A Father Killed on Highway 85
Mary Rodriguez didn't come to the Capitol to talk policy. She came to describe the moment her father died.
An oncoming driver struck a roughly 700-pound cow elk on U.S. Highway 85 near Castle Pines on September 29, 2024, launching it into the air. "The elk came from above and crashed directly through the windshield of my parents vehicle, stopping the car dead in its tracks, killing my dad instantly," Rodriguez told the House Finance Committee on April 20.
That testimony anchored a hearing on SB26-141, the Wildlife Collision Prevention Act, which would fund wildlife crossing infrastructure through an optional $5 fee collected during vehicle registration. The committee advanced the bill 8-2 to the Appropriations Committee — but not without a sharp fight over whether the fee was even legal.
The Week in Brief
This was Legislative Day 100 territory — the Colorado General Assembly's final sprint before the 120-day session closes. Committees were burning through bills at a furious pace, sending dozens to the floor while quietly killing others. Two sweeping ballot initiative proposals riddled with drafting errors got a blunt technical review. A landmark school funding bill squeaked out of Senate Appropriations on a 4-3 vote. And a mental health bill years in the making cleared its final committee hurdle unanimously.
It was a week of big bets, close votes, and at least one painful admission from a ballot initiative proponent: "It does not. That would need to be changed."
Is That Fee Even a Fee?
Rep. Rick Taggart had the numbers: four completed wildlife crossing projects, more than $200 million in leveraged federal funding, and a 92% reduction in wildlife-vehicle collisions on Route 9 near Kremmling. AAA Colorado's Skyler McKinley brought his own data. "Average wildlife collision repair costs in our data have doubled from around $5,000 to around $10,000," McKinley told the committee. "Cars have changed, repair costs have changed. What we do to protect drivers and their vehicles also needs to change."
Western Resource Advocates' Brendan Witt told the committee that wildlife crossing measures can reduce collision risk by over 90%.
But Rep. Bob Marshall wasn't buying the framing. He zeroed in on how the $5 vehicle registration add-on was being described — and kept being described, by witness after witness — as an opt-in donation. "We keep saying it's an opt in, but it's my understanding this is an opt out," Marshall said flatly.
Then he went further. Under Colorado's Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, a fee must be imposed to defray the cost of services "at rates reasonably calculated based on the benefits received" by the people paying it. Marshall argued the fiscal note acknowledged fee payers receive no direct material benefit — meaning the bill's legal structure as an enterprise fee was shaky at best.
Taggart countered that insurance savings constituted an indirect material benefit. "From an insurance standpoint, this is causing Colorado taxpayers $1.2 billion a year. If that's not material, I don't know what is material."
Marshall wasn't persuaded. In his closing statement, he delivered a warning that cut to the heart of the Finance Committee's role: "Calling things something that they're really not is very problematic to me when we do these things because when we get sloppy with wording and process, no matter how great this program is... I would hope the Finance committee would take a little more view of what's this funding mechanism."
Marshall and Rep. Ken DeGraaf voted no. The other eight voted yes, sending SB26-141 to Appropriations.
The $7 Billion School Funding Gamble
On April 17, Senate Appropriations took up SB26-135, a referred ballot measure that would raise the TABOR spending limit above its current Referendum C level and direct the excess revenue — growing at 2% compounding annually for a decade — toward K-12 public education. By year ten, the bill's sponsor, Sen. Jeff Bridges, told the committee, that works out to roughly $1.3 billion per year going to schools, with approximately $7 billion flowing to K-12 over the full period.
Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican, voted no — but her objections weren't just about spending. She was furious about how the bill had been pitched to teachers. "I think that was pretty disingenuous because they're all like, well, this is going to increase our pay," Kirkmeyer said. "There's nothing in here that guarantees it's going to increase teacher pay."
Bridges argued the investment was urgent. He told the committee Colorado loses more than half of all teachers who enter the profession in the first five years, and described the state as having some of the lowest-paid teachers and one of the highest teacher turnover rates in the country. (These characterizations came from Sen. Bridges's floor remarks and were not independently confirmed on the record.)
