The House State, Civic, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee voted unanimously Monday afternoon to advance the bill. was introduced Friday, days after into Chávez that accused the late Mexican-American civil rights icon of sexually abusing and assaulting women involved in the agricultural labor movement.

His victims allegedly included underaged girls and his fellow organizer Dolores Huerta, who described Chávez’s abuse to the Times.

HB-1339 would change Colorado’s March 31 voluntary legal holiday — which falls on Chávez’s birthday — from César Chávez Day to “Farm Workers Day.”

“When we talk about removing a name from statute, we’re not just talking about policy. We are talking about history. We are talking about identity, and we are talking about people’s experiences,” said House Majoriy Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat. “This conversation didn’t start here. It started with survivors. It started with members of our communities, who came forward with painful stories of sexual abuse and rape. And (they) asked something very simple of us: to listen, and to not look away.”

Duran is co-sponsoring the bill with Rep. Lorena Garcia and Sen. Jessie Danielson, both also Democrats.

Duran and Garcia said renaming the voluntary holiday — which doesn’t require state government offices to close — would emphasize the broader farm labor movement and the workers who filled its ranks, rather than the man who led it decades ago.

Garcia quoted a comment by one of Chávez’s victims to the Times: “The movement — that����ap the hero.”

The bill passed the committee 11-0. It now heads to the full House for the first of two votes. Garcia says lawmakers intend to pass the bill before March 31 so that the new holiday can take effect.

If the legislature works at its maximum speed, the bill could be passed by the end of this week.

The Times’ revelations about Chávez have prompted a wave of similarly swift recriminations nationwide. Lawmakers in California, where March 31 is also named for Chávez, have similarly discussed stripping him from the holiday. Annual marches in Chávez’s honor were canceled in Denver and in several other cities, and officials in multiple states said they would consider renaming the scores of streets and schools that bore his moniker, according to the Times.

Last week, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston announced that the city would change a full municipal holiday named for Chávez that’s set to be observed next Monday. The city also planned to strip his name from a city park.

In another vote, the House’s narrowly advanced during the meeting, which stretched into Tuesday night. That bill would broadly seek more transparency and oversight of some federal activities in the state.

The defeat of came after several hours of testimony on both measures. HB-1275 was backed by progressive and immigrant-rights organizations, but it was opposed by law enforcement groups.

It died on a 5-6 vote, with two Democrats joining the committee’s four Republicans in voting no.

“In the age of fascism, where our government is snatching people off the street into unmarked vehicles, without due process and (while) violating multiple constitutional rights, this was a modest step that we could have taken to keep our community safe — and I am extremely disappointed that we were not able to,” Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat and one of the bill’s sponsors, said Wednesday morning.

The bill — which was significantly amended before it was voted down — would’ve generally required local enforcement officers to identify themselves, though it would not have applied to federal immigration agents, who are frequently masked and unidentified.

Zokaie and fellow sponsor Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat, said that though they couldn’t regulate federal authorities’ conduct, they wanted to distinguish local police from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Local law enforcement also would have had to receive training on the state’s immigration laws, which generally prohibit cooperation with federal officials on civil immigration enforcement. The bill would’ve given local Colorado-based police the explicit authority to intervene if federal agents use excessive force. The bill also underscored that local law enforcement can arrest federal agents who break state law.

ICE officers who later try to work for local agencies in Colorado would have been required to turn over their internal affairs file to a state board that certifies law enforcement.

, police officers must provide their business cards to certain people with whom they interact. Officers also must intervene when other state-regulated law enforcement uses excessive force.

The bill’s death, which comes amid an intense local and national backlash to ICE’s often-militarized enforcement tactics, was a shock. Supporters said Tuesday night that they believed it would pass after it had been effectively rewritten. On Wednesday, Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat who’s often worked on immigration legislation, said she was “stunned and appalled” that the bill died. But she said conversations were still underway about next steps to revive some of the bill’s aims.

Zokaie said she had expected the bill to clear the committee. Rep. Chad Clifford, one of the two Democrats who voted against the bill, is also listed among the bill’s more than 20 House sponsors.

Zokaie said her disappointment in the bill’s failure was compounded because “it was Democrats teaming up with the Republicans to do it.”

Republicans opposed the bill because it would have imposed additional regulations on local law enforcement. Clifford said the bill focused on local police even though “Colorado peace officers didn’t mess this up,” a reference to the backlash against ICE.

He and Denver Rep. Cecelia Espenoza, the other Democrat who opposed HB-1275, also questioned if the bill would have any impact, given that its identification elements would have applied only to local officers. Espenoza said she was concerned that the immigrant community would be “misled” about whom the bill applied to.

“I’m just not there (on there being) something here that����ap going to change something,” Clifford, a Centennial Democrat, said. He added in an interview that he had agreed to co-sponsor the bill before it was fully drafted and released.

Christopher Nurse, the political director for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, criticized Espenoza’s comments.

“If I could have responded to her in the moment, I would have disagreed with her notion because there isn’t false hope in telling Coloradans and immigrants who live in this state that if somebody has the privilege to protect and serve us, we should know exactly who the hell they are,” he said. “I don’t see where there’s false hope in that.”

The bill that did pass the judiciary committee on Wednesday, , must now clear a second legislative committee. It passed on a 6-5 vote, with Espenoza and the committee’s Republicans opposed. The bill generally would require state agencies to publicly release subpoenas sent by federal immigration authorities that the state has fulfilled.

The bill also would require additional health inspections of detention centers beyond what’s required now. It would seek to block airports from assisting ICE’s deportation efforts by providing any kind of transportation to individuals.

The bill’s sponsors, Democratic Reps. Lorena Garcia and Elizabeth Velasco, also added an amendment Tuesday prohibiting ICE agents from entering nonpublic areas of jails without a warrant. A similar provision had been stripped from an immigration bill passed by the legislature last year, and its return comes amid criticism from advocates that immigrants without proper legal status have been arrested by ICE inside local jails.

Staff writer Nick Coltrain contributed to this story.

The state’s 100 lawmakers hit 60 days of work on Saturday, with just as many to go before the legislature must adjourn on May 13. Gov. Jared Polis has so far signed two dozen of their bills into law, as hundreds more continue to move through — or stall out of — the legislative process.

Debates have already begun on some of the most prominent bills, on issues like immigration, data centers, firearm regulations and tax policy. But across the street from the Gold Dome, the biggest bill of the year — the annual state spending bill — is still taking shape, as the top budget-writing lawmakers try to identify program cuts on the order of $1 billion to make up for drops in revenue and skyrocketing costs elsewhere.

“We’re on track, and we’re going to utilize the time that we have,” House Majority Leader Monica Duran, a Wheat Ridge Democrat, said of the session schedule. “When we say 120 days, that’s seven days a week — if we need it — to get the work done.”

Among bills that have cleared one of the two chambers of the General Assembly already is a measure that would expand who and which types of entities can file requests for extreme risk protection orders issued by courts to require people to temporarily surrender their firearms. So have a proposed ban on 3D printed guns and a bill that would allow Colorado to look more broadly to medical professional organizations for vaccine guidance. That one came amid Democrats’ concerns about federal guidance coming from the Trump administration.

A proposal that would make it easier for entities like nonprofits and school districts to build housing on land they own, known as the HOME Act, was the first measure introduced in the House this year. passed the Senate on Thursday and is now heading to Polis’ desk.

But other Democratic priorities are still in the beginning of their legislative journeys through the Capitol.

In a statement on the session’s progress, Polis praised the imminent passage of the HOME Act and the that would set in motion the transition to a new system and state department for “postsecondary education development,” as House Democrats characterized it last week. The department will integrate higher education and workforce development programs.

“We are running through the tape, and I look forward to continued conversations with the legislature on how to deliver for Coloradans,” said Polis, who’s in his final year as governor.

