of established neighborhoods while not actually helping reduce home prices. In a news release issued this year, the opposition called Lakewood’s rezoning efforts “a blueprint for crammed, profit-driven development, bulldozed trees and ignored infrastructure.”

Those backing the city’s rezoning effort countered that without policies designed to diversify Lakewood’s housing inventory, working-class families representing teachers, firefighters and health care workers will never be able to afford a home in the city.

Mayott-Guerrero told The Denver Post last month that “the idea that we can keep structuring our housing in the same way and get a different result doesn’t make sense to me.”

The battle over affordable housing runs deep in Colorado, with the state mandating higher density in recent years and, in turn, being sued by cities that claim the legislation treads on their home-rule authority. Last fall, Littleton voters passed a measure that better protects single-family-home neighborhoods from multifamily housing projects.

The campaign to retain Lakewood’s rezoning regulations has outraised the opposition by a ratio of nearly 6-to-1 — $269,000 to $46,000, according to on March 31.

The issue committee Make Lakewood Livable — which supports keeping Lakewood’s rezoning ordinances — has pulled down big-dollar contributions from developers, including $10,000 from Cardel Homes and $50,000 from Boulder-based Conscience Bay.

Its top donor is the Action Now Initiative. The Houston-based nonprofit advocacy organization, which is a part of the national philanthropy Arnold Ventures, gave Make Lakewood Livable $75,000.

Arnold Ventures was launched by John Arnold, a former Enron executive and hedge fund manager who previously spent in support of Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s election and a 2024 Denver affordable housing sales tax proposal that was rejected narrowly by voters.

The top contribution on the side in favor of repealing Lakewood’s rezoning, which was supported by three issue committees, is $2,500.

Xcel filed the proposal Thursday with the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, or PUC. Under the proposal, data centers would have to sign 15-year contracts, provide financial assurance of cash or credit and pay substantial exit fees if they shut down early.

Potential large customers would have to sign service and interconnection agreements before they’re included in the utility’s planning forecast. The provisions would apply to data centers and other facilities using at least 50 megawatts of electricity.

The PUC will hold hearings and take input on Xcel’s plan in proceedings expected to take months. The commission will consider the rates, also called tariffs.

At the same time, the Colorado General Assembly is considering data center bills. One would provide sales and use tax incentives to encourage development of the centers. Another would impose regulations.

Xcel, which is monitoring the legislation, wants to protect residential and other customers from any rate increases caused by data centers and other large users of electricity, said Jack Ihle, Xcel’s vice president of data centers and large loads.

“We’re trying to do that by having the data centers pay for all the generation and transmission we need to serve them,” Ihle said. “We are looking to preserve the reliability of the system.”

The rapid development of artificial intelligence is driving the growth of the computing centers and their spread from previous hot spots such as Virginia to across the country. Xcel Energy’s recently approved plan for new energy resources includes about 2,000 megawatts for high-use customers by 2031.

One megawatt can typically power a few hundred homes.

“There is substantial interest in investing in Colorado data centers and we need to get this tariff in place so that we can get them into the resource plan process and begin to serve them,” Ihle said.

Potential data-center customers accounted for 62% of Xcel’s projected energy growth in its approved by the PUC in November. The company is Colorado’s largest electric utility with approximately 1.6 million customers.

The large computing centers that provide the foundation for digital operations for individuals, businesses and government have raised concerns about the volumes of water they use to cool the equipment and the amount of electricity needed to keep the machines humming 24/7.

Another issue is to pay for more power and the equipment to deliver it. Xcel’s proposal is a good first step in ensuring there is accountability for protecting consumers, Anita Seitz, advocacy director for Colorado Communities for Climate Action, said in a statement.

“This is about making sure data centers carry their fair share of the costs of building out new generating resources and transmission which are mostly going to serve data centers,” Seitz said.

Data center critics worry that the development boom could increase natural gas use, affecting the transition to wind, solar and other renewable sources and slowing goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Xcel’s proposal includes a clean transition tariff provision to encourage data centers to invest in carbon-free technologies. Companies would invest in those resources and receive a credit for the power the technology produces.

for a new data center in Minnesota calls for providing 1,400 megawatts of wind power, 200 megawatts of solar and 300 megawatts of storage.

Colorado law requires certain utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 2005 levels by 2030. Ihle said a longer-term target is using 100% clean energy by 2050.