Meanwhile, the School Finance Act itself — SB26-023 — cleared the Senate Education Committee unanimously on April 20, implementing the agreed-upon 30% phase-in of the new formula adopted in 2024. But Sen. Chris Kolker, one of the bill's own sponsors, used his closing remarks to raise a red flag about its long-term viability.
"The LCS projections from earlier this year confirm what many of us have already known. The phase in the new formula is not sustainable," Kolker said. He cited a February 2026 memo from Legislative Council Staff projecting that under current conditions, "the state's general fund reserve will be negative by fiscal year 2930" — he appeared to mean fiscal year 2029-30.
Student Samira Yusupov put a human face on what underfunding looks like right now. "Classrooms are so crowded that some students don't even have a desk on the first day of school," she testified. "This isn't about physical space, but it's about opportunity as well."
Kirkmeyer, for her part, had a pointed retort to calls for new revenue: "While my co-prime's favorite word is shenanigans, mine I think is bamboozled because we kind of bamboozled people where we did the negative factor."
SB26-135 passed the Senate Appropriations Committee 4-3, with Kirkmeyer, Sen. Larry Liston, and Sen. Byron Pelton voting no. It now heads to the full Senate.
A Mental Health Bill Years in the Making
On the same day, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously advanced SB26-149, a sweeping bill creating new civil commitment pathways for individuals found incompetent to stand trial and non-restorable to competency — a population that falls through a legal crack that has left courts, hospitals, and public defenders frustrated for years.
The bill was the product of months of negotiation across more than a dozen stakeholder groups, including public defenders, district attorneys, disability law Colorado, county attorneys, the governor's office, human services, hospitals, and the judicial department. Seven amendments were adopted in a single hearing.
The sponsor described the "dangerous pathway" — civil commitment for individuals who are seriously ill and have committed serious crimes but cannot be restored to competency — as targeting roughly 25 to 50 people per year.
Sen. John Carson, a Republican, voted yes while noting a genuine tension the bill can't fully resolve: if a court later determines a confined person is no longer a risk, "I presume, I guess they're released at that point, which may not be, really, encouraging to the public or to victims of violent crimes."
But the sponsor kept returning to the bill's core purpose. "Most people who have a serious mental illness or who have a neurocognitive disorder or a developmental disability are not violent. They are fine human beings, and their illness doesn't take them in that direction. But there are some people who are, and it isn't good for them if they don't get the care that they need, and it isn't good for the rest of society."
Committee Chair Sen. Dylan Roberts called the competency crisis "the saddest thing in the world that nobody knows about."
SB26-149 passed 7-0 and moves to Senate Appropriations.
A Ballot Initiative Disaster in Slow Motion
On April 20, Legislative Council Staff sat down with proponents of three proposed ballot initiatives — two pushing proportional representation for state legislative seats, one establishing ranked choice voting — and methodically walked through a list of drafting errors that would have made the proposals nearly incoherent as written.
The most striking moment: staff pointed out that in Proposed Initiatives #3 and #4, one section of the proposed constitutional amendment required proportional representation for both chambers, while another section explicitly stated the Senate shall be elected by single-member districts.
"How proportional representation can be achieved in a district that only elects a single member?" staff asked.
The proponent's answer was blunt: "It does not. That would need to be changed."
That was one of more than a dozen identified problems — including an even number of commission members with no tiebreaker, a constitutional amendment that would have inadvertently severed the joint election of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and a reference to a Secretary of State rule (potentially 8 CCR 1505-1) being incorporated by reference into the state constitution — meaning any future change to that rule would automatically become part of the constitution without a vote of the people.
"If the rule changed just opposite does from time to time, it would be incorporated into the Constitution that change. So you wouldn't have any control over what ended up happening," a staff member explained.
Proponents acknowledged every error and committed to written corrections. The target election year for the proportional representation measures: 2032. For ranked choice voting: 2033. They have work to do.
The Arkansas River's Unresolved Fight
In the House Agriculture, Water & Natural Resources Committee, a landmark bill got a full hearing and then — nothing. HB26-1340 would require that when irrigation water is permanently removed from farmland in Water Division 2, the owner of the changed water rights must ensure revegetation or dry-land farming with adequate weed and erosion controls.