That doesn’t mean he and the legislature’s Democrats — who have a nearly 2-to-1 advantage over Republicans in each chamber — have always agreed on legislation. In fact, Democrats are barrelling forward with a bill that would make state labor law more favorable to unions, despite Polis’ veto of the same bill last year.

On deck: fights on immigration, AI regs

As the back half of the session unfolds, two prominent immigration bills supported by Democratic lawmakers are set to get their first hearings and votes on Tuesday. Debate around them will likely stretch well into the session’s final weeks.

So, too, will the legislature’s third straight year of haggling over artificial intelligence regulations.

The immigration bills include , which seeks to regulate law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. It would prevent anyone who’d worked for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from becoming a certified law enforcement officer in Colorado. It would expand a state law related to impersonating officers to include law enforcement agents who conceal their identities.

After ICE’s enforcement actions in Colorado and elsewhere have sparked public outcry, the bill would also require local law enforcement officers to intervene should a federal officer use excessive force.

The second bill, , would require more inspections and regulations for immigration detention centers, and it would prohibit airports from working with airlines or government agencies to transport immigrant detainees. It would require more transparency around federal subpoenas sent to the state, after Polis’ office spent much of the past year trying to turn over certain employment records sought by ICE.

Rep. Lorena Garcia, the sponsor of HB-1276, said Thursday that Democratic lawmakers were aligned on the policies, which she said were responding to concerns from constituents about ICE’s conduct as it has carried out President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. She said the sponsors have not yet heard any concerns from Polis’ office.

Also still in process are a suite of bills that aim to reduce the impact of federal tax cuts at the state level as a way to recreate the state’s flagging family affordability tax credit. Those bills cleared their first committee on Monday. The family tax credit — which has been hailed by advocates for helping to cut childhood poverty in Colorado by more than a third last year, according to recent research — is otherwise on the ropes, a possible casualty of the state’s ongoing budget woes.

Republicans plan to fight the measures, which they see as Democratic overreach, said House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell, a Colorado Springs representative.

The tax bill package would separate state tax policy from some of the tax cuts put in place federally by H.R. 1, known as Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” and passed down to Colorado’s tax code. The Democratic proposals include limiting tax deductions for operating losses and executives’ salaries, eliminating a sales tax exemption for downloaded software, and limiting other tax write-offs and deductions that were expanded by the federal tax bill.

Democrats point to how their package would give low-income families almost $2,200 in credits to help raise young children. But Caldwell worries about the economic effects of what he calls a $580 million tax increase.

He predicts lengthy debates when those measures reach the floor — but with the Democratic majority being what it is, he said, Republicans would need to sway several Democrats to their point of view.

“The mindset from the majority side is that we have to try to raise revenue and not try to live within our means,” Caldwell said. “We’re going to continue fighting it and trying to make people aware of what is happening right now. But I’m pessimistic on being able to kill these really bad bills that are going to essentially increase taxes on small business.”

Caldwell is also wary about a second-half effort from Democrats to push stricter greenhouse gas emissions-reduction standards. Rumors of such a bill swirled last year, though nothing materialized then. Nothing related has been introduced yet this year, either, though late bills are always a possibility. Polis has set aggressive emission standards during his time in office, and this would be his last legislative session to hammer the issue.

Lawmakers expect another big debate to reopen soon. They’ve been waiting for a promised plan on how to regulate artificial intelligence to emerge this session.

In 2024, legislators adopted first-in-the-nation rules that sought to ensure that AI couldn’t be used in banking, hiring or housing decisions to discriminate against people. In the two years since, a wide array of lobbyists, tech and consumer protection officials, representatives from Polis’ office and a small group of lawmakers have haggled, negotiated and fought over how to rewrite those regulations.

Nothing has come of those efforts thus far, other than repeated agreements to delay the new rules from taking effect.

A task force convened last fall by Polis represents the latest effort to reach an agreement on overhauling those rules. But the group has repeatedly held off on a final vote on recommendations in recent weeks, as its members sift through lingering tensions over definitions and how to apply the regulations to the health care industry, among other sore spots.

That vote is expected to happen this week.

Still, even if a majority of the task force approves a deal, it����ap unclear how those terms will be greeted by the rest of the legislature — let alone the broader lobbying corps or Polis’ office. As it stands, the existing — and much maligned — regulations passed two years ago take effect at the end of June.

“The Colorado AI Policy Workgroup has been hard at work for nearly six months now,” Polis said in a statement Thursday. “I’m proud of the progress they have made, and I am looking forward to reviewing their forthcoming recommendations.”

‘Not even close’ to needed budget cuts

The session’s second half also promises a flurry of activity once the budget comes out.

Bills that would cost money to implement have been waiting in the queue of a key spending committee, which in turn is waiting for the state budget to be set. Work to set the budget has been going on for months.

But it will hit a fever pitch this week, when the state economic forecast is set to be unveiled. That forecast will tell , which had been working off older projections, exactly how much money it has to spend — and how much it needs to cut. This year’s budget includes a nearly $17 billion general fund, with about 60% of it going to Medicaid and K-12 education.

Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who chairs the budget committee, called drafting the coming year’s spending plan “the most painful budget experience I have been a part of.”

The costs of Medicaid services and other state programs continue to rocket up faster than the amount of spending allowed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, a state constitutional amendment that limits the growth of government. And changes to federal tax policy last summer, now mirrored in the state tax code, are further squeezing the budget.

As a result, this is the third legislative session in a row, including the summer special session last year, that lawmakers have had to close a nearly $1 billion budget gap.

On Monday and Tuesday, Sirota and the committee’s five other members debated cuts to and to Medicaid services. Cuts to children’s health care programs are “particularly awful,” she said. But “there’s no way to close this budget and balance it without the cuts that we are making,” Sirota added.

In one painful example, the committee voted to cut a program that helped parents with substance use disorders access child care while the parents sought treatment, she said.

“We’re not eliminating programs that aren’t doing good, that aren’t serving an important purpose,” Sirota said. “We are making cuts and eliminating programs that have made a demonstrated impact on people’s lives, and we can’t afford to continue them.”

The economic forecast, scheduled for release Thursday, will be pivotal in determining how much more work the budget committee needs to do. The forecast projects the amount of money the state can budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30, 2027.

“We aren’t even close to where we need to cut,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Weld County Republican. And she, like others on the budget committee, was doubtful that other members of the General Assembly had truly grasped the depths of cuts needed, even if they appreciated that it was bad.

“Every time a bill comes into (the Appropriations Committee), we’ll be thinking about, ‘Do we fund this new program, or do we fund neglected and abused kids? Do we fund this new program, or do we add to this other program — or do we fund those children that have intellectual and developmental disabilities?’ ” Kirkmeyer said. “Those are the decisions that we are making.”

The state’s dire budgetary straits have also spurred Democrats to look to fundamentally reform how state budgeting works.

One such proposal, , would refer a ballot question to ask voters in November to remove state education funding from being subject to the TABOR cap. That move essentially would eliminate TABOR refunds to taxpayers for the foreseeable future, while funneling an estimated $200 million per year to K-12 education and freeing up millions more for other state spending.

Sen. Jeff Bridges, a sponsor of the bill and vice chair of the Joint Budget Committee, described it as an attempt to address what he sees as the “self-inflicted harm” of TABOR. That bill passed its first committee Thursday on a party-line vote.

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee expressed skepticism that the proposal was necessary. Colorado’s Democratic leaders simply didn’t have education as a high-enough priority, said Sen. Scott Bright, a Platteville Republican.

In response, Bridges tied the proposal to the state budget, and he pleaded for suggestions of what else to cut instead of the choices facing him in the budget committee. He was about to head to another meeting for the state Medicaid program — “the worst part of my day.”

“I have spent this week cutting health care for kids. I don’t like doing that. If you can bring me something that lets me not do that, amazing,” Bridges said during the committee meeting. “Last year, we cut all of the fat that we could find. It was the easy cuts last year.

“This year, it is the heartbreaking, painful cuts that keep me up at night.”

