The pace is picking up at the Colorado Capitol, with stacked calendars of committee hearings and floor votes. The legislature has nine days to go — including this coming weekend — before the end of the 2024 session, which must adjourn by the end of the day on May 8.
This story will be updated throughout the day.
Updated at 7:26 p.m.: After multiple delays set off feverish scrambling last week, the Senate’s Local Government and Housing Committee voted 4-3 along party lines to advance the centerpiece of Gov. Jared Polis’ land-use reform package Tuesday evening.
In a bid to improve housing affordability, House Bill 1313 seeks to beef up development in urban areas by requiring local governments to set density goals in transit-rich areas and to pick strategies to hit those goals. Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat whose concerns last week repeatedly delayed the bill, voted in support Tuesday, though she indicated her support wasn’t total.
The bill didn’t get through the committee unscathed: The bill’s sponsors, Democratic Sens. Faith Winter and Chris Hansen, proposed several amendments that stripped out provisions that would’ve withheld tax money and allowed the Department of Local Affairs to sue local governments that resisted implementing the bill. That’s not terribly surprising: Both pieces were considered bargaining chips to soothe some of local governments’ resistance.
Winter and Hansen also stripped out a provision that set aside $35 million in tax credits that were something of a carrot to local governments. That change allows the bill to sidestep a potentially tricky trip to the Senate Finance Committee, where its passage was not assured. Instead, the measure now goes directly to the Senate Appropriations Committee and, should it pass there, to the Senate floor.
The bill now has a full week to pass the Senate — and negotiate differences with its House sponsors — before the session ends May 8.
Updated at 5:39 p.m.: Two House Democrats criticized their Senate colleagues Tuesday afternoon, accusing them of undermining a bill intended to protect tenants from rent increases by siding with a software company that’s been accused of fixing prices.
At issue is House Bill 1057, which would prohibit the use of certain algorithmic devices in setting rents in Colorado. That’s become a nationwide issue in the wake of a 2022 ProPublica investigation into RealPage, the developer behind the software, which found that the algorithm is widely used by property owners to allegedly push rent prices higher.
The bill passed the House in March before moving to the Senate. There, Sen. Joann Ginal, a Fort Collins Democrat, advanced an amendment that would allow the algorithms to be used as long as their data is publicly available. The Senate then passed the amended version, sending it back to the House for acceptance.
On Tuesday, the House sponsors rejected the amendment. Rep. Javier Mabrey, who’s sponsoring the bill in the House with fellow Denver Democrat Rep. Steven Woodrow, blasted the amendment as codifying price-fixing into state law. He told colleagues that the amendment was requested by RealPage, which, he said, is reportedly being probed by the U.S. Department of Justice for price-fixing. The company is also facing a class-action lawsuit in Colorado.
Mabrey drew a parallel to other pro-tenant bills that have faced headwinds in the Senate, such as a “for-cause” eviction protections bill that narrowly cleared the Senate earlier this spring.
“Many of our colleagues in the Senate, when they vote against tenant protections, will say over and over again that their main concern is that policies that we’re bringing might increase prices — that increased rents is what they care about most,” he said. “But RealPage, this company, is designed to do just that, in their own words.”
Asked if the amendment was requested by RealPage, Ginal said it wasn’t: “Not to my knowledge.” She continued: “If they want to pay for an app, everybody should have the opportunity for that. … My philosophy is if you want to use that app and you want to pay that price — it’s a free country, right?”
The Senate must now decide whether to revert to the House version of the bill or kill the measure entirely.
Updated at 4:34 p.m.: In a deal with Polis, Democratic lawmakers are set to back a $450 million state income tax cut this year in exchange for advancing legislators’ priority of a child tax credit. Supporters say that credit would slash child poverty in Colorado in half.
The income tax cut — requested by Polis for months — would shake out this year to a 0.15 percentage point reduction in Colorado’s 4.4% income tax rate. In future years, the cut would continue at varying levels, depending on the size of each year’s state surplus under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, according to a briefing by lawmakers Tuesday. The initial cut would reduce the tax rate by the same amount as a 2022 ballot measure that won overwhelming voter approval.
Legislation codifying that change, which is set to be introduced in the state Senate on Tuesday, also will include a state sales tax reduction for any year during which the state’s surplus surpasses $1.5 billion. The income tax rate cut is dependent upon the surplus being larger than $300 million, according to Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, who’s backing the tax credit and, now, the bill to cut the income tax.
The bill will affect how TABOR refund checks are distributed. In recent years, lawmakers have moved to distribute those checks on a uniform basis, providing the same amount to all taxpayers, rather than varying refund amounts depending on a person’s income. Under the new bill, depending on how much money is in the surplus, every taxpayer would get either a flat $197 check or — if the surplus is higher than a threshold — a varying amount tied to their income based on a six-tier system. The latter is the process in current law.
The deal has been under negotiation between Polis and legislators since February, when House Democrats introduced a bill that would steer hundreds of millions of dollars of TABOR surplus money to lower-income families in the form of a tax credit. Supporters say that measure would cut child poverty in Colorado in half. Polis, meanwhile, has backed income tax cuts and did so again in his State of the State address in January. His support for the proposed tax credit was conditioned on an income tax cut.
Democrats backing the deal acknowledged that an income tax cut wasn’t terribly popular among their colleagues because it would disproportionately benefit wealthier residents. But, they said, accepting the cut was necessary to achieve their tax credit goals.
“We don’t think that the income tax rate reduction is a particularly equitable way of doing this, but sometimes this is about compromise and the art of the possible,” said Kennedy, a Lakewood Democrat who’s sponsoring the tax credit bill along with fellow Democrats Rep. Jenny Willford and Sens. James Coleman and Faith Winter.
In a statement to The Denver Post on Tuesday afternoon, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said Polis was “optimistic that the legislature will deliver a meaningful income and sales tax cut that will help our economy grow and keep more money in family’s pockets.” She reiterated his January call for those reductions.
Wieman did not specifically respond when asked why the governor had required an income tax cut in exchange for a tax credit aimed at cutting child poverty. But she praised the credit overall, as well as its intention of lifting “tens of thousands of Colorado kids out of poverty.”
Updated at 10:30 a.m.: Colorado school employees must now call students by their preferred, gender-affirming names, under to a new law signed Monday by Polis.
Under the law, it is discriminatory for staff members to fail to call a student by their preferred name, and students can file a report with the school. The measure was shepherded through the Capitol alongside a similar, Democrat-backed bill that Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera signed into law earlier this month. That law allows people convicted of felonies to use gender identity as a basis to legally change their names.
The name-change bill was sponsored by Democratic Reps. Stephanie Vigil and Brianna Titone and Sens. Faith Winter and Janice Marchman. The student preferred names bill was backed by Democratic Rep. Lorena Garcia and Sens. Dafna Michaelson Jenet and Kevin Priola.
Both bills had sparked lengthy debate, especially in the House, where Republicans invoked anti-transgender rhetoric in opposing them.
Stay up-to-date with Colorado Politics by signing up for our weekly newsletter, The Spot.
