Senate State, Veterans, & Military Affairs

Thursday, April 2, 2026·1h 4m·▶ Watch / Listen

The Colorado Senate State, Veterans, & Military Affairs Committee advanced two bills unanimously — one targeting fraudulent business filings with the Secretary of State and one overhauling lobbying transparency requirements for legislative liaisons — both referred to the Committee on Appropriations with 5-0 votes.

Key Actions

·HB 26-1088 – Business Entity Filing with Secretary of StatePassed

+ 1 more action

Controversies

Whether courts should be included in SB 26-147's disclosure framework

Terry Scanlan, Legislative Liaison for Colorado Courts, argued that publicly disclosing the courts' positions on legislation could taint judicial impartiality and that courts' role is fundamentally different because they interpret legislation and must remain impartial in future proceedings. Senator Weissman explicitly stated 'I believe that they should be' included in the framework and pressed that cleanup work for independent agencies was underway.

+ 2 more controversies

Notable Quotes

“In 2012, there were 72 reported instances. By 2016, 240. But the COVID 19 pandemic saw numbers skyrocketed in 2020. They jumped to 3,864 and 4,331 in 2021. And this trend continues with over 6,000 complaints since 2023.”
Senator Chris Kolker — Senator Kolker was presenting the justification for HB 26-1088, which targets fraudulent business filings with the Colorado Secretary of State, by illustrating the rapid growth of the problem.

+ 4 more quotes

Votes

Move HB 26-1088, as amended, to the Committee on Appropriations with a favorable recommendationPassed

Yes (5)Rod Pelton, Mike Weissman, Lynda Zamora Wilson, William Lindstedt, Katie Wallace

HB 26-1088 – Amendment L002 (clarifying technical language)Passed

HB 26-1088 – Amendment L003 (empowering Secretary of State to investigate fraudulent networks without a public complaint)Passed

Move SB 26-147, as amended, to the Committee on AppropriationsPassed

Yes (5)Rod Pelton, Mike Weissman, Lynda Zamora Wilson, William Lindstedt, Katie Wallace

SB 26-147 – Amendment L002 (striking Advocacy Day participant registration language)Passed

SB 26-147 – Amendment L003 (two-year ban on covered officials serving as legislative liaisons)Passed

SB 26-147 – Amendment L004 (language cleanup and uniformity in bill position terminology)Passed

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TranscriptPreview

Filings are handled by the Colorado Secretary of State. And it adds new tools and procedures to address fraudulent or unauthorized business filings. So fraudsters have been using bad forms of payments to file records without actually paying for the filing. With this Bill 1088, the Secretary of State can void or remove a business filing in the state database based if the electronic payment for that filing doesn't go through. So for example, if the payment is reversed or fails, this prevents not just the harm from a fraudulent filing, but for the lack of payment as well. One person has had, in, you know, in the case studies, one person has had more than 15,000 fraudulent business filings right now, a complaint against one of these filings doesn't necessarily impact any other problematic filings. And this bill lets the Secretary of State mark a business record as unauthorized or fraudulent based on a notice from the Attorney General. So for any additional fraudulent business businesses related to the original notice, the Secretary of State would now be able to directly manage any other filings related to that company without first referring the complaint back to the Attorney General.…

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