In Tuesday night, Polis — who has also faced months of pressure from President Donald Trump to release Peters — compared the disgraced former Mesa County clerk’s punishment to the penalty for a state senator recently convicted on the same charges.

Polis wrote on the social platform X that the former lawmaker, Sonya Jaquez Lewis, was sentenced to probation and community service last week after being convicted of attempting to influence a public servant earlier this year. The former senator, a Democrat, was charged last year with that crime as well as forgery after falsifying letters of support in an effort to fight a legislative ethics probe.

Peters, a Republican clerk who collaborated with discredited election conspiracy theorists and provided access to secure voting equipment, was also convicted of attempting to influence a public servant, along with other charges. Now 70, she is serving a sentence of nine years in jail and prison.

Polis said it was “not lost on me” that one of the two women’s felony charges was the same.

“Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly, you never know when you might need to depend on the rule of law,” Polis wrote. “This is the context I am using as I consider cases like this that have sentencing disparities, which is why I have extended the deadline for clemency applications until April 3rd.”

The comments, which Polis’ office defended Wednesday morning, attracted national media attention and drew a caustic response from Democratic lawmakers.

“Without discounting at all what Sen. Jaquez Lewis did, there is a material difference between submitting false documents to a tribunal and aiding in the attempted insurrection and overthrow of the duly elected president of the United States,” said Rep. Steven Woodrow, a Denver Democrat. “Tina Peters fanned the flames of Trump’s big lie. And that is materially different than anything even approaching what Sen. Jaquez Lewis did. I hope the governor thinks long and hard about that material difference before he decides to do (anything).”

“I am astonished that one would make such a comparison,” added Rep. Emily Sirota, also of Denver.

Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Dan Rubinstein, the Republican Mesa County district attorney who led Peters’ prosecution, both similarly drew a distinction between Jaquez Lewis’ conduct and that of Peters. Rubinstein wrote in a statement that there was a reason the legislature had given judges a range of sentencing options, even for people convicted of the same crime.

He acknowledged that Polis had the authority to reduce Peters’ sentence but wrote that doing so “would be a gross injustice to the affected citizens I represent.”

“Peters’ … actions are still being used to try to undermine the 2026 election. She should get no special treatment by the governor, and his statement is shocking and worrisome,” Griswold said in a separate statement.

For his part, Denver District Attorney John Walsh, whose office prosecuted Jaquez Lewis, that the two cases “were not even in the same solar system in terms of the severity of their conduct.”

Critics cite Peters’ lack of remorse

At the state Capitol on Wednesday, several other Democratic lawmakers expressed disappointment or concern with Polis’ comments. Sen. Robert Rodriguez, the Senate’s majority leader, said he didn’t think Polis should intervene, and he noted that Peters has shown no remorse for trying to undermine the state’s election systems.

Asked if she thought Polis should alter Peters’ sentence, Northglenn Rep. Jenny Willford stopped in her tracks.

“Are you (expletive) kidding me?” she said.

The X post was the latest signal that Polis may commute Peters’ sentence, which he earlier called “harsh” and “unusual.” Though his post leaned on Jaquez Lewis’ recent conviction, Polis’ interest in reducing Peter’s sentence predates the former lawmaker’s January trial.

A number of public officials — Griswold, Rubinstein, Attorney General Phil Weiser and a coalition of county clerks — have repeatedly urged the governor not to reduce Peters’ sentence, and similar efforts have been made behind the scenes.

The Colorado Court of Appeals is weighing the length of Peters’ sentence, and its judges have indicated they may reduce it.

In a statement Wednesday, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said he was not considering a pardon for Peters but was weighing clemency.

“The governor has expressed skepticism around this inmate’s sentence and was noting the difference in sentencing for two people, both public officials, with the same charge,” she wrote.

The governor did find support from one federal lawmaker.

“So a former Democrat State Senator here in Colorado was charged and convicted of the SAME THING as Tina Peters,” U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, . “She was given PROBATION. Tina Peters was sentenced to 9 YEARS in prison. FREE TINA PETERS.”

Peter Ticktin, a Florida-based attorney for Peters, told the Times that he believed a commutation of her sentence could come out as soon as this week.

“It will be a victory as soon as the eggs are hatched,” he said of Polis’ potential action. “If it ends up happening, her regaining her freedom will be a step toward righting a wrong.”

Lawmakers weigh responses to Polis

Lawmakers have already weighed how to voice their displeasure with the Democratic governor’s position. Senate Democrats have discussed sending the governor a letter opposing any change to Peters’ sentence (though no letter has been sent). Democrats in the House have discussed a legislative response.

While lawmakers are still discussing how to proceed, the available options also include an effort to censure Polis.

“I’d be surprised if there were not (a response from the legislature),” Woodrow said. “Everything’s on the table. There are ongoing conversations amongst colleagues. We are taking a wait-and-see approach.”

The former Mesa County clerk’s prison term has become a cause celebre among election-deniers allied with Trump. The president has repeatedly blasted Polis for not releasing Peters, and he issued a pardon for her late last year. But the move was essentially symbolic — because Peters was convicted of state charges, only Polis can reduce or end her sentence.

Pressed by reporters earlier this year, Polis refused to say if he’d had conversations with the Trump administration about Peters. He denied that he’d discussed releasing her as part of a trade for restored federal funding or other benefits from the federal government.

But that hasn’t slowed criticism from lawmakers.

Rodriguez said he didn’t know if Polis’ interest was driven by legitimate policy concerns or by “outside pressures.” Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat, argued that Polis’ interest in Peters’ sentence was evidence that the governor was “trying to continue to do favors for the administration.”

In a statement Wednesday morning, Weiser noted the president’s “pressure campaign” to release Peters. Commuting her sentence after that campaign, he said, “would be a serious injustice and send the wrong message to those who would attempt to tamper with our elections — if you are wealthy or politically connected, you can escape justice. Worst of all, releasing her early would erode confidence in our system of justice as based on fairness, equity, and the law.”

House Speaker Julie McCluskie declined to comment on Polis’ latest Peters post. But a spokesman said her position on Peters has not changed.

In her opening day speech in January, McCluskie argued that “this administration will target Colorado no matter what we do,” and state officials should “do what’s right.”

Those comments, she later told The Denver Post, were in reference to Peters.

Colorado lawmakers advanced legislation Wednesday that would seal name-change records for minors but only after they removed a more contentious section of the bill because of objections from Gov. Jared Polis.

As it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, would require the automatic suppression of most children’s name-change petitions. Supporters say that is necessary to protect the privacy of transgender youths and their families.

But when the day began, the measure also would have directed family court judges to take into account a parent’s acceptance of a child’s gender identity when determining parenting time. That section had revived a provision that was stripped from a , and the bill’s sponsors said before the hearing Wednesday that they’d garnered support from various LGBTQ+ advocacy groups to support the language this year.

The provision was pulled from SB-18 after Polis threatened to veto the bill otherwise, according to Rep. Lorena Garcia, one of the bill’s sponsors, and Z Williams, one of the activists supporting the measure.

Garcia said Polis issued the veto threat earlier this month. Williams said the governor told the bill’s supporters that he didn’t want to make any changes to family law.

“It pains us to remove this provision, as it was a title pulled by the late Sen. (Faith) Winter before her death,” Sen. Katie Wallace, a Longmont Democrat, told committee members. Winter, who died in a car crash in November, sponsored last year’s bill, from which lawmakers dropped the same family court provision amid disagreements among LGBTQ+ groups.

In a statement Wednesday evening, Polis spokeswoman Ally Sullivan said the governor “opposed the contradictory and troublesome family law provisions in the legislation, which were substantially the same as those he opposed last year.” She added that LGBTQ+ activists and attorneys specializing in family law had “warned against potential adverse and detrimental impacts on the very children the bill was intended to help.”

Polis’ statement also seemed to suggest that the governor was still not on board with SB-18, even with the family court provision stripped from the proposal.

“The governor would be open to new legislation regarding record suppression for name changes for all people and appreciates the ongoing conversations with bill sponsors,” Sullivan wrote.