Xcel’s proposed rates for high-use customers are structured to focus on the demand side, meaning much of the rate would be based on the facility’s peak demand. They would have to pay 80% of the minimum demand charge whether they use the amount or not, Ihle said.

“That provides a mechanism to protect other customers and we can ensure that we have enough revenue for these larger loads, which may be driving specific generation and transmission investments,” he added.

Xcel has recently told regulators that it could be short on electricity this summer and has concerns about potential gaps in 2027 and 2028. The utility’s largest power generator, the Comanche 3 coal plant near Pueblo, hasn’t worked since August and could be down for several more months.

In light of those concerns, does Xcel have any trepidation about taking on hyperscale computing centers as customers?

“The first thing I’d say is there will be zero data centers entering our system and coming online in the summer of 2026,” Ihle said.

Xcel is focused on getting its fleet back into service and is doing everything it can to get Comanche 3 working again, he added. A smaller coal plant set to be retired at the end of 2025 is still operating. And Xcel is looking at short-term market purchases of power.

“We understand and share customer concern over the immense energy needs of new, large customers, such as data centers,” Xcel Energy-Colorado President Robert Kenney said in a statement. ” At the same time we recognize these large customers bring the potential for jobs, investment and innovation to our communities.”

Depending on their size, data centers can generate millions of dollars a year in property taxes, Ihle said.

The tide is beginning to turn. In 2027, we will welcome the Sundance International Film Festival to Colorado. While some have questioned the $70 million incentive package used to secure the festival, that figure doesn’t tell the full story. Of that $70 million, only $34 million is in state tax credits; the remainder is backed by other interests, the City of Boulder, Visit Boulder, and the University of Colorado Boulder.

This funding is spread over ten years, and Sundance has committed to calling Boulder home, meaning that each year, the state is only providing an average of $3.4 million in total. These tax credits are not being thrown at an unproven event. In 2025 alone, Sundance generated a $196.1 million economic impact for Utah with over 85,000 attendees. For Colorado, we anticipate the festival will generate over $2 billion in economic impact over the next decade.

The impact of Sundance isn’t confined to a two-week event in Boulder. We are already seeing “cascading effects” through year-round cultural activities, such as recent screenings of the award-winning American Pachuco in Denver and Longmont.

However, this momentum depends entirely on our film office. The Colorado Office of Film, Television, and Media and Film Commissioner Lauren Sloan have worked tirelessly to ensure Sundance’s success benefits the entire state. Through partnerships with the Colorado Film and Video Association, Denver Film, and others, they have hosted town halls in seven regions, engaging hundreds of local creators and building the community required to attract major productions back to our rural areas.

The Colorado Office of Film, Television, and Media and Film (COFTM) is the bridge between curiosity and production, spending money in Colorado. Their work ensures that filmmakers visiting Sundance come back to produce their next projects here.

Currently, arts and culture generate $19.7 billion for Colorado and support over 121,000 jobs. COFTM grants specifically support cultural non-profits in communities like Carbondale, Delta, Paonia, and Steamboat Springs, while their workforce development initiatives have enabled hundreds of local hires across the state.

Growth in this industry improves education, well-being, and public engagement. Sundance is already attracting programs to help our educators deepen students’ media literacy, while Colorado-based documentaries continue to bring vital attention to issues like climate change and civil rights.

We recognize the immense pressure on the Colorado General Assembly. Due to the passage of H.R.1, the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the state faces a $1.5 billion budget gap. While short-term cuts are tempting, defunding the COFTM would be a self-defeating measure. If the office loses its funding, we will eliminate the very infrastructure — workforce development, rural initiatives, and local festival support — needed to capitalize on the Sundance investment. Cutting these programs now would be a short-sighted remedy for a long-term budgetary challenge.

As the head of a community of filmmakers, casting directors, artists, and craftsmen, I urge you: do not abandon us at the very moment we are poised to become an industry hub. Art gives our lives meaning, but it also powers our economy. Our industry stands ready to partner with the legislature to support vulnerable Coloradans and contribute to our state’s recovery.

I didn’t stay in Colorado because it was easy; I stayed because I love this state. The industry looks forward to boosting Colorado’s financial and cultural future.

Noah Smith is the president of the Colorado Film and Video Association. He is a Denver-based filmmaker and the founder of InContrast Films. 

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