With just over three weeks left in this year’s session of the Colorado General Assembly, lawmakers are starting in earnest to push through their preferred policies — and that urgency means bill schedules will become even more fluid.
Major bills are still being introduced, and some — chiefly around property taxes and relief — are still expected in coming weeks. Meanwhile, lawmakers are negotiating other marquee proposals, especially related to housing policy, as they move through the chambers.
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But some proposals await grim fates before the House and Senate appropriation committees, where a finite state budget carries more sway than policy preferences.
Here’s what’s expected at the Capitol this week:
Gun regulations continue march
The House, fresh off passing a proposed ban on the sale and transfer of what sponsors refer to as assault weapons, hasn’t finished with a lengthy slate of bills to regulate firearms in the state.
The entire body was scheduled Monday to consider HB24-1270, which would require liability insurance for firearm owners, though the floor schedule is seldom set in stone and the measure could get bumped.
On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee is set to take up SB24-131, a proposal to limit where firearms are allowed, whether or not the person has a concealed carry permit. The proposal was stripped down in the Senate. That bill is last on the schedule for the 1:30 p.m. committee hearing.
A proposal to require secure firearm storage in vehicles, HB24-1348, is scheduled for the full Senate Tuesday, though the same caveat about uncertain schedules for full debate applies. If that bill passes the Senate, the two chambers need to reconcile changes made there before it could go to the governor.
As for the assault weapons bill, HB24-1292, it has not yet been scheduled for a committee hearing in the Senate.
Housing crosses chambers
Two proposals seeking to address construction defects from different directions have crossed chambers, and one faces its first test in the new chamber. HB24-1230, which would extend how long homeowners have to seek remedies for shoddy construction, will be heard by the Senate Local Government and Housing Committee on Tuesday afternoon.
The other proposal, SB24-106, was pared back in the Senate in the hopes it’ll have a more receptive audience in the House, though it does not yet have a hearing scheduled there yet. While the two proposals aren’t necessarily in opposition to each other, they represent different philosophical approaches typical of their chambers of origin — the relatively more progressive House and the more moderate Senate.
Other notable bills
HB24-1447, a proposal to trim the Regional Transportation District’s elected 15-member board to seven, including some appointees — recently called a “hostile takeover” by one board director — will have its first committee hearing at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the House Transportation, Housing and Local Government Committee.
On Thursday, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee will hear HB24-1028, which would allow local governments to authorize clinics where people could use drugs while under medical supervision. The intent is to prevent overdose deaths and implement other harm-reduction strategies to help people with substance use disorders.
That Senate committee, with just a slightly different makeup, killed a similar bill last session, also after it passed the House.
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