On Thursday, Wallace and Williams both disputed the governor’s claim that advocacy groups had concerns about the family court provision. Both said that the bill’s backers had successfully negotiated a more modest amendment to assuage concerns from LGBTQ+ groups. The family court provision was also significantly changed from the version that died in 2025, Williams said, rather than “substantially the same,” as the statement from Polis’ office claimed.

Wallace said the sponsors wouldn’t kill the bill and replace it with a new one, as Polis seemed to desire.

In a followup statement Thursday, the governor’s office struck a conciliatory tone.

Williams, who runs a nonprofit law firm, said those remaining provisions were still important to protect the privacy of children who, through their parents, petition to change their names. The bill doesn’t apply to people younger than 18 who have been convicted of crimes.

“This bill will protect children from AI data-scraping of those public records, the potential of bullying if they should be found and from hostile individuals in the wider world,” Wallace said during the committee hearing Wednesday.

The removal of the bill’s family court provision did not stanch the opposition from conservatives and critics of the measure. More than 70 people signed up to testify on the bill, and opponents criticized the family court language and gender-affirming care generally.

The committee voted 5-2 to advance the bill. It will next head to the Senate floor.

The legislative package sponsored by a dozen lawmakers would repeal a variety of state tax exemptions that mirror tax breaks in the federal code. It puts a particular focus on splitting the state tax code from changes made by the tax cut bill passed last year by Congress and championed by President Donald Trump.

The targeted cuts would include a cap on how much corporations can write off from operating losses, how much depreciation businesses can write off for things like buildings and equipment, and how much interest a business can deduct from its taxes. Filers who use those tax breaks would no longer get the full benefit for state tax purposes.

The new bills build off state Democrats’ work during last summer’s special session to close a slew of tax exemptions and update the state tax code in response to H.R. 1. That is commonly known as Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”

Lawmakers hope to use the money the state pockets from ending the exemptions to extend or expand some state tax credits, such as those for rehabbing mostly vacant buildings in enterprise zones and for wildfire mitigation. Supporters also hope to steer some of the money to recipients of the state’s new — and on the ropes — Family Affordability Tax Credit, or the FATC.

That new program has given direct payments to low- and middle-income families to help with child-rearing costs, starting with the tax-filing season a year ago. Researchers credited the program with helping to cut Colorado’s child poverty by more than a third last year.

“Seldom have we seen any piece of tax policy be that effective, that quickly,” Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat sponsoring some of the proposals, said at a news conference. “That has been our North Star in assembling this whole package.”

During the event, supporters framed the reforms as shifting tax cuts away from wealthy corporations and toward everyday Coloradans who could use the help to pay for car repairs or for clothes or extracurricular activities for their children.

But in the business community, people worry about the proposals hamstringing Colorado’s competitiveness with other states, Colorado Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Loren Furman said Tuesday. The chamber hasn’t taken a formal position yet, but Furman said it has “deep concerns” about the overall package.

“Together, these proposals shift the burden of Colorado’s budget shortfall on the backs of employers of all sizes via procedural changes to the tax code, reviving several problematic concepts from bills that we’ve repeatedly fought, negotiated or killed in prior years,” Furman said in a statement. “At the end of the day, these bills will increase taxes on businesses at a time when Colorado’s competitiveness rankings continue to decline, further driving companies and families out of the state due to sky-high costs.”

The changes to the federal tax code last summer plunged Colorado’s tax collections below a threshold that would allow for the family tax credit in the current fiscal year, meaning parents won’t receive the money when they file their taxes in 2027.

The tax package proposed Tuesday wouldn’t funnel money directly into that credit, but it would create a new Family Affordability Credit mirroring .

The current family credit gives money directly to joint filers with incomes below $96,000 or single filers with incomes below $85,000. The credit provides more money to lower-income families and those with younger children, and then scales the credit down as the incomes and ages of tax filers rise.

Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat, said it is “crucial” to pass the tax reform package this year because of how effective the FATC has been.

“The progress we made is not something I’m willing to walk back,” Zokaie said in an interview previewing the package.

Three of the four bills were introduced Tuesday afternoon as House Bills , and . A nonpartisan fiscal analysis showing their effect on state tax collections and spending was not yet available.

In addition to Zokaie and Weissman, the bills are being sponsored by Democratic Reps. Andrew Boesenecker, Kyle Brown, Lorena Garcia, Karen McCormick, Emily Sirota and Steven Woodrow, plus Sens. Judy Amabile, Matt Ball, Cathy Kipp, Dylan Roberts and Katie Wallace.

The party has a nearly 2-to-1 majority in the Capitol. But Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, said in an interview at the start of the legislative session in January that he’d want broad-based tax cuts as part of any tax package. He won an income tax cut as part of negotiations to pass the original FATC bill in 2024.

This year, however, Garcia said that “never in a million years” would she consider a broad-based tax cut when the caucus’s goal is direct support to working families.

“At the end of the day, the governor is going to see that this is absolutely necessary,” said Garcia, from Adams County. “He’s trying to say that he wants to put money back in the hands of hardworking families. This is how we do it.”

But Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce President and CEO J. J. Ament echoed Furman’s concerns about the package. The proposals would particularly hurt small businesses, he said.

“You simply cannot make things more expensive and more affordable at the same time,” Ament said in a statement. “The legislature would be better served by focusing on increasing Colorado’s competitiveness and attractiveness for business investment and great jobs.”

The new package is part of a broader push on the left to remake Colorado’s tax system. The state has long been governed by the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, which mandates a flat income tax and caps state revenue collection.

The Colorado Education Association is backing a proposed ballot measure that would exempt education spending from the cap — in effect, giving the state an additional buffer of billions of dollars before it would have to refund money to taxpayers. It would earmark some of the cash for education. Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat, is planning to introduce a bill to refer that measure to the ballot.

The progressive Bell Policy Center recently won preliminary approval to solicit signatures through the initiative process for another measure that would institute a graduated income tax, in which wealthier Coloradans would pay a higher percentage of their incomes in taxes.

The proposals wouldn’t necessarily compete with each other, but they would upend the foundation of Colorado’s tax code.

For one, the education proposal would, in effect, erase the state’s TABOR surplus, or the money collected over the revenue cap. That money is generally used to pay for a slew of Colorado tax credits, including the FATC, before issuing general taxpayer refunds.

The tax package unveiled Tuesday would sidestep that issue by dedicating money from the closed write-offs and other exemptions to fund the new, similar-but-separate Family Affordability Credit.

The gathering was small, and it seemed dwarfed by the large room where the bill’s supporters had assembled. They’d repeatedly delayed the proposal, and tweaked its scope, amid lingering concerns from Gov. Jared Polis — who months earlier welcomed immigration authorities’ presence in the state to help arrest “dangerous criminals.”

The delayed and low-key nature of that April news conference would make for a stark contrast with the unveiling of another round of immigration legislation just 10 months later.

At that rally last week, legislators gathered outside the state Capitol to launch a package of immigration bills drafted in response to President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation agenda. The group, with lawmakers flanked by dozens of supporters and advocates, filled most of the building’s west steps and spilled onto the concrete below.

The crowd chanted “Abolish ICE!” as legislators described plans to prevent anyone who’d worked for the agency from joining a Colorado police department, while tightening rules around detention centers and allowing Coloradans injured by federal authorities to sue them.

The events’ contrasts are emblematic of the shift on immigration — in rhetoric and, to some degree, in policy — among Colorado’s majority Democrats after a year of unprecedented enforcement. While Colorado has not been visited by the quasi-militarized surges of Minneapolis or Los Angeles, the state saw more than 3,500 immigration arrests over the course of Trump’s first nine months in the White House.

Graphic footage of federal agents’ killings of people in Minneapolis and high-profile operations in Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Durango and affluent parts of the high country brought the Trump administration’s immigration agenda to the doorsteps of lawmakers and the Democratic base that elected them.

