In a no-vote hearing, a citizen proponent walked staff through a ballot measure to give juveniles the same clemency options adults already have.
Legislative staff walked the proponent of proposed Initiative 2027-28 #6 through an early review-and-comment session on extending gubernatorial clemency to juvenile adjudications. No vote was taken.
House Appropriations sent a bill offering resentencing to inmates 60 and older to the floor without a single question for its sponsors.
SB26-115 would let long-serving prisoners who are at least 60 ask a court to reconsider their sentence. It moved through House Appropriations quietly, one amendment adopted without objection.
Lawmakers on the Capital Development Committee moved a letter of support for SB26-149, a competency-system rewrite whose real capital hook is roughly 32 new treatment beds.
In what was billed as its final meeting of the session, the Capital Development Committee took up a sprawling mental-health competency bill — and the construction question tucked inside it: where do you put people the state can't lawfully hold and can't safely release?
Senate Appropriations advanced HB26-1069 on a party-line 4-3 vote, letting Medicaid reimburse ambulance crews for treating patients on the scene — no hospital trip required.
A quiet bill about how ambulances get paid cleared Senate Appropriations 4-3. Its sponsor calls it one of the session's most underrated; Republicans wanted the fiscal-note math nailed down first.
A fatal elk crash, a $7 billion school funding fight, and a room full of ballot initiative drafting errors defined a chaotic week at the Capitol
A woman testified about her father's death when a 700-pound elk crashed through his windshield. Then the real fight started — over whether the $5 fee meant to prevent it is even legal.
SB26-023 sailed through committee 7-0. Then Senator Chris Kolker warned the whole formula could collapse by 2030.
Senator Chris Kolker just helped pass a unanimous $10.2 billion school funding bill — then warned the whole formula could collapse by 2030. His co-sponsor disagrees. Both might be right.
Colorado's Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously advanced a landmark mental health competency bill — years in the making, weeks in the negotiating, and still not fully paid for.
Colorado's Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-0 to advance a landmark mental health competency bill — but the fiscal note isn't finalized, the hospitals aren't fully on board, and the hardest votes are still ahead.
Three ballot initiatives meant to rewrite how Coloradans elect their lawmakers arrived at a legislative review hearing riddled with drafting errors — including one that would have accidentally dismantled a century of constitutional law.
A hearing on three Colorado ballot initiatives to overhaul state elections revealed the proposals were riddled with internal contradictions — including one that would have accidentally required the Governor and Lieutenant Governor to run against each other.
Colorado's Wildlife Collision Prevention Act sailed toward passage — until one Finance Committee member started asking uncomfortable questions about what, exactly, drivers would be paying for.
A Colorado woman described watching her father die when a 700-pound elk crashed through his windshield. Then a legislator started asking whether the bill meant to prevent such deaths was legally what anyone claimed it was.
A Colorado lawmaker's student-safety measure ran into a wall of opposition from school officials who said it duplicated laws already on the books. The bill's fate is now uncertain — and the kids who inspired it are watching.
A Colorado lawmaker's student-safety bill — written with help from high schoolers — ran into a wall of school administrators who said it duplicated laws already on the books. Now its survival depends on phone calls that haven't happened yet.
HCR 26-1002 had bipartisan sympathy and a Supreme Court tailwind. It still couldn't survive the Colorado legislature's wariness of cluttering the state constitution.
Colorado lawmakers killed a bill to require age verification on pornographic websites — not because they disagreed with the goal, but because they didn't want it in the state constitution. The vote was 4-7. The conversation it opened may outlast the bill.
Immigration detention deaths, recovery house exploitation, and a 107-page property tax overhaul collided in a single afternoon at the Colorado House Finance Committee — and not everyone made it out with a yes vote.
Rep. Gonzalez had heard the testimony about deaths in detention facilities and still voted no — and his explanation reveals exactly how hard Colorado's budget crisis is making every humanitarian decision this session.
From opioid prescribing to psychiatric beds in mountain towns, Colorado's legislature is overhauling the plumbing of its health care system. The bills are small. The stakes are enormous.
Colorado's Senate Health & Human Services Committee spent two days in April 2026 quietly rewiring the state's health care system — overhauling opioid prescribing incentives, psychiatric care access in the mountains, compounding pharmacy law, and Medicaid accountability all at once. The bills are narrow. The stakes are not.
A sweeping election overhaul that would let citizens use 'reasonable force' to stop suspected election crimes, six competing voter ID ballot initiatives, and a fight to bring casinos to every corner of the state — all landed in one extraordinary week of hearings.
A ballot initiative that would let citizens use 'reasonable force' to stop election crimes, six competing voter ID proposals, and a plan to put casinos in every Colorado county — all in one week.
A unanimous committee vote advanced a bill that could let manufacturers decide for themselves whether their equipment is too sensitive to fix. Opponents called it a blank check. Sponsors called it common sense. Neither side is done fighting.
Colorado's landmark right-to-repair law is facing a carve-out so broad that opponents say manufacturers could use it to exempt almost anything they sell. A unanimous committee vote just sent the fight to the Senate floor.
A landmark domestic violence bill cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee — but not before a room full of survivors, advocates, and law enforcement clashed over who gets to save a life.
Teddy McCullough's grandmother called police eight times in a year. Each time, officers left. Now a Colorado bill aims to make sure that never happens again — and a Senate committee just advanced it over fierce objections.
The Capital Development Committee didn't dispute the need behind House Bill 1301 — it balked at paying for one building with a permanent excise tax.
Rep. Bob Marshall pitched a long-term civil-commitment facility funded by a voter-approved hike in alcohol and marijuana taxes. The committee agreed the problem is real — and voted, without dissent, to tell the health committee the bill isn't ready.
Colorado's Senate Judiciary committee heard six bills in a single marathon session — from a law named for a dead teenager to a cash-bond fight that exposed a 700-person jail backlog no one had a clean answer for.
A father described the two years his family spent waiting for the truth after a driver who had been up all night drinking killed his teenage son — and no one at the scene ever asked. That testimony was the emotional center of a Colorado Senate Judiciary session that also produced a fractious 4-3 vote on cash bail and a committee chair who voted against his own colleague's bill while warning that the state's jail backlog could hit 1,500.
Colorado landowners told a committee how Xcel Energy threatened to seize their land before getting permits. The committee killed the bill protecting them anyway.
Elbert County ranchers testified that Xcel Energy threatened to seize their land before getting permits — then the committee killed the bill that would have stopped it.
A one-page 'cleanup' measure on remote participation for joint committees split the Senate State Affairs Committee 3-2, mostly over whether being in the building matters.
HB26-1068 would let legislative leaders set uniform rules for lawmakers joining joint committee meetings remotely. It advanced on a party-line vote after a short, oddly cheerful debate about whether showing up in person is worth the drive.
Inside a brutal Joint Budget Committee hearing where lawmakers discovered that 13,000 children are frozen off child care assistance, the state's financial plan relies on waiting lists shrinking by attrition, and a $91 million federal funding threat could hit as soon as January 30th.
Colorado's child care agency came to the Joint Budget Committee with a five-year financial plan. Lawmakers discovered it was a plan to serve fewer and fewer children until the waiting lists solved themselves.