The Parker Town Council unanimously passed an emergency ordinance Monday that places a nine-month moratorium on the town accepting applications from retailers to establish drone dispatch and delivery facilities.

About 24 hours later, the Castle Rock Town Council passed a similar ban. Castle Rock’s timeout will last six months.

Both towns recently received inquiries from Walmart and Wing about launching a drone operation to make deliveries for the retail behemoth, be it printer cartridges, a banana or a bottle of cold medicine. Wing, which is owned by the Google parent company Alphabet, , including Houston, Dallas and Atlanta.

Drone delivery has yet to take off in Colorado, though it is .

“The town council thinks this is going to happen in the future and we don’t want to be the test case for it,” Castle Rock Mayor Jason Gray said Tuesday. “A lot of people are asking how loud they are, how often they will fly and at what distance around town.”

A glimpse at answers to some of those questions came during Parker’s Town Council meeting Monday night. Town planner Elizabeth Steward told the council that the drones proposed for the town would fly at heights between 150 feet and 400 feet, though they could drop down and hover around 40 feet above the ground when delivering or retrieving items.

The loudest a drone would get when delivering merchandise, she said, would be 62.6 decibels, which sound experts say is .

Councilwoman Brandi Wilks said she worries about how delivery drones might impact wildlife and whether they will conflict with drones the Parker Police Department regularly flies.

Councilman Todd Hendreks said a pause was needed as the town tried to wrap its head around the technology and devise the most appropriate ways to deploy it. The move by both Douglas County towns this week echoed the go-slow approach some Colorado communities have taken recently with other emerging technologies, such as the development of artificial intelligence-driven data centers.

“With emerging technology, since we have really nothing to address this, I think it’s important to give (town) staff time to review and come back to us with whatever they find,” Hendreks said.

Parker plans to hire a consultant to come up with rules for managing delivery drones in town.

Ultimately, though, cities and towns in Colorado are limited in what they can control when it comes to drones.��That’s because the Federal Aviation Administration has jurisdiction over airspace, aircraft operations, flight paths, altitude and in-flight noise, according to .

A municipality’s regulatory authority is “generally limited to the land use and site-related aspects of the operation, including where launch and landing infrastructure may be located,” and how the site is designed, the memo says.

Delivery drones in Castle Rock would have to compete with the town’s drones-as-first-responder program, which it launched through its police department last summer.

“The FAA will have ultimate control — we’re hoping we have enough control that we can guide the process as well,” said Gray, Castle Rock’s mayor.

According to , the drone delivery business is poised for robust growth as consumers who shop by smartphone — and from their couches — become hungrier for faster delivery times. The forecasting firm projects that the global industry will grow from just over $5 billion this year to nearly $21 billion in 2034.

The firm said North America “dominated the drone package delivery market with a market share of 35.47% in 2025.”

Gray said it’s one thing when it’s just Walmart flying merchandise to people’s front steps in Castle Rock. But if drones prove popular with consumers, others are sure to get in on the action.

“If we have 18 different retailers doing delivery by drone, I don’t know what that’s going to look like,” he said. “If drones were flying by your house 15 to 25 times a day, my citizens might not like it.”

In May, Walmart , boasting that it is operating the service across 66 stores in four states. Its fastest delivery time so far is 4 minutes and 44 seconds, though the average delivery time for an order is 23 minutes.

Parker Councilwoman Anne Barrington conceded that while the latest wave in shopping convenience is fraught with uncertainty, she has no doubt that it’s coming — and Parker better be ready.

“We’re not saying no — we’re just saying no today,” she said.

Or so it goes in a local software engineer’s new online game, in which players deputized as park rangers fight ghouls, frolic through the and learn the

Cheesman Park: The Game, created by 33-year-old Casey Cantor, is filled with recognizable landmarks from the 80-acre park, brought to life one pixel at a time. To play the free game on a computer or smartphone, visit .