Some state legislators likened the current moment to the weeks after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, which helped unify Democratic lawmakers and spurred the passage of a marquee police oversight bill in Colorado.

Identifying a problem and agreeing on a solution is rarely a straight line in politics, and whether Democratic lawmakers’ comfort with criticizing ICE translates into full agreement on policy changes remains to be seen. Democrats nationwide are just starting to probe the scale of growing anti-ICE sentiment, and Polis, in a statement to The Denver Post, was lukewarm and “skeptical” about additional immigration measures.

Though he said he was open to the discussions, “I think we have to be mindful of what we already have on the books.”

But lawmakers here, particularly those who have long worked on immigration legislation, are preparing far-reaching measures as a response to what they’ve seen in the past 12 months. While last year they waited on negotiations with the governor, they’ve moved more swiftly this time around.

Less than three weeks before the rally, on the first day of the 2026 legislative session, the lawmakers had already introduced , which would allow Coloradans injured by immigration authorities to file lawsuits against those agents. And they were publicly describing plans for two more, both tabbed for introduction later in February, that would, among other things, further tighten laws around ICE cooperation and remind local police that they can detain federal agents during an investigation.

“Because Trump is so unpredictable, (Democratic) leadership, in general, really were wanting to take a more reserved measure on immigration” last year, said Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat who sponsored the 2025 bill and is involved in this year’s package. “But we were still able to get a pretty bold bill out of here. And yet still it’s not enough.

“I would say the legislature (this year) is actually saying we have to be more aggressive in protecting Coloradans. And the community’s been calling for it.”

‘They’re not scared,’ advocate says of lawmakers

After Trump won reelection in 2024 with a campaign focused on immigration and pledges to deport millions of people without proper legal status, Democrats across the country wondered whether the party needed to toughen its position on immigration.

Spring showed majority support for ICE raids, the use of military personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border and the banning of so-called “sanctuary” policies in cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

In Colorado at the time, some state lawmakers had privately worried that passing a bill strengthening the state’s sanctuary-like laws would only draw the ire of Trump, said Alex Sánchez, the head of the high country-based Voces Unidas, an immigrant-rights group.

Those conversations are different this year, he and others said.

While Colorado Republicans have generally defended immigration enforcement — if not fully embracing how it’s being carried out — a different breeze is blowing among Democrats, from those who control the state Capitol to the candidates vying to unseat a Republican congressman in the suburbs north of Denver.

“The biggest change I’ve seen is they’re actually talking about (immigration), and they’re not scared,” Gladis Ibarra, the co-executive director of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said of federal and state lawmakers. “It’s not across the board. But it’s been a clear shift.”

The intensive surge of immigration authorities into several blue states, and the killing of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis last month, helped swing public opinion against Trump’s immigration agenda. In his statement to The Post, Polis said the “images from the last year, especially the last few weeks, are incredibly disturbing.”

Some Colorado lawmakers pointed to public polling that has shown increasing opposition to ICE’s practices. A new nationwide found that 34% of nearly 1,200 voters interviewed in late January and early February supported how ICE was enforcing immigration laws — a 6-percentage-point drop from two weeks prior. Sixty percent said Trump’s treatment of undocumented immigrants had been too harsh.

Latinos are the largest ethic minority group in Colorado, and 40% of those polled last year said they or their communities feared being arrested by ICE. All of the poll’s respondents were U.S. citizens.

Every month has seemed to bring news of a new and controversial arrest, from a father and two children in Durango or a prominent activist in Denver to a schoolteacher in Douglas County or drivers headed to work in the high country. Nearly two-thirds of the 3,500 immigrants arrested in the state last year had no prior criminal convictions, according to ICE records obtained by .

Local advocates said they had documented ICE arrests and then broadcast what they’d found, including to lawmakers, to move the immigration crackdown from rhetoric to reality.

“Coming out of 2024, a lot of Democrats were convinced that they were just on the losing side of immigration as an issue,” said Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver. “And it was definitely the top issue mentioned by the Trump campaign, it was the main thing they ran on and he won with it.

“I think what we’ve seen — particularly over the last month, but somewhat more broadly over the last year — is just some of the consequences of the Trump administration’s crackdown, which looks more brutal than a lot of people expected.”

Facing public demands for action

The proximity of those arrests — coupled with the violent intensity of immigration authorities’ efforts in Minneapolis and elsewhere — has galvanized Democratic lawmakers.

Protests have erupted, too, further pressing elected officials to respond. Days before last week’s rally on the Capitol steps, hundreds of protesters gathered near the same spot to protest ICE.

“There is now evidence in our midst of what the federal administration is doing,” said House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat.

After an ICE operation in nearby Frisco last year, local school attendance dropped by 35%.

“What we’ve seen in this state, and what we’re seeing on a national stage, has really caused our public to step up and demand that we take action,” she said.

The Colorado Democratic Party recently released a “Know Your Rights” toolkit on its social media accounts to provide immigrants with guidance on how to interact with ICE. Masket said he couldn’t have imagined the party doing that even six months ago.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, Denver’s longtime congresswoman, has called for the “dismantling” of the agency. A newly progressive-leaning Aurora City Council passed a resolution opposing ICE’s “lawlessness and overreach,” less than two years after one of that council’s members helped ignite a national firestorm over a transnational Venezuelan gang.

In Denver, City Council members soon will consider a local measure that would attempt to ban ICE agents (and other officers) from wearing face coverings.

U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper — both of whom are facing contested primary elections in June, with Bennet seeking the governor’s office and Hickenlooper running for reelection — have increasingly criticized ICE. They’ve also supported Democrats’ decision to shut down the government over funding for the agency. Hickenlooper later voted for for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.

Still, it’s unclear to what extent broad anger will help produce a coherent policy response, in Colorado and across the country. Nationally, have fretted over the calls — like those echoing from the Colorado Capitol’s stairs — to abolish ICE outright.

Two of the three expected measures in the Colorado legislature have yet to be introduced. One of them would prohibit state law enforcement officers from wearing masks and prevent any former ICE agents from becoming certified to work for Colorado agencies, said Reps. Yara Zokaie and Meg Froelich, who are set to sponsor the proposal.

The other would further expand last year’s cooperation restrictions bill — including with provisions aimed at Polis, who sought to sidestep the law last year and comply with an ICE subpoena. The measure would require the state to report ICE subpoenas it receives and state officials to alert anyone whose data may be included in the request.

The governor, also a Democrat, has taken a more neutral tone against Trump since the president returned to office last year.

But Polis has become more critical of the president’s immigration enforcement efforts: A year after he welcomed ICE to the state, Polis spent part of his final annual address to the legislature last month noting how many immigrant detainees had no criminal records, as well as listing the names of people killed and arrested by immigration authorities.

His office has also encouraged clemency applications by people convicted of nonviolent or minor crimes and who “are experiencing or fear being seized by the federal government and torn away from their families.”

Polis’ office declined an interview request for this story. In response to an emailed list of questions, Polis said his position on immigration enforcement had not changed. He told The Post that “when anyone is being investigated for a crime, whether they are here legally or illegally, we will work with anyone to apprehend and prosecute them. But unfortunately the federal government has not been targeted or transparent in how they are pursuing their enforcement activities.”

As for legislators’ plans this session, Polis said he hadn’t seen language on all of the proposals.

But he said he “would be skeptical of legislation that raises constitutional concerns or departs from the agreements reached last year.”

“I have been clear (that) I am willing to work with legislators on any issue to deliver the best policy for the state,” Polis said. “However, Colorado has some of the strongest protections across the country and I want to ensure that recent laws are being followed and fully understood and (that) new laws do not create confusion.”

Immigration a top issue in CD8 race

The changing politics of immigration have also slipped into one of the state’s most high-profile races this year.

Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans won the 8th Congressional District seat in November 2024 in part by running on immigration enforcement and for supporting past legislation limiting state cooperation with ICE. Then-U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo on an issue that was seen then as a vulnerability for Democrats.

