More than 200 new Colorado laws will take effect this week, including massive new tax credits, significant changes to the state’s overdose response, event ticket pricing transparency and new protections that should ease hikers’ access to some fourteeners.
On Wednesday, more than 40% of the bills passed by Colorado lawmakers earlier this year will kick in, 90 days after the end of the 2024 legislative session. Unless a bill is enacted immediately or specifies a date, legislation typically becomes effective about three months after the session ends. That makes Aug. 7 the single biggest enactment day of the year.
The new laws vary widely and include tighter regulations on vehicle towing companies; a new tool for local governments to buy and preserve affordable housing; permanent approval for to-go and delivery alcohol sales, which began during the pandemic; and free menstrual products in Colorado schools.
New regulations on metropolitan districts will prohibit them from foreclosing on a lien because of delinquent fees. The sponsors of another new law — aimed at protecting Coloradans’ brainwave data — say it’s the first of its kind in the world.
Parking requirements for new development, long the bane of density-minded housing developers, will also be curtailed in Front Range cities starting Aug. 7. Motorcyclists legally will be allowed to begin “lane filtering” — meaning they can leapfrog around fully stopped cars on roads by passing between traffic headed in the same direction at up to 15 mph. But “lane splitting,” which involves moving around or between cars that are in motion, remains illegal.
Two new tax credits — aimed at lower-income families and workers in the caregiver economy — will officially become part of state law, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for certain segments of Colorado’s workforce in the coming years.
A third new tax credit will provide two years of reimbursement for college tuition to students whose families make less than $90,000 a year, though they won’t be able to claim the credit for the coming academic year until filing their 2025 state taxes.
The list of new laws is long. There’s also a new license plate honoring the Chicano community, changes to the state’s medical aid-in-dying law, the start of the state’s reintroduction of wolverines and new limitations on texting while driving.
Here’s what else to expect:
Fentanyl-fueled drug policy changes
Lawmakers passed several bills this year that seek to blunt the overdose crisis hammering Colorado. The most consequential is likely House Bill 1045, which focuses on improving treatment for substance use disorders.
The bill directs the state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to seek federal approval to begin providing Medicaid services for substance use disorders to eligible Coloradans in jails or prisons before they’re released.
As it stands, people under incarceration are booted from Medicaid. But the risk of overdose for people who are just released from incarceration is drastically higher than for the general population, and the legislature has quietly moved in recent years to improve treatment in prisons, jails and upon release.
The change means that a person receiving opioid addiction treatment in jail or prison can enroll in Medicaid before being released, receive a 30-day supply of treatment medications upon release and then transition into covered care from there, ideally with no disruptions. It also means that jails — which are now required to offer medication-based opioid use treatments to qualifying inmates — can bill Medicaid for those services, helping offset the new cost.
Jose Esquibel, the associate director of the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention, called the change really consequential.
The new law also will devote $750,000 to support what’s considered the gold-standard treatment for methamphetamine addiction. The money will stand up a grant program for what’s called contingency management, a treatment protocol that rewards patients who attend treatment and stay sober. Think of people drawing gift cards from a fishbowl in exchange for clean tests and attending therapy.
There aren’t any medications approved to help people struggling with methamphetamine use like there are for opioids, making it a difficult addiction to treat. What’s more, overdoses involving meth have surged in recent years as fentanyl — the powerful synthetic opioid — has spread to all corners of the drug supply. Contingency management has been successful in treating meth addiction, but it remains an underfunded service.
The new law also allows pharmacists to prescribe certain medications to treat opioid use disorder, like buprenorphine, which should be particularly beneficial in rural areas, Esquibel said.
Another bill going into effect Aug. 7, House Bill 1003, makes it easier to carry naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote, on school buses. Overdoses among youth have surged in Colorado during the fentanyl crisis, and policymakers have worked to put more naloxone in schools and to bolster pediatricians’ ability to screen for substance use.
Event ticketing reform
Another multi-year effort that got over the finish line this year came in the form of House Bill 1378, which institutes new requirements around concert and event ticketing. That includes requiring refunds (from either the operator or the reseller) if a show is canceled or if the ticket is counterfeit, and requiring admittance regardless of where the customer purchased the ticket.
The new law also states that failing to disclose the total cost of a ticket upfront — including all fees — is a deceptive trade practice. So, too, is changing the price of a ticket between when a person first sees the cost on the screen and when they actually pay for it.
The law also prohibits sellers from misleadingly using a venue, a performer or a company’s name or logo on their website.
New gun laws
Three new gun measures kick in Wednesday. They include Senate Bill 3, which gives the Colorado Bureau of Investigation nearly $1.5 million to better pursue illegal gun sales and purchases.
Senate Bill 66 requires credit card companies to create a specific code to apply to gun and ammo sales. Such codes exist for other types of purchases, and applying them to firearms will allow for better data tracking at the state level and could be used to flag suspicious purchases for law enforcement. Colorado is among several states to require the codes, though some parts of the law don’t kick in until later, with codes assigned to merchants beginning next May.
Finally, House Bill 1174 adds new requirements to obtain a concealed carry permit in Colorado. The new law requires at least eight hours of in-person training, which must include the use of live ammunition.
Hikers’ access to some 14ers
Via Senate Bill 58, lawmakers created a liability shield for property owners whose land is part of a route to one of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks. The law allows property owners to put out signs warning of known hazards and generally protects them if a hiker or runner is injured on their land.
Liability concerns had prompted property owners to limit access to at least five peaks as previous attempts by lawmakers to fix the problem fell flat.
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Originally Published: August 5, 2024 at 6:00 a.m.