“This is a love letter to Cheesman Park,” said Cantor, who has no plans to monetize the game. “I told my wife yesterday that I would be so satisfied if some people played it, and maybe a local paper would write about it. Mission accomplished.”

Cantor and his wife live a couple of blocks from the park, which is bordered by Humboldt Street, Race Street, 13th Avenue and Eighth Avenue. The software engineer lived in Denver after college from 2015 to 2018 and then moved back with his wife a year ago.

When searching for a neighborhood to call home, Cantor took his wife to Cheesman Park, where they both fell in love with the area.

“The park is the biggest reason we picked this neighborhood to move to,” he said.

Cantor’s game-making started about the same time he moved back. He grew up playing video games like World of Warcraft and Halo, but also enjoyed with cute worldbuilding like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley.

Cantor realized the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, paired with his software engineering skills, enabled him to create just such a cozy game himself, without having to hire other people. He cut his teeth making a horse-racing game called Pocket Derby — a process he found gratifying.

When his friend asked a few weeks ago whether he was going to make another game, Cantor found a muse in one of his favorite places — a neighborhood staple with spooky lore that would lend itself well to storytelling.

“Basically, the game made itself with the history of the park, the spooky history of it all,” Cantor said. “I knew I wanted something to do with ghosts and zombies, but also wanted to do some of the happier, more friendly parts of the park.”

Players who frequent the park are in for a treat spotting familiar sights.

In the game, as in real life, dancers groove in the iconic Cheesman Park Pavilion. Volleyball games are underway. Dogs and squirrels abound. The rose garden is flourishing.

When nighttime falls, the game’s friendly parkgoers turn into zombies and ghosts who chase the park ranger, armed with nothing but a Frisbee deployed by the keyboard’s space bar. The aim of the game is to survive as many nights as you can before you’re zombie chow.

Players may run into , the undertaker the city hired in 1893 to remove the remains of the bodies buried in the graveyard that now exists as Cheesman Park.

The cemetery opened in 1858. By 1910, the land had a scandalous conversion to a public park and was named after Walter Cheesman — a local businessman and booster whose fortune after death went toward financing the park’s iconic pavilion.

Infamously, McGovern did a literal hack job on the bodies, cutting them up and distributing them among multiple caskets to cash in on more profits. have been found in the modern park and adjacent Denver Botanic Gardens. (In a bonus level of the game, players dash through the gardens.)

From start to finish, Cantor said the game took him six days to make and launch. He posted it on social media and plans to hang fliers in Cheesman Park that say “Enjoying Cheesman Park? Play the game!”

Cantor credits AI with the quick deployment, along with his own software skills and on-the-ground work. To re-create the park so well, he used overhead shots he found via Google and his own photos from walking the park.

“A few years ago, this would have taken five people a few weeks to make and nobody would have funded it, but now the technology is so great, those things are possible,” he said.

Now that he’s had a taste for it, Cantor is inspired to re-create even more Denver landmarks through computer gameplay.

“One person really can make something specific to their corner of the city, kind of like a love letter of the things important to them,” Cantor said.

On Tuesday, Polis rejected , which would’ve prohibited companies from using the vast amounts of data collected on Coloradans to set individualized prices on goods like groceries and electronics. The bill also would have barred companies like Uber and Lyft from using that information to set differing wages for drivers.

Supporters of the bill, which was passed with support only from Democratic lawmakers, argued that the technology was used to set prices at the highest level a consumer was willing to pay — or the lowest wage that a worker was willing to accept — based on that person’s location and other characteristics.

Polis had already signaled his skepticism of the bill because, his office said, it might “interfere with the free functioning of markets.”

In his veto statement Tuesday, he echoed objections raised by the business and tech communities, which opposed the bill en masse, that HB-1210 was too broad and would prevent those companies from offering lower prices and discounts to consumers. The bill carved out discount and loyalty programs, but Polis said he “found little comfort” in those exemptions.

