State legislators wrapped up their session late Tuesday with the usual flurry of last-minute lawmaking. Looking back over the past four months of work, here is a (decidedly not exhaustive) list of some of the most significant policies they took advanced — and a few they didn’t:
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
Democrats passed more new gun laws than ever in a single year
Democrats started the year with a relatively ambitious slate of new gun laws, steered in part by the leadership of Rep. Tom Sullivan, whose son’s murder in the Aurora theater shooting led him into politics. But the mass shooting at a King Soopers in Boulder pushed lawmakers even further than they’d originally intended to go. All told, the legislature passed a half dozen bills that tighten the rules on gun ownership. People will now be required to store firearms safely when not in use and report when they are lost and stolen.
A conviction for many violent misdemeanors will prevent someone from buying a gun for five years. Local governments will be able to pass stricter gun laws than the state. People in domestic violence cases are more likely to have to surrender any guns they own. And the state is setting up an Office of Gun Violence Prevention. However, not every policy that was discussed made it into bill form; Democrats chose not to introduce bills to require a three day waiting period for gun purchases or outlaw the sale of ‘assault-style’ weapons.
The state is getting a ‘Colorado Option,’ but it’s very different than what was originally envisioned
Lowering the cost of health insurance and health care has been a central goal for Gov. Jared Polis, and the pandemic didn’t change that. This year, lawmakers place new regulations on insurance companies and medical providers to achieve that goal. Private companies will be required to sell a “Colorado Option” insurance plan to individuals and small organizations.
The plan will come with benefits that are supposed to lower out-of-pocket costs. The law also says that insurance companies must find a way to make it cheaper, lowering costs 15% by 2025, compared to the average plan today. The bill also allows the state to regulate the prices that hospitals and doctors can charge under the plan. Only two other states and the federal government have embraced that power.
The Colorado Option went through a series of rewrites and compromises, with the negotiations disappearing from public view for weeks at a time. Ultimately, Democrats convinced groups representing hospitals and doctors to take a “neutral” position on the bill, while insurance companies and Republicans opposed it. A separate bill that Democrats also say will help with medical costs will create a new board that can control the prices of prescription drugs.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
After a veto threat and a lot of off-screen negotiation, Democrats and the Governor got together on a climate bill
Some of this session’s biggest political drama came around a bill that would give air quality regulators more power to limit greenhouse gas emissions across the economy.
In the three years since Democrats won complete control of state government, lawmakers and environmental groups have grown frustrated with Gov. Polis’ focus on using incentives and voluntary agreements to meet Colorado’s greenhouse gas emission targets. His critics argue that isn’t enough unless the state also imposes regulations to hold businesses accountable.
The tensions boiled over when Polis threatened to veto SB21-200. In a rare show of public defiance, Democrats lawmakers continued to advance the bill through the process, while also negotiating furiously behind the scenes. The result was an 11th hour deal that saw elements of SB21-200 added to another climate-related bill, with the governor’s blessing. Under the compromise, the state will put new emissions restrictions on the industrial, electric, and oil and gas sectors, but not transportation and buildings, as the sponsors had originally hoped.
Kevin J. Beaty/Denverite
A year after George Floyd’s murder, criminal justice reformers pass ambitious agenda, but don’t get as far as they’d hoped
Justice reformers spent much of the session lobbying for policies meant to keep more people out of jail — the bill would have required police to write summons for many low level crimes, instead of making an arrest. And judges would have had to grant personal recognizance bonds, instead of setting cash bail, in many cases. Advocates argued the consequences of low-level arrests and jail time can be significant, and disproportionately impact people of color. But law enforcement and other opponents countered it would encourage lawbreaking and give people little reason not to blow off court dates. The bill failed in the House Finance Committee the evening before lawmakers adjourned.
However, several other significant measures did move forward. People who are arrested anywhere in the state will now be assured of seeing a judge within 48 hours, even on weekends, something advocates have tried to pass for several years now. Other bills passed include restrictions on when EMTs can administer ketamine to someone being arrested and revisions to last year’s broad police accountability bill. Most measures were backed only by Democrats, but one bipartisan effort did go through: a collaborative effort to overhaul the state’s complex list of misdemeanor crimes. A bill that ends the policy of suspending people’s driver’s licenses for unpaid court fees and judgments also garnered some Republican votes.
David Zalubowski/AP
The future of transportation funding starts with a fee on your Grubhub tacos
A few pennies here, a quarter there — a raft of new fees lawmakers passed on everything from gasoline sales to your next takeout order will add up to billions of dollars in new revenue for the state’s transportation system. Most of the TABOR-evading new fees will kick in next year. But perhaps the biggest impact of Senate Bill 21-260 will take much longer to unfold: many of those new fees are set to rise automatically over time. That will help address an existing multi-billion dollar backlog in transportation projects left unfunded for years because, in part, the state’s gas tax isn’t indexed to inflation and has remained the same since 1991.
The bill effectively diversifies how transportation funding is raised and spent in the state, away from a model where fuel taxes pay for state and local road projects to one where fees support everything from road repair and expansion to electric vehicle adoption, environmental mitigation and more. Business and environmental interest groups both had their complaints about the bill, but the Democratic sponsors were able to hold together a fairly diverse coalition of support outside the Capitol — even if it ultimately passed with only one Republican vote.
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