The bill's proponents brought devastating statistics: more than 100,000 acres of dried-up irrigated farmland still dominated by weeds and blowing soil decades after water rights sales. Crowley County alone, witnesses said, has lost 92% of its irrigated farmland.
But Aurora Water raised legal objections, farm groups threatened to flip from conditional support to full opposition, and Rep. Dusty Johnson pressed hard on whether it was constitutional to tie land obligations to water rights sales.
The sharpest exchange: LLAMA's attorney Richard Marin argued existing statute already requires revegetation and was therefore sufficient. Katherine Kada of the Lower Arkansas Valley Water Conservancy District disagreed. "Respectfully, the Lower Arkansas Valley disagrees with the legal position you just heard from counsel for lama. There is no enforcement mechanism in the statute as it exists. The language of the statute says that the court must consider conditions that are designed to accomplish revegetation, but there is no teeth included."
And Brandon Melnikoff of Colorado Farm Bureau issued a direct warning: "If the dry land farming provision remains in the soon to be proposed strike below, Colorado Farm Bureau and more than likely Farmers Union will register in office opposition to House Bill 26:1340 as it will exasperate the very problem the legislation seeks to solve while shifting all legal responsibility onto our farmers and landowners."
A strike-below amendment arrived by email at the close of testimony. The committee laid the bill over for action the following Thursday.
The Constitutional Graveyard
Not everything survived the week. In the House State, Civic, Military & Veterans Affairs Committee, Republicans brought three constitutional resolutions — and lost all three.
A TABOR reaffirmation resolution (HR 26-1008) failed 3-8 after Vice Chair Chad Clifford challenged sponsor Rep. Ryan Gonzalez on his command of the law's inflation formula. "It scares me that you're running a resolution for something that you can't explain," Clifford said.
A parental rights constitutional amendment (HCR 26-1004) failed 2-7. A vacancy appointment reform resolution (HCR 26-1005) failed 4-7, with Rep. Michael Carter arguing the real answer is special elections: "This bill doesn't fix the problem. If we have an issue with vacancies, then we need to do special elections, period."
One bipartisan resolution did pass, however: HCR 1106, which would limit governors' ability to narrowly define special session proclamations, cleared 10-1. Rep. Lorena Garcia, a Democrat, offered perhaps the most candid explanation of why she co-sponsored a bill constraining her own party's governor. "As somebody who is part of the majority party who quite frankly has benefited from these special sessions... I understand that it's also unfair."
Also quietly killed this week: SB26-062, the rodenticide regulation bill, which its own sponsors requested be postponed indefinitely after concluding that their proposed "limited use designation" amendment was not a durable policy solution. The committee voted 11-2 to kill it, with sponsors promising to return in a future session.
What to Watch Next Week
HB26-1340 — Arkansas River Basin revegetation. The House Agriculture committee has a strike-below amendment in hand and action scheduled Thursday. Watch whether Farm Bureau and Farmers Union follow through on their threat to formally oppose — and whether Dusty Johnson's constitutional questions about tying land to water rights create a floor problem even if the bill passes committee.
SB26-149 — Mental health competency pathways. Heads to Senate Appropriations with a still-unfinal fiscal note. The fiscal estimate had just come in the same morning as the Judiciary Committee vote; expect scrutiny on numbers.
SB26-135 — K-12 funding referred measure. Cleared Senate Appropriations 4-3 and now goes to the full Senate floor. A bill that would raise the TABOR spending cap and direct up to $7 billion toward schools over a decade is a major vote. Watch whether it can survive a chamber where Republicans will have every incentive to fight it.
SB26-141 — Wildlife Collision Prevention Act. Now in House Appropriations. The legal fee-vs.-donation question Rep. Marshall raised isn't going away. If the enterprise fee structure is shaky, it could be a real problem on the floor.
SB26-023 — School Finance Act. In Senate Appropriations. Sen. Kolker promised additional amendments are coming. With school boards needing to adopt budgets by July 1, the clock is real.
If SB26-135 passes both chambers and goes to the ballot, Colorado voters would decide whether to permanently raise the TABOR spending limit to send billions more to K-12 schools — a fight that would reshape education funding in the state for a generation. If it fails, the negative-factor era's shadow keeps stretching forward.