What Colorado bills are becoming laws?

"I am concerned that instead of advancing a policy to specifically target clearly egregious price gouging practices," he wrote, "this broader framework will inadvertently capture innocuous uses of technology that in no way harms -- and indeed benefits -- consumers and workers."

The bill was backed by progressive organizations and consumer groups. Amid growing interest among policymakers in regulating the practice, it would've been the strongest regulation of its kind in the United States.

"Everybody is talking about how concerned they are with the rising cost of living, and this bill was about preventing companies from spying on us to price gouge us," Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat who sponsored HB-1210, said Tuesday. "I don't know how anyone can credibly make the case that it's a good thing for the biggest companies in the world to know everything about us in how they set our prices."

HB-1210 was the latest in a slew of pro-tech and pro-business vetoes by Polis in recent years, and it was the only one of Democrats' three marquee affordability measures to pass the legislature this year.

Its demise came almost exactly 12 months after Polis vetoed another Democratic priority bill, 2025's . That measure would have prohibited landlords from using algorithmic software to set home rental prices, a practice that cost Denver renters more than $1,600 per year, according to a study by the Biden administration.

On Tuesday, Polis also vetoed , which would've reformed parts of the state's arbitration rules, and , which sought to curb the distribution of single-use serviceware by restaurants and delivery services. The latter bill would have required them to provide single-use utensils, napkins, condiment packets, straws, chopsticks and other items to customers only upon request.

Tuesday's rejections bring Polis' veto total for the year to nine, two shy of his single-year record. He has until mid-June to sign or reject bills, or to allow them to pass into law without his signature.

“If you Google ‘lawn mower recycling,’ I’m the only one that comes up,” he said.

The 60-year-old owner of All-Pro Lawnmower Sales, Service & Recycling at 555 Santa Fe Drive in Denver spends his days toiling on small engines. He’s been working at the shop for a decade and has owned it for five.

The business brings in $250,000 annually with $160 carburetor fixes and $140 tune-ups. But the number of lawn mowers he services goes down each year.

“So many people have jumped on the electric [mower] that gas has slowly phased out,” he said.

The shop used to be a two-man show. When Mason started working there, one person would go out and buy unwanted mowers to resell; the other would repair ones that came into the shop.

The business would spend between $3,000 and $5,000 each winter to get enough stock in store for when the spring used mower season begins. Now, with recycling in the name, people bring in enough products for him to sell so that he can spend all his time making repairs. All customers have to do is roll them through his front door during business hours. He said he made the change after seeing how many people were taking their old, “perfectly good” mowers to the landfill.

About 20% of his revenue comes from selling used mowers. And for the used mowers that can’t be fixed, he’ll take the working parts and slap them on other ones to save money.

That����ap a boon for the small-business owner, who doesn’t have to pay another employee Denver’s nearly $20 hourly minimum wage.

“They’re lawn mowers. You’re not going to make a ton of money,” he said. “But I make a living.”

During the busy season, about 10 mowers come through the doors each day needing service. Most of the work is replacing a faulty carburetor, usually because the owner left gas inside the mower all winter.

It takes Mason just a half hour to do the repair.

The Arvada native has spent much of his life in Colorado. His dad was a diesel mechanic for Safeway, working on its truck fleet at its distribution center off of 40th and Colorado.

“I always loved little engines,” Mason said.

He served in the Army at Fort Hood and painted custom homes in Austin, then returned home to paint schools for Jefferson County.

But all the while, he battled alcoholism and wound up in trouble with the law, serving a 10-year sentence related to his addiction. When he was released, the first job he applied for was at All-Pro Lawnmower.

In the years since, he’s worked on everything from the traditional lawn mower engine to an antique John Deere. Last week, his shop had a moped and jet ski inside, with dozens of push mowers around them.

He’s seen seven competing shops go under during his time working there. He doesn’t repair electric mowers, which he said are “disposable.”

