What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope
What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 94
The Colorado State House adopted three bills in the past week dealing with prisons, right to repair for agricultural equipment and firearms, and on the latter two, with vigorous opposition from Representative Richard Holtorf, R-Akron. Lawmakers debates a bill that would fund more prison beds, and for the Sterling, Limon and Buena Vista correctional facilities, $4.5 million in housing incentives to boost recruiting and retention. Senate Bill 113 sought $20.3 million for a mid-budget-year adjustment to pay for, among other things, 393 more beds...
Farmers don’t have the luxury to wait for their equipment to be fixed, so a bill approved by the House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee will give them leeway to do their own repairs, or at least take the equipment to an independent repair shop. House Bill 1011 won a 9-4 party-line vote and is now awaiting review from the full House. The bill is sponsored by Representatives Brianna Titone, D-Arvada, and Ron Weinberg, R-Loveland. Under the bill, equipment manufacturers would be required to provide parts, software, firmware, t...
The looming crisis on the Colorado River, which supplies water to seven states and feeds the billion-dollar agricultural industries in California, Arizona and Colorado, is prompting Colorado lawmakers to ramp up their attention to water issues. That includes converting what was once an interim committee that met only a few times a year to look at a limited number of issues to become year-round. Under Senate Bill 10, sponsored by Senators Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village, and Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa, the interim water resources and...
Members of the Colorado National Guard, who are called out by the governor to help with natural disasters, should not have to use vacation time from their jobs when they’re out for longer periods of time, under a bill approved by the General Assembly’s House State, Civil, Military and Veterans Committee on Jan. 26. Senator Byron Pelton, R-Sterling, is the Senate sponsor of House Bill 1045, which won unanimous approval from the committee and now awaits action from the full House. The bill would require employers to grant up to three weeks of...
Governor Jared Polis, in a 70-minute State of the State address Jan. 17, outlined his priorities for the upcoming legislative session and what he wants Colorado to look like when he finishes his second term in 2026. The item that got the Governor’s longest remarks: affordable housing. While the legislature invested hundreds of millions of dollars in housing loans and grants in 2022, money that came from the federal government through the American Rescue Plan Act; and voters approved a ballot measure last November that will add $300 million t...
The first week of the General Assembly saw Republican House members trying to upset the apple cart on the vote for Speaker of the House. House and Senate leaders gave opening day speeches on Jan. 9 that outlined their priorities for the next 120 days. In his opening day remarks, Senate President Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, spoke about gun violence. He noted a measure coming from Senator Tom Sullivan, D-Centennial, that will expand Colorado’s extreme risk protection order law, aka the red flag law. “If local law enforcement can’t — or won’t ...
The Colorado General Assembly began its 2023 session next Monday, Jan. 9. With dozens of new lawmakers joining the legislature, out of 100 total, the session promises to be a little more chaotic than usual. In the State House, there will eventually be 31 new lawmakers out of 65. Republicans lost ground in the November elections, dropping from 24 members to 19, a historic low. Democrats, at 46, now hold a better than two-thirds majority, meaning they could override any veto from the Governor. That also gives them the ability to send...
The 100 members of the Colorado General Assembly returned to the State Capitol on Mon. Jan. 9, with leadership from both parties laying out their priorities for the next 120 days. Governor Jared Polis also gave a hint about his priorities in a revision of the 2023-24 budget he sent to the Joint Budget Committee on Jan. 3. Polis submitted a proposed budget to the JBC on Nov. 1, seeking $42.7 billion in all funds, including $16.7 billion in general funds, which is made up of corporate and individual income tax revenue and sales and use tax...
Friday, June 10 marked 30 days since the end of the 2022 General Assembly session and the deadline for all bills sent to the governor to be signed, vetoed or become law without his signature. The General Assembly introduced 657 bills during its 120-day session that began on Jan. 12. Of those bills, 144 were lost, leaving 513 headed to the governor’s desk. Governor Jared Polis vetoed four bills in the weeks following the May 11 adjournment: • House Bill 1218 would have required certain commercial and multifamily dwellings to install ele...
State Representative Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, will continue to represent the Eastern Plains come 2023, but it will be a district (and a seat) very different from the one he currently covers. Pelton has been the representative for House District 65 for the past four sessions, beginning in 2019. In an odd turn of fate, his county of Cheyenne is the furthest south in the district that extends all the way to the State’s northern border with Nebraska. The representative for the southern half of the Eastern Plains, Rep. Richard Holtorf, R...
As he readies himself for the next phase of his career in public service, Senator Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, recently reflected on the policies and people who have been a part of that journey at the State Capitol. Ten of the 13 Senate bills Sonnenberg sponsored in 2022 made it through the General Assembly to the governor’s desk. So far, five have already been signed into law. The Governor has until June 11 to sign the rest. Sonnenberg said his most significant bill in 2022 is Senate Bill 53, which would allow someone who is hospitalized d...
Sixteen years. That’s the maximum any Coloradan can serve in the Colorado General Assembly, at least consecutively, with four two-year terms in the House and two four-year terms in the Senate. What does that mean? It means seniority, respect, and the ability to effect policy changes, even when the lawmaker spends most of his time in the minority. This year, only one lawmaker out of 100 in the Colorado General Assembly, hit that 16-year mark: Senator Jerry Sonnenberg of Sterling. Sonnenberg sat down with this reporter shortly before the wrap-up...