Last April, as the state legislature considered the bill further limiting ICE cooperation, then-Rep. Shannon Bird, a Democrat, was preparing to run against Evans. Later that month, she voted against the bill in committee and was absent for its final vote on the House floor.

Her campaign said last week that she’d missed the vote because of an ill family member. She’d voted no in committee, the campaign said, over concerns with proposed penalties that would be assessed to state or local officials who worked with ICE. Her campaign said Bird would’ve voted for the final version of the bill.

The penalty provision remained in the legislation when it passed the House and was later signed into law. Garcia and Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, the lawmakers who sponsored the bill, said Bird had not raised concerns to them last year.

“I don’t want to make assumptions about why she dodged the vote,” Garcia said last week.

Bird’s no vote and absence may have spared her attack ads from Evans. But, in another sign of how the political realities around immigration have shifted in the past year, that vote drew a caustic statement from one of her Democratic primary opponents in the 8th District, Evan Munsing.

In a statement, Bird’s campaign manager, Eve Zhurbinskiy, wrote that Bird “believes ICE is murdering people in our streets. Having violent, untrained and masked agents terrorizing our communities is unacceptable and un-American. Unlike Gabe Evans, who has voted for the Trump agenda every step of the way and enabled these attacks on law-abiding citizens, Shannon will always represent the needs of our community first — not the president.”

Evans has had to navigate his own immigration position in the swing district, which takes in northern Denver suburbs and Greeley.

He has said he wants the Trump administration to focus on immigrants with criminal records, but he also supported a Republican bill directing tens of billions of dollars in additional funding to ICE, even as more .

, Evans said he was worried about ICE officials’ assertion that the agency’s personnel can search homes with just an administrative warrant, rather than obtaining one signed by a judge. He said he looked forward to questioning Homeland Security officials during an upcoming House hearing.

But he blamed Democrats for the Minneapolis standoff and the broader impression that ICE was out of control.

“One side wants to fan the flames and equivocate in this space because they want an issue to run on in November,” he said.

He noted that ICE had stepped lightly in his district, with narrowly tailored operations aimed at criminals rather than the local industries that rely on immigrant workers.

“We have big meatpacking plants, we have big dairies, we have places where, if ICE was trying to meet a quota, you would see ICE going to them,” Evans said.

‘A failed system for decades’

Other Republicans have offered similarly mixed views on the crackdown, primarily expressing reservations with how it����ap being carried out.

During a debate last week in the state Capitol over a resolution calling for support for the immigrant community, two Republican lawmakers addressed their constituents in Spanish and spoke of the value of immigrants. Rep. Ryan Gonzalez, of Greeley, said he supported a humane immigration system — but, echoing Evans, he said the resolution was divisive and polarizing, and he and every other Republican voted against it.

Rep. Matt Soper, a Delta Republican whose wife became a U.S. citizen last week, said in an interview that he was troubled that asylum-seekers and others without full legal status were being deported, in some instances, to countries other than those where they’re from.

But he wanted the federal government to enforce the country’s immigration laws, he said. He supported what Trump was doing, he said, even if he wished “he could be nicer about it.” He saw little chance that his caucus would support Democrats’ immigration proposals.

Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson said he was concerned by the October arrests of a father and two children in Durango, which was followed by an ICE agent throwing a protester to the ground. He said he’d reached out to Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, whose district includes Durango.

“It’s just has caused me to think more deeply about federal immigration and the recognition that it����ap been largely a failed system for decades,” he said, adding that he didn’t think mass deportations were the answer to that failure.

Still, he said, he wanted Democrats to acknowledge that there are “bad actors” who’ve entered the country without legal status. In his view, the state should cooperate with ICE, which in turn would help the agency focus on arresting people with criminal histories while reducing the likelihood of violent encounters between federal officers and the public.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

“Today, in this very building, we, as legislators, are joining you with solutions that can help protect Coloradans, strengthen our constitutional rights and hold firm against the unlawful attacks by an unlawful agency called ICE,” Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat, said during a rally outside the Capitol on Monday.

The bills have been shaped by the first year of President Donald Trump’s effort to mass-deport immigrants without legal status, and they come this month amid a national backlash to Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Minneapolis, where two people have been shot and killed by federal agents.

Both of those killed — Renée Good and Alex Pretti — had family ties to Colorado, and the package that lawmakers will bring this session includes provisions related to suing and arresting federal immigration agents who violate people’s constitutional rights or commit crimes.

Only one of the three bills in the package has been introduced.  would allow Coloradans to file lawsuits against federal authorities who injure a person and violate their constitutional rights during civil immigration enforcement activities.

Lawmakers voted to advance that bill out of its first committee Monday. Sponsor Sen. Julie Gonzales listed high-profile ICE altercations in the state, including the October arrest of a Durango father and his two children, and a related incident in which an ICE agent threw a protester’s phone before shoving her to the ground. Sen. Mike Weissman, the bill’s other sponsor, said the bill was in the works prior to the shootings and ICE surge in Minneapolis.

The bill tries to close what called “an odd gap in federal law” that generally allows lawsuits against state and local officials but not against federal ones. Congress has not enacted legislation allowing lawsuits against federal officials who allegedly violate the Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court created a pathway in 1971 but has since backed off, punting the question back to Congress.

Other states have already passed similar laws, and more have weighed them in the wake of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Illinois passed a similar measure late last year, though it was swiftly challenged by the Trump administration.

“Sometimes the federal government will misbehave,” Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar told the Times, “and you can’t count on Congress always to rein the federal government in.”

Before the hearing began Monday, dozens of supporters — legislators, advocates and members of the immigrant community — lined the stairs outside of the legislature Monday, an hour after the state Senate’s Democratic majority and defending the state’s immigrant community. Supporters held signs praising immigrants, cheered the coming package of legislation and briefly chanted “abolish ICE.”

The other two bills are expected in mid-to-late February. One bill would underscore that local law enforcement can arrest federal agents who break state law while an investigation takes place, and it would block people who once worked for ICE from becoming certified law enforcement officers in Colorado. The measure also would require state law enforcement officers to clearly identify themselves, and it would prevent them from wearing masks, though the law wouldn’t apply to federal agents.

The bill originally focused on masking and identification. Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat co-sponsoring that measure, said the proposal has since been expanded to include the arrest and certification provisions and “to be responsive to what we’re seeing around the country.”

Colorado law already allows for the arrest of federal agents breaking the law, she said, but the bill will “emphasize” that option to local law enforcement. She accused the Trump administration of being a “fascist federal government that is determined on enacting a policy of racism and cruelty.”

The third bill would further tighten the state’s limitations on local officials sharing information with federal immigration authorities. Democratic lawmakers expanded that legislation last year and plan to do so again this year. The new legislation would expand oversight of ICE detention centers, more of which are expected to open in the state; hold specific agencies accountable when local law enforcement officials break state law to share information with ICE; and require additional transparency when the state receives subpoenas from immigration authorities.

Specifically, the bill would require the state to inform people when ICE has requested their information through a subpoena, said Garcia and Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, who are sponsoring the bill. That became an issue last year, when Gov. Jared Polis attempted to comply with an ICE subpoena and his lawyers argued that a nonprofit law firm couldn’t sue on behalf of immigrants whose information was being sought.

After an afternoon of public testimony Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 5-2 on party lines to advance SB 5, which would allow residents to sue ICE agents.

Before the vote, Weissman quoted the poem “First They Came” about Nazi oppression and the Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s. Most of the public testimony was supportive of the measure, including comments from recently released advocate Jeanette Vizguerra, with the exception of a few opponents who questioned why Colorado lawmakers were trying to give civil rights to undocumented immigrants.

The bill now needs another committee vote, in front of the Appropriations Committee, before going to the full Senate floor.

In a statement, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said the governor “remains deeply disturbed by what we are seeing in Minneapolis and continues to demand transparency and accountability from ICE.” But Maruyama did not answer directly whether Polis had taken a position on the bills.