“There’s nothing to work on,” he said. “It����ap not like the old days where everything can be replaced.”

Read more from our partner, .

IonQ, the largest independent player in quantum computing, has chosen Boulder as the site of a new research and development facility, joining Google Quantum AI, which made a similar move in March.

“This is a big bet for us,” said IonQ chairman and CEO Niccolo de Masi, during a ceremony on Tuesday to unveil a 22,000 square feet lab at Boulder 38, which is at the intersection of 38th Street and Arapahoe Avenue.

The company plans to invest $100 million in the new R&D facility, which is expected to be completed in late summer to accommodate new quantum computers arriving from the United Kingdom later this year.

Once those are set up, a team of engineers and computer scientists will monitor hardware performance and test how they handle different software configurations and algorithms. The location will also serve as a quantum data center handling real-world applications.

In February, the Colorado Economic Development Council approved $2.76 million in Job Growth Incentive Credits for IonQ, conditioned on the creation of up to 150 new jobs paying an average annual wage of $168,422.

The EDC has also designated those state tax credits as refundable, meaning they could be sold to raise funds. Boulder’s Gunbarrel area also received a CHIPS Zone designation in November, which opens up additional credits.

Incentives aside, Boulder beat out its competitors because of the technical expertise residing at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other federal labs, IonQ executives said.

The Boulder area has the highest concentration of quantum researchers, companies and workers in the world. Getting those experts to leave is a tough task, said David Allcock, vice president of Quantum Computing Science with IonQ, and the executive who will be in charge of the new lab.

Although IonQ is based in Maryland, the company’s core technology, like so much in quantum computing, traces back to Boulder.

Company co-founder Chris Monroe, together with Nobel-prize-winning physicist David Wineland, developed the world’s “quantum logic gate” in 1995 while working at NIST, home to the atomic clock.

That set the stage for the use of trapped ion technology in computing, which was further developed at the University of Maryland.

“In so many ways, we see IonQ’s decision to choose Boulder as the site for this facility as a reflection of the community’s longtime commitment to innovation, entrepreneurship and emerging industries,” Boulder Mayor Aaron Brockett said.

IonQ went public in November 2020 and on Thursday had a market value of $21.4 billion, making it the largest standalone quantum computing company in the world.

Its growing financial cloud has allowed it to make several big acquisitions, including the $1.8 billion purchase announced earlier this year of SkyWater Technologies, a large U.S. semiconductor foundry based in Minnesota.

In January, the company ., a California company with a large presence in the Broomfield area. Skyloom has developed technologies for transmitting data via lasers through space instead of through land-based fiber optic cables.

“The conversation is shifting from can we do quantum to how do we scale it,” said Jessi Olsen, CEO of Elevate Quantum, a Boulder-based association working to promote the commercialization of quantum computing within the state. “Colorado is where the quantum future is being built.”

Google Quantum AI, a subsidiary of Alphabet, is another leading player in the quantum space that set up shop in Boulder after previously concentrating most of its investments in California and Washington.

In March, it established a new research and development team under the direction of CU Boulder professor Adam Kaufman to build quantum computers using what are known as neutral atoms.

The , which has primarily focused on superconducting or the use of extremely cold temperatures to harness atoms.

Practicality versus supremacy

Quantum computers operate at a power of magnitude so far beyond existing systems that it can be hard to describe them without evoking terms from the supernatural.

Classical computing systems are binary, where bits function like light switches, either on or off. Information is processed in a linear sequence, one step at a time. The bits can be in one place at a given time, and their paths can be traced, making error detection and correction possible.

Quantum computers use “qubits,” which can access subatomic states. One state is , allowing them to be both on and off at the same time and in multiple places at once. And there is entanglement, where qubits can be linked regardless of distance, say a computer in Boulder and one in Maryland, using a Skyloom laser.