The 2022 General Assembly session came to its constitutionally mandated conclusion shortly before midnight Wednesday, May 11, bringing forward 657 bills during its 120 days. What remained on lawmakers’ agendas until the very last day included bills on collective bargaining for county workers, the school finance act and a bill on hospital visitation. The collective bargaining bill, Senate Bill 230, was already watered down by the Senate, exempting counties of less than 5,000 population (which included Phillips and Sedgwick) and allowing c...
The 2022 General Assembly adjourns for the year on Wednesday, May 11, having worked on 655 bills, including 100 introduced in the session’s final month. Among the actions in the last full week: the House reviewed Senate Bill 230, a bill that would affirm in state law the right of county workers to engage in collective bargaining. House Republicans were prepared to offer more than 500 amendments to the bill for the May 6 debate, including exempting most of Colorado’s counties, one at a time, or exempting other county elected offices, such as...
Senate Democrats, faced with a threat of more than 24 hours of debate on a bill on collective bargaining, watered the bill down on April 29th to one that puts more control into the hands of county commissioners. That debate came two days after dozens of county commissioners testified to the potential negative financial impacts of Senate Bill 230. Out of 38,000 county employees statewide, not one currently employed county worker who was not already affiliated with a union testified they wanted a union. Sixty people signed up to speak on the...
A bill to help students with severe behavioral issues and other needs shows just how caught in the middle kids are: on one side, parents who are frustrated with the lack of available medically necessary services for their children with disabilities who need those services during the school day; and school districts that after two years of COVID face staff shortages and burnout among teachers. House Bill 1260 faced a tough test: a four-hour hearing earlier this month, and a complete rewrite of the bill, as adopted by the House Education...
Should illegal ponds be tapped to combat wildfires? A month ago, the answer was a clear “yes,” but when Senate Bill 114 came to the House Agriculture, Livestock and Water Committee last week, it wasn’t so clear. The bill is now raising questions from those with water rights in the South Platte about its impact on compact compliance and court orders. SB 114 would require county commissioners to apply to the state engineer to have certain ponds designated for wildfire suppression. Those ponds must be accessible to firefighters, if it’s in an a...
The Senate wrapped up its work on the 2022-23 State budget, adding a whopping $783 million in new spending, but the bulk of those changes are unlikely to make it to the final version. The biggest change was an amendment from Senators Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, and Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, to add $503 million to K-12 education, with half going to teacher salaries and the other half to pay down the debt to K-12 education, known as the budget stabilization factor. During April 6 debate on House Bill 1329, which started the State budget at $36...
Senator Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, won a surprising 23-10 vote on Senate Bill 53, which would allow a patient in a hospital or nursing home to have a family member visit during a pandemic. The March 29 vote was bipartisan, with 13 Democrats and 10 Republicans in favor. The bill now heads to the House and an uncertain future, given that three previous House-sponsored bills on the same topic have failed to gain traction. Representative Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, will sponsor the bill in the House. Sonnenberg is hopeful, telling this...
Emotional stories from Democratic lawmakers who lost loved ones to COVID-19 was enough to garner a preliminary voice of approval on March 25 on a hospital visitation bill from Senator Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, Senate Bill 53 was approved on a voice vote in the state Senate and is currently awaiting a final vote. Sonnenberg told this reporter he believes the vote will be very close. The bill would grant one visitor of a patient’s choosing the right to visit that patient in a nursing home or hospital during a pandemic. Those facilities w...
Representative Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells, scored a bipartisan victory in the House Finance Committee on March 17, with approval of House Bill 1129. The bill sets up a one-time income tax credit of surplus general funds — the dollars the state gets from corporate and individual income taxes and sales taxes — to taxpayers. “This bill couldn’t come at a better time, with all the people hurt through shutdowns, businesses closed and the State realizing a surplus over and above what we thought we would get,” to the tune of $1.8 billion, Pelton tol...
Farmers and ranchers would be required to notify their local fire departments when they do controlled burns, under a bill that won approval from the House Energy and Environment Committee last week. House Bill 1132 would apply to anyone attempting a controlled burn on private property and it’s a response to what happened to Yuma County firefighter Captain Darcy Stallings last Oct. 21. Stallings, 34, was responding to a fire call that turned out to be a controlled burn when he died in a traffic accident in his personal pickup, when he ran i...
The State Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee resoundingly rejected a bill that would have allowed local governments to regulate pesticide use in their communities, after a nine-hour hearing and 93 witnesses. The bill’s sponsors, Senators Sonya Jaquez Lewis, D-Longmont, and Kevin Priola, R-Henderson, in an effort to keep the bill alive, tried to water it down, but that didn’t fly with the ag committee either. Senate Bill 22-131 died on a 1-6 vote, with three Democrats voting with the three Republicans against it. The only “ye...
The effort to allow hospital visitations during a pandemic took a large leap forward this week, when the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, on a 3-2 vote, greenlighted Senate Bill 53. Sponsored by Senator Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, the bill has been on hold for more than three weeks while Sonnenberg and Senate Democrats worked out an amendment to address concerns raised by opponents. SB 53 states that a patient admitted to a hospital for inpatient care, or a resident of a nursing care assisted living facility, can have...
A bill that would allow illegal ponds to remain undrained in order for the water to be used for wildfire suppression got its first hearing in the past week in the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. Senate Bill 114 would allow those ponds to remain, given that the alternative is that they be ordered drained by the State Engineer, since they’re unpermitted. The bill only applies to ponds that can be accessed by firefighting vehicles; those that don’t have that access could still be ordered drained, Senator Dennis Hisey, R-C...