“The Governor’s Office is in discussions with legislators,” Maruyama wrote, “and will review any legislation that reaches his desk.”

The New York Times contributed to this report.

Taken alone, either of the two proposals — a graduated income tax that requires the wealthy to pay more and another that raises the state’s spending cap dramatically — would represent a fundamental change to the state’s rigid tax structure. Taken together, the measures ask voters to reimagine how taxes are collected and spent.

The potential benefits would go to education, in particular, as well as to health care, child care and a slew of other state services that Democrats say have been shortchanged by a system that has been largely untouched for nearly 20 years.

The measures would also mean tax increases for the wealthiest Coloradans, changes to the slew of tax credits that draw on the state’s surplus tax collections, and a potential end to the sales tax refunds that the state frequently issues with tax returns.

The two ballot measures, one a potential referred measure backed by the Colorado Education Association and the other an outside initiative by the progressive Bell Policy Center, wouldn’t directly compete with each other, backers said. But the two proposals would ask voters big, similar questions as Democrats try to solve what they see as major structural problems with state finances.

“They both attack the problem in different ways,” said Kevin Vick, the president of the CEA, the largest teachers union in the state, at a rally Thursday outside the state Capitol to support changing the state spending cap. “They don’t compete with each other in ways they attack the issue.”

But he acknowledged: “We’re still working through what having both of them on the ballot may mean for voters.”

The CEA proposal, which would raise the state spending cap set by the TABOR Amendment in the state constitution, likely faces an easier path to the ballot than the graduated income tax proposal.

TABOR, which Colorado voters adopted in 1992, restricts growth in government using a formula that factors in population growth and inflation. The CEA proposal would ask voters to exempt the state share of K-12 education funding from that cap — in effect giving the state a $4.5 billion buffer before it needs to refund money — while promising to increase education funding by at least 2% per year. The buffer could last for years.

Those billions wouldn’t suddenly materialize in the state budget. The most recent economic forecast from the legislature predicts the state will be $501 million over the cap in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, and $807 million over in the following fiscal year.

Under this proposal, the state would be able to keep that money instead of refunding it.

‘An outdated and arbitrary revenue cap’

Democrats, who outnumber Republicans in the legislature by a ratio of nearly 2-to-1, frequently argue that the TABOR cap unnecessarily hamstrings the state in paying for public services, from roads to health care. The proposal, which has yet to be officially filed but has been talked about since the legislative session began Jan. 14, could land on ballots with a simple majority of support from lawmakers.

“This is something that hasn’t changed in decades,” said Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat who will sponsor the measure. He said it was time to take the issue to voters and give them the choice of keeping the spending cap or raising it to enable the state to “lower class sizes, increase teacher pay and make sure our kids are ready for the workforce.”

“This is the time for Coloradans to ask themselves, ‘How much do we care about our kids?’ And to figure out what we need to do as proper and adjusted investments,” added state Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat who plans to sponsor the bill when it’s introduced. “One thing I do know about Coloradans is we do care about our kids, and we care about our kids across the state.”

In recent years, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has celebrated the end of the so-called budget stabilization factor, or the budgeting maneuver that long allowed the state to fund K-12 education below the constitutionally required amount. The legislature also passed a rewrite of the state’s school finance funding formula to try to better direct the state’s contribution.

While state education funding is no longer lower than the constitution requires, advocates note that it����ap still at inflation-adjusted 1989 levels — a time before families expected Chromebooks and mental health services.

Now, the state is between $3.5 billion and $4.1 billion short when it comes to adequately funding education, according released early last year.

At the rally on Thursday, Vick, from the teachers’ union, tied education funding to the TABOR cap.

“For more than 30 years, an outdated and arbitrary revenue cap has kept our state funding tied up so tightly that we can’t invest in public education and keep up with student needs,” Vick said.

The measure, if adopted by voters in roughly the shape envisioned by its backers, would immediately boost public education funding by between $90 million and $100 million, Vick said, with annual increases after that.

It wouldn’t be “the final piece” to achieving full funding of education, he said, “but we need to provide some relief now and get this increase in funding started, so we’re not losing generations of kids to this crisis.”

The change would also free up potentially billions of dollars in flush years for the state to spend on other priorities, like its ever-growing Medicaid costs — and keep the money from being directly returned to Coloradans via the sales tax refund that’s typically issued with tax filings or through the litany of tax credits lawmakers have passed recently, including the Family Affordability Tax Credit. That one has been credited by draft study with lowering childhood poverty rates significantly in its first year.

Gov. Jared Polis, who often advocates for cutting taxes, hasn’t officially weighed in on the CEA’s outlines for the measure, though his signature wouldn’t be necessary for the legislature to refer it to the voters.

In an interview with The Denver Post earlier this month, he signaled some caution because, as it stands now, there are simply some years when the state doesn’t hit the TABOR cap — meaning there wouldn’t be extra money anyway.

“Generally speaking, two years out of every 10 or so — usually because of a recession, but it could be because of federal tax changes — we don’t have a TABOR surplus,” Polis said. “So I would just want to highlight that if you’re talking about base spending, it might work seven or eight years out of 10.”

Kristi Burton Brown, the vice president of the Advance Colorado Institute, a conservative think tank that often opposes measures it sees as an attack on TABOR, said the math doesn’t add up for this proposal. Raising the spending cap by $4.5 billion, while earmarking only $100 million of the increased spending capacity for education, could result in the creation of a “slush fund,” she warned — while it also “basically destroys the possibility of ever getting TABOR refunds again.”

Another question remains: Will voters go for it?

Voters have rejected recent attempts to adjust the TABOR cap. Proposition CC, with its promise to dedicate funding to education and roads, went down in 2019. Four years later, Proposition HH — despite promises to boost education funding and soften property tax increases — also failed.

Backers argue this new proposal asks voters a more direct question — Can the state keep money to pay for education? — than those failed efforts.

Burton Brown argues the earlier questions were direct enough, and directly answered by voters with a resounding “No” when the electorate saw them as end-runs around TABOR.

“While voters like those things (that were promised), I don’t think voters are willing to give up their TABOR refunds, give up the cap on state revenue to do that,” Burton Brown said.

The measure also may not be the only question about changing state taxes on the ballot in November.

Income tax measure would change flat rate

The Bell Policy Center, a progressive think tank in Denver, recently won preliminary approval from the state’s title board for its proposed ballot measure.

It would change the state’s income tax code from a flat-rate tax — where every Coloradan pays the same percentage of their income, currently 4.4% — to a graduated rate where lower-income people pay a smaller percentage in taxes while wealthier Coloradans pay a higher rate.

The center’s proposal would result in lower-income taxpayers paying a lower tax rate than they do today, while wealthier taxpayers would pay more, with the rate increasing with each income bracket. The first $25,000 a person earns would be taxed at 3.7%; income over $25,000 but less than $100,000 would be taxed at 4.2%; and income between $100,000 and $500,000 would be taxed at 4.4%. Only money earned beyond that $500,000 mark would be taxed at a higher rate of between 7.4% and 8.4%.

For the vast majority of Coloradans — an estimated 97% — the proposal would mean a tax cut, Bell Policy Center President Chris deGruy Kennedy said. It would also earmark money collected over the current TABOR cap to be spent on child care, health care and education.

The proposal still needs final approval from the title board — including facing likely challenges from Burton Brown’s group — before backers can begin gathering signatures.

“This is not just a lefty thing. This is the way taxes are done in more than half the states of this country,” including Republican states, deGruy Kennedy said. “We just want to restore an income tax system that relieves undue pressure on the lowest-income Coloradans.”

The Bell measure and the teachers union’s measure would propose changes to different parts of the tax code. Supporters of each are keenly aware that they’d be asking big questions of voters.

DeGruy Kennedy said the two measures would build off one another — not compete — and “allow the state to make very, very meaningful investments.” Voters have a history of deciding each ballot measure separately, but it’s an open question as to how the electorate would see these two interplaying, he said.