If bits are mere mortals, occupying space and time, qubits possess omnipresence and telepathy. But they are “wild” in their natural state and not easy to tame.

Historically, extremely cold temperatures, near absolute zero, were used to put them in a quiet state, which required bulky and expensive systems. IonQ, by contrast, initially used a series of laser “lassos” to control the atoms and drain them of their kinetic energy.

While a big step forward from cryogenic systems, scaling requires a complex array of precise lasers. IonQ will be testing systems in Boulder that use on-chip electronics to do more of the gatekeeping, making for an easier commercial transition.

Quantum computers can handle a massive number of mathematical possibilities at once and complete calculations once considered impossible. Computations that the world’s most powerful conventional supercomputers could never hope to complete can be done in minutes and hours with quantum computers.

But qubits, despite their superpowers, are incredibly fragile and require isolation from the outside world.

Even the tiniest disruptions, whether in temperature or electromagnetic waves, can make them unstable. Qubits are so unstable that even observing them to see if they are behaving properly can upend the process.

For years, adding more qubits to correct errors was the attempted solution, but it only increased unreliability. Recent advances have resulted in lower error rates as more qubits are added.

IonQ uses individual atoms of Ytterbium and Barium as qubits within an ultra-high vacuum, protecting them from the outside world. Once trapped, the ions are reduced to a ground state through lasers, similar to what freezing them at absolute zero achieves.

Rather than focusing, as Google has, on “quantum supremacy,” IonQ has put its energy into running a smaller number of qubits at a much higher accuracy rate. All major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and even Google Cloud, are customers.

Its trapped ion systems are shrinking in size and can operate at room temperature with fewer lasers; they can now fit into rack-mounted systems compatible with standard data centers.

One rack-mounted IonQ system could, in theory, replace thousands of energy-hungry GPUs for AI training tasks, said Chris Ballance, president of Quantum Computing at IonQ.

Investors are pouring billions of dollars into AI-related companies that are promising to resolve bottlenecks, from building more data centers to providing more power to increasing chip capacity to photonics.

But quantum computers have shown they can learn complex patterns from much smaller datasets than classical AI and they can resolve complex problems using a fraction of the energy.

If conventional chips represent the information age equivalent of fossil fuels, quantum chips represent the coming “clean energy” alternative.

“It can solve problems for far less power,” Ballance said.

That in turn could make the expansion of AI, which relies heavily on data centers, more palatable to the public.

Gallup, , found that 7 in 10 Americans are opposed to the construction of data centers in their communities, with nearly half “strongly opposed.”

Key concerns include the raw land that centers use, the diversion of water resources to cool servers and electricity requirements, which is putting strains on the grid and driving up residential electricity prices.

Americans are now more accepting of nuclear energy plants in their communities than data centers, Gallup has found.

Because quantum computers can handle complex calculations in a fraction of the time conventional computers require, less energy per solution is required.

One transition scenario involves hybrid data centers where quantum machines do the heavy mathematical lifting while traditional servers handle the interactions with users.

How fast that day arrives remains to be determined. But the new research facilities that Google and IonQ are launching in Boulder could play a key part in whatever comes next.

And for the second consecutive year, Gov. Jared Polis has greeted the bill with a cold shoulder.

The state Senate passed on Wednesday on a 19-15 vote, putting the attempt to ban “surveillance pricing” on a glide path to Polis’ desk. If signed into law, the measure would generally prohibit companies from using the mountains of data collected on consumers to set individualized prices on items like groceries, plane tickets and electronics. It would also block companies like Uber or Lyft from using that data to set individualized wages for workers.

The measure is similar in intent to last year’s , which targeted the algorithms that the Biden White House found had been used to increase rents in Denver and elsewhere in the United States. Polis vetoed that measure.

In the debate over this year’s measure, critics argue that companies use the technology to set prices at the highest point each consumer is willing to pay, based on the data collected about that person. That means the price you pay may depend on how close you are to a store or whether the algorithm has determined that you’re particularly desperate for diapers.

The bill’s opponents, which include a number of prominent business and technology groups, have countered that the technology is used to provide discount programs for customers and to increase pricing efficiencies.

“We appreciate the sponsors’ work to address our concerns; however, our members continue to tell us that the bill remains overly broad and creates uncertainty around routine business practices,” Brittany Morris Saunders, the president and CEO of the Colorado Technology Association, told lawmakers during an earlier committee hearing.

While other states have debated — and, in — limitations on price surveillance, Colorado’s bill would be the strongest in the country, said Lee Hepner, a senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project.

HB-1210 is “truly a first-in-the-nation bill to curb surveillance pricing,” Hepner said in an interview last month, after the bill had passed the House.

Whether it now becomes law is another question.

Polis’ office has declined to say whether the governor intends to sign the bill once it passes a final procedural vote and moves to his desk. On Wednesday, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama referred The Denver Post to an earlier, lukewarm statement on the bill.

“Governor Polis is concerned with policies, including price-fixing and restrictions on demand-informed pricing, that further interfere with the free functioning of markets,” spokeswoman Ally Sullivan wrote last month.

Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat sponsoring the bill, said Wednesday that he hadn’t received direct feedback from the governor’s office and had heard about Polis’ position only through his statement to The Post.

“But I would expect, given the governor’s focus on affordability, that he does the right thing and signs the bill,” Mabrey said. “Coloradans don’t want to be spied on and scammed.”

HB-1210 is among the few remaining marquee affordability-focused bills backed by House Democrats this year; three of those bills were touted at a news conference earlier this year. Another bill in that package, which would’ve curbed prices at concert venues and sports stadiums, died in its first committee hearing, and a third affordability measure was never introduced.

Polis is often skeptical of bills that regulate tech companies or products, and that skepticism has butted up against Democratic lawmakers’ plans in the past. Last year, the governor rejected the legislation banning algorithms that had been used to hike rent prices in Denver and elsewhere, despite a letter from the House Democratic caucus urging him to sign it.

The 2026 sessions ends next Wednesday. Once HB-1210 reaches Polis’ desk, he will have 30 days to sign it, veto it or let it pass into law without his signature. If it becomes law, the bill would take effect in August.

Once it goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2028, will only allow pet stores to host animals from adoption or rescue services, so long as the stores don’t charge fees and the animals are sterilized. It otherwise prohibits those stores from selling dogs and cats in an effort to curb commercial breeding and sales from “puppy mills.”

, there are seven pet stores in the state licensed to sell the animals and five more that serve as brokers.

As Polis prepared to sign the bill, five black-and-white, 13-week-old puppies — Benedict, Daphne, Violet, Eloise and Hyacinth — lounged, climbed over one another, leaned into a reporter’s mic and cuddled in a pair of pens on the Capitol foyer’s floor. All of them .

The governor also brought his dog, Gia, who hopped off her chair and wandered under the bill-signing table to investigate the newcomers.

“We’re sending a very powerful message with this bill — first of all: Adopt, don’t shop. Little Gia is here, we adopted her 16 years ago,” said Polis, who had scooped up the little brown dog. His husband, animal rights advocate Marlon Reis, stood beaming nearby.

“If you do want to purchase … some people want (a) purebred or a specific breed, (and) there are many wonderful home breeders, legitimate breeders in our state, people who have a litter of dogs in their home and sell them,” Polis added.

The new law will not apply to the sale of specially trained animals — like those used by law enforcement, hunters or people with disabilities.

The bill took eight years to pass, according to Polis and the bill’s primary sponsor, House Majority Leader Monica Duran. Duran officially named the bill after her late Pomeranian, Pistol.

Polis said 26 jurisdictions in Colorado have banned puppy mill sales in retail stores. Denver joined them when its City Council passed an ordinance last year, though the city had no stores selling dogs and cats at the time. Several other states, including and , have adopted similar bans.