But for Burton Brown and other conservatives, the proposals would amount to “completely wrecking the tax code that people have really relied on and really liked for a long time in Colorado.” She warned of the additional strain it would put on a precarious state economy.

“Obviously, if either gets on (the ballot), they need to be fought with serious campaigns against them so voters aren’t deceived by bad messaging that doesn’t give them the full picture,” Burton Brown said.

Other tax questions, and the governor’s view

While those efforts play out, Democratic lawmakers are also working on several measures to further tweak the state’s tax code. They want to close or limit business-friendly tax incentives in the hopes of bolstering the rest of the budget.

The package is still being drafted, and it’s unclear how much money the proposals might raise. But lawmakers say they intend to direct that money toward what may become a new program to support families, in a similar vein to the successful Family Affordability Tax Credit passed two years ago.

“We know that families are struggling right now, and do we want to give corporations more tax breaks? Or do we want to be able to put money in the hands of struggling families?” said Rep. Yara Zokaie, a Fort Collins Democrat involved in drafting the bills. “I think it’s important that we put money here.”

One bill would eliminate a sales tax exemption that the state applies to software purchased online (sales tax is already assessed on software purchased in stores). Another, sponsored by Zokaie, would further limit deductions that corporations can take on executive compensation and a tax provision that lets companies deduct current-year losses from future years’ income.

The third bill would decouple the state from four federal tax incentives that were created or expanded under the tax-and-spend bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump in July, said Rep. Lorena Garcia, an Adams County Democrat.

The package would partially build on tax reforms lawmakers began to pass last year, both during the regular session and the budget-bandaging special session in August.

In his final State of the State address this month, Polis made his own pitch for tax reform — by inviting lawmakers to support an income tax cut.

Speaking to reporters afterward, the governor gestured at the coming tax package from his fellow Democrats and indicated he’d support it if lawmakers included another “significant” income tax reduction, on top of others passed by voters in recent years.

“This would be part of a comprehensive tax-reform package,” he said. “So, reducing special interest tax loopholes, using some of the proceeds for reducing the income tax and other proceeds for other progressive tax credits.”

He later elaborated that he would want any tax package to include a broader tax cut — such as to income tax rates, property taxes or sales taxes — along with targeted programs, like the Family Affordabilty Tax Credit.

To pass the family affordability credit in 2024, legislators begrudgingly agreed to an income tax cut sought by Polis that’s conditional, depending on the size of TABOR surpluses.

But this year, some lawmakers said they were not interested in a similar deal.

“I’m always happy to negotiate with the governor,” Garcia said. “I will never give in to an income tax cut. Period.”

In a statement Thursday, Polis spokesman Eric Maruyama said the governor “looks forward to working with the legislature to help Coloradans keep more of their hard-earned money, close corporate tax loopholes, and streamline our tax code.”

“While it����ap early in session, the governor’s office is in active conversations with sponsors over what it would take to get the governor on board,” Maruyama wrote, “and he encourages everyone to keep an open mind on saving people money.”

The first bill in the package, , was introduced on Wednesday, the legislature’s first day back at work. It would give Coloradans who are injured during immigration enforcement actions the ability to sue federal officers, part of a in states .

“The world of the United States has changed — and not for the good, in terms of these issues,” said Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat sponsoring the bill with Sen. Julie Gonzales of Denver. “Even since spring 2025, the tactics deployed by federal agents are getting more violent, more shocking, more violative of legitimate expectations of people in this country and of the law. By the day, it is increasingly urgent that we, at the very least, provide a remedy for that.”

The other two bills were still being drafted. They will likely be introduced in the state House in the coming weeks, lawmakers said.

One would build upon legislation passed last year that further limited how local officials can share information with federal immigration authorities. The new bill would require that state agencies publicly release data requests from immigration officials, and it seeks to alert people whose data is being sought in those requests.

That follows directly on the heels of Polis’ attempts to comply with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement subpoena received by state officials in May. A judge ruled that complying with the subpoena — which sought records on the sponsors of unaccompanied immigrant children — would likely violate state law.

Polis, who has contended the subpoena was related to potential child abuse and exploitation, is still trying to find a way to turn over some records. Attorneys also argued in that litigation about whether anyone but the immigrants themselves had legal standing to file lawsuits, an argument complicated by the fact that immigrants are typically unaware that their data may be turned over at all.

“We’re also seeing an uptick of these unlawful detentions, and it����ap important for us that everyone is safe in the state of Colorado,” said Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Glenwood Springs Democrat. She’s sponsoring the second bill with Rep. Lorena Garcia. “It feels very urgent and of the times that, as we’re protecting the state against the Trump administration, we stand up for everyone that lives here.”

The bill would also institute tighter regulations on ICE’s only current detention center in the state, in Aurora, and on any others the agency opens.

The third bill underscores that local law enforcement cannot wear masks in most cases, said Rep. Meg Froelich, an Englewood Democrat. But it would not apply to federal agents. This week, the Denver City Council began mulling a potential ordinance that would try to restrict federal agents from wearing face coverings when they carry out arrests and detentions.

Federal officials generally have challenged local and state governments’ attempts to regulate federal immigration and law enforcement activities.

The bills are all coming in response to aspects of the immigration crackdown that has unfolded since Trump returned to office. Thousands of immigrants without proper legal status have been arrested in Colorado over the past year, most of whom had no prior criminal convictions.

Renee Good, a Coloradan living in Minnesota, was shot and killed by an ICE agent earlier this month. Attorneys and advocates have repeatedly criticized the conditions in ICE’s detention center in Aurora and have protested against plans to open more facilities in parts of rural Colorado.

In the late spring, a University of Utah college student was arrested after a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy tipped off ICE officers to her location and immigration status. The deputy appeared to have violated state law limiting that type of contact, and he resigned amid a lawsuit by the state attorney general’s office.

Garcia and Velasco said their bill would place liability on agencies, rather than individual state employees. That way, they said, an officer couldn’t just resign and end the case. Their bill would also require more transparency around task forces; the Mesa County deputy shared information with ICE in a task force group chat.

Other opening day legislation

Often, the first bills introduced in a legislative session represent the Democratic majority’s priorities and messaging. In addition to Weissman and Gonzales’ immigration bill, Democratic leadership unveiled dozens of bills Wednesday.

As expected, the Worker Protection Act — which would make it easier for organized workers to fully negotiate their union contracts without having to clear a second vote — was introduced again after Polis vetoed it last year. This year, it comes in the form of .

Leadership also introduced , which would require state courts to suppress records of people who’ve changed their names — essentially keeping them private. The bill would also direct family court judges to weigh a parent’s acceptance of aspects of a child’s identity — such as their gender identity — when determining parental time. That’s a similar provision to one that was hotly debated in a transgender rights bill that was passed last year after the provision was stripped out.

is also a redux: It would make it easier for nonprofits, transit authorities, school districts and colleges to build housing on their land. Last year’s version, which withered on the Senate’s calendar, also included religious organizations.

Sen. Tom Sullivan introduced a who can petition a court to temporarily remove a person’s firearms under the red flag law. A bipartisan group of lawmakers unveiled a bill that would give municipal utilities and electric cooperatives more time to cut their carbon emissions.

Another bill, , would require utilities to provide a minimal level of electricity to lower-income Coloradans at marginal cost.

would require that certain websites — like social media platforms — provide faster responses and a dedicated hotline for Colorado law enforcement officers serving search warrants. Lawmakers have made repeated attempts to regulate social media companies and to expedite search warrant responses.

The issue gained more urgency in September, after law enforcement said that they had been trying to identify the person behind the social media accounts used by the Evergreen High School shooter before the shooting unfolded.

Finally, would require additional price transparency, particularly on goods ordered via online services. It would prohibit certain settings with “captive consumers” — including hospitals, event venues, airports and correctional facilities — from price gouging. Those places would be blocked from charging more for an “ancillary good or service,” like food, than the average price for that same good or service elsewhere in the county.