HB-1011 was also sponsored by Democrats Rep. Karen McCormick and Sens. Robert Rodriguez and Dylan Roberts. The measure passed the Senate earlier this month on a 19-16 vote, with all Republicans and some Democrats opposed. It had cleared the House 44-21, with only one Republican — Rep. Rick Taggart — voting in support.

“Today, this bill has lived in my heart for eight years,” an emotional Duran said. “Eight years of conversations, eight years of setbacks, eight years of (the time for this law) being not yet, not now and maybe never. But here we are.

“And today, I don’t stand alone. I stand here with every voice that refused to give up on the animals who could not speak for themselves.”

Ahead of the bill signing, the Best Friends Animal Society hailed the legislation and expressed hope it would help reduce euthanization of shelter pets in Colorado by increasing adoptions. In a news release, the group cited recent data showing a nearly 16% increase last year in the killing of shelter pets across the state, though the vast majority of shelters are considered “no-kill.”

“Best Friends has been working to make the country no-kill and it����ap incredible to see the continued momentum in Colorado to help save every healthy and treatable dog and cat,” the society’s CEO, Julie Castle, said in a statement.

Welcome back to the Capitol, where Colorado lawmakers will pass the midpoint of the 2026 session later this week.

That threshold — the 60-day mark — will hit Saturday, when lawmakers will (likely … hopefully) be home for the weekend. Before that happens, legislators in the House will vote on several bills that have been tabbed as priority measures by the Democratic lawmakers who have near-supermajority control of the statehouse.

Today, the House is set to vote on and send it to the Senate. The bill would repeal a unique provision of Colorado’s labor law, which requires that newly formed unions pass a second vote before they can begin negotiating the collection of union dues.

Colorado lawmakers aim to ‘assert state authority’ amid federal gaps on vaccines, worker safety and other issues

The bill is almost certain to pass the House today and the Senate later this session. It's a priority for the unions that form a significant part of the Democratic base, and a similar version of the bill passed last year.

From there, though, HB-1005 is likely to run into the same end that met its 2025 version: a veto at the hands of Gov. Jared Polis.

Elsewhere today, the House Finance Committee is scheduled to vote on three Democratic measures that would limit several business-friendly tax incentives. The state would direct the savings from the bills toward a new tax credit, which would go to lower-income families with children, mirroring another credit that's run into trouble. The measures are House Bills , and .

Here's what else to expect this week, with schedules subject to change.

AI task force recs

For the radar this week: Polis' latest artificial intelligence task force, which has been tasked with rewriting Colorado's artificial intelligence regulations, is finally nearing its last hours. The task force is expected to vote at some point soon on a framework that can then be sent to the legislature for consideration for a new AI bill.

Tuesday

The House's Judiciary Committee will vote on , which seeks to expedite how quickly social media sites and other tech companies respond to search warrants. That bill has already cleared the Senate.

Wednesday

The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on , which would decriminalize prostitution across the state.

The Senate Education Committee will also weigh whether to provide initial approval for , which would institute state-level protections against disability discrimination in Colorado schools.

Thursday

The House Business Affairs and Labor Committee will debate , another Democratic priority bill. The measure would prohibit companies from using data they've picked up through digital surveillance to customize either the prices they charge or the wages they pay to workers like Uber drivers.

But first, the Senate is set to have the first floor debate and vote today on . The measure is the first of Democrats’ trident of immigration bills, and it would allow Coloradans to file lawsuits against federal agents if residents are injured by those agents during immigration enforcement operations.

The bill was one of the first measures introduced this session, and it cleared its first committee earlier this month on a party-line vote. It’s likely to pass the full Senate, too, and today’s vote is the first of two it’ll need before it can move to the House.

After SB-5, the Senate is also scheduled to debate initial approval for , which would automatically seal most minors’ name-changing records. That bill was significantly amended in committee amid opposition from Gov. Jared Polis’ office. The governor has also made noise about killing SB-18 entirely and replacing it with a new bill, but the bill’s supporters told us they have no intention of playing along.

Elsewhere today, the House Finance Committee is set to debate a pair of housing-related measures. First is , which would set up incentive programs for communities to build up their ancillary public transit infrastructure, like signs and lighting. The bill would also create additional financial support to build affordable housing.

The committee will also debate , which would give tax breaks for land that’s been purchased for the purpose of later development into housing.

Later in the week, the full House will chat about which would prohibit local governments from establishing minimum lot sizes of more than 2,000 square feet. Basically, that would allow for more density, though it would do so by tipping into the land-use debate, where local governments have opposed state intervention at length.

On the Big Data front: Lawmakers of both parties have proposed legislation that would take various steps to limit law enforcement access to personal data.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up and . The former would generally block government agencies from accessing license plate reader databases without a warrant. The latter is more expansive and would put restrictions on accessing technology like facial recognition software and traffic and drone cameras.

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee will weigh a similar proposal, . That bill would generally prohibit private companies from selling your data to law enforcement agencies.

Here’s what else is afoot this week, with schedules subject to change.

Tuesday

House Judiciary will debate , a tenant-protection bill.

Wednesday

The House Ethics Committee will vote on a complaint against Republican Rep. Ron Weinberg. The legislature’s Audit Committee will receive a report on the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s DNA evidence testing program, after last year’s intense focus on the agency’s testing backlog for sexual assault kits.

Both hearings are scheduled for first thing Wednesday morning.

Thursday

The Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee will debate , which would undo lawmakers’ decision last year to maintain state income taxes on overtime.

The House’s Business Affairs and Labor Committee will that essentially would create state-level workplace standards, in a bid to step in for lapsing federal standards and oversight. On that same front, the House’s Education Committee will vote on , which would establish state-level protections against discrimination in schools.

All consumers who purchased items from the Google Play Store between August 2016 and September 2023 and “were harmed by Google’s anticompetitive conduct” are eligible for part of the settlement, according to a from Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser’s office.

The settlement was first announced in December 2023, , but is still in the process of being approved.

“This settlement is a win for Coloradans and consumers across the country,” Weiser stated in the release. “We use our mobile devices more than any other form of technology. Google’s anticompetitive practices with the Play Store forced higher prices on consumers.”

Affected Coloradans began receiving notices about the settlement distribution process on Dec. 2. Eligible consumers do not have to submit a claim, and most will not need to take any further action to be paid.

Weiser and a sued Google in 2021, alleging the company unlawfully monopolized the Android app distribution and in-app payment processing market.

Google signed anticompetitive contracts to prevent other app stores from being preloaded on Android devices, bought key app developers who might have launched rival app stores, created technological barriers to deter consumers from directly downloading apps to their devices and imposed monopoly prices on in-app purchases, according to the lawsuit.

The court granted preliminary approval of the $700 million settlement on Nov. 20, triggering the notification process, according to Weiser’s office. A judge will decide whether to approve the final settlement in a hearing on April 30, 2026.

Once the settlement has been approved, consumers will receive an email from PayPal or a text from Venmo notifying them of their incoming payment at the email address or mobile phone number associated with their Google Play account.

If the phone number or email associated with the consumer’s Google Play is associated with a PayPal or Venmo account, then the payment will be made directly to that account. If not, consumers will have the option of creating an account or directing the payment to a different account.

There will be a after automatic payments are made for consumers who:

• Do not have an existing PayPal or Venmo account and do not want to sign up for PayPal or Venmo,
• No longer have access to the email address or mobile phone number associated with their Google Play account,
• Or were expecting to receive a payment but did not.

Google Play customers who do not want to receive payment from the settlement fund and want to bring their own case against Google must submit a request to be by Feb. 19, 2026. Consumers must also file any objections to the settlement by that date.