Coloradans are being offered up to $1,100 in monthly stipends to house migrants through the nonprofit Hope Has No Borders. People who wish to participate can call Mile High United Way’s 2-1-1 hotline in the Denver metro area for information.

Hope Has No Borders formed in May 2024. By mid-June, it had placed seven migrants in homes and identified 20 hosts for up to 90 people. Most hosts were offering stays of between three months and a year and asked for a monthly stipend of $200 to $900. 

The group receives no financial assistance from Mile High United Way, Denver or the state of Colorado. The organization said it is funded through donations and is obtaining grants and partnerships to help make more placements.

More than 42,000 migrants have come to Denver since December of 2022, straining the city’s ability to provide housing and other aid.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Londis Ramirez knew her plan was working when a preschooler making a self-portrait asked her, “Can you help me draw my panza?”

Panza means belly in Spanish, which is not the child’s first language. But a Head Start program tested last year and expanding this fall in Jefferson County is offering preschool in Spanish and English, one of many efforts in the works across Colorado as the state tries to get more Spanish-speaking students into preschool and assimilate new migrants from South America.

It also comes as Gov. Jared Polis signed a new law last week to create a bilingual licensing unit within the state Department of Early Childhood, targeting $360,000 in state funds next year to help Spanish-speaking child care providers get licensed and to expand bilingual preschool options. 

Next fall, Jefferson County Head Start will have three bilingual classrooms in Arvada — for kids who speak Spanish at home and whose parents speak only Spanish, and for English-speaking children whose parents want them to learn Spanish. 

Ramirez, who supervises the county’s bilingual Head Start program, spent the past year building a plan to serve the area’s growing Spanish-speaking population. Several of the families who’ve enrolled are recent migrants from Venezuela and Colombia, she said.

The nonprofit Head Start provides free preschool to low-income families. In Jefferson County, 200 children, from infants to 5 years old, are enrolled in 16 classrooms in Arvada and Wheat Ridge. Until this year, all of the classes were taught in English, which was leaving out a large segment of the community, including parents who speak only Spanish and were unsure how to access the program, Ramirez said. 

When she started working at Head Start three years ago, the program had only three or four Spanish-speaking families. 

“I was like, ‘Why not? Where are these people? Where is the gap?’” she said. 

Ramirez developed a pilot program, which recently let out for summer vacation, and word has been spreading. Jefferson County Head Start now has eight bilingual teachers, plus two bilingual mental health specialists and two bilingual support specialists who help families access food assistance and other human services programs. 

Bilingual teachers use curriculum kits, or daily lesson plans, that come in Spanish and English. Books in the bilingual classrooms are in Spanish or English, and sometimes both at once. On some days, the teachers will speak mainly in English, and on others, mostly in Spanish. 

One bilingual class for the fall is already full with 20 students and a second class is nearly full with just a handful of spots left, Ramirez said. 

Colorado has 77 licensed child care providers who identified Spanish as their primary language, with 25 additional pending applications, according to the state early childhood department. The state did not provide a count of how many of the 297 Head Start providers statewide offer bilingual options. 

About 16% of the population in Colorado speaks a language other than English, including 11% who speak Spanish, according to the latest census. Colorado lawmakers who passed House Bill 1009, recently signed into law by Polis, said they were concerned that the language barrier is keeping kids in Spanish-speaking families from enrolling in preschool programs and keeping Spanish-speaking child care providers from getting licensed. 

The state’s early childhood department had used federal pandemic relief funds to hire three bilingual employees and provide 35 licensing training sessions in Spanish, but those temporary funds will run out in September. The new funding will allow the department to offer child care licensing applications in Spanish and provide translation services throughout the process. 

In Jefferson County, 17 students were in the Head Start program’s first bilingual classroom last school year, including about a dozen who spoke Spanish and five who spoke only English — at least when the class began. 

Ramirez marveled at how easily all of the kids in the class began to incorporate vocabulary in a new language. When the teacher asked who wanted milk, it didn’t matter if she said it in English or Spanish — everyone understood. Many of them were speaking some form of Spanglish, or “code-switching” with a mix of the two languages, by the end of the year. 

“You could definitely see a difference,” Ramirez said. “Children code-switch a lot, which I do, too. Even the kids who were monolingual, they were understanding, too.

In a hotel conference room in Denver, Dallenis Martinez attended orientation with hundreds of other migrants Monday for the city’s new, ambitious migrant support program, which includes six month apartment stays and intensive job preparation for those who can’t yet legally work.

It’s an about-face from strategies Denver, New York City and Chicago have used as the cities scrambled to support thousands of migrants and slashed budgets. The largely improvised support strategies have included days- to weeks-long shelter stays or bus tickets to send migrants elsewhere.

Now, Martinez, 28, and her two young kids, along with some 650 others in Denver, are being set up with an apartment with six months of rental, food and utility assistance, a free computer, a prepaid cell phone and metro bus passes.

Then, the city working in coordination with several nonprofits plan to provide courses on English language, computers, financial literacy, and workers rights, while also assisting migrants in getting credentialed in specific industries, like construction, retail, hospitality, health care and early childhood education. Martinez said she will take any job to support her kids.

The support will also include help with the paperwork for asylum applications, and eventually work authorization.

The goal of the new program is to act as a buffer for new arrivals who have to wait six months for a work permit after applying for asylum under federal law, using that time to prepare migrants for their new life.

“This is investing in people to set them up to be independent and thrive,” said Sarah Plastino, who’s overseeing the program. “We know that when we set people up for success, people really do succeed.”

The city expects to enroll 800 migrants in the coming months, though only those who don’t yet qualify for a work permit can enter this program.

Martinez, who’s from Venezuela but was living in Peru when she started her journey north, didn’t know she’d end up in a program like this. She didn’t even know what the orientation was about when she first took a seat.

Martinez, who travelled with her 11-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter, arrived in the U.S. with nothing. On the border of Guatemala and Mexico, she was robbed of the little money she had. Then, it happened again, and she had to hide in a river with her kids for two nights.

“I was hungry, cold and scared,” said Martinez, who turned herself in to U.S. immigration soon after crossing the border. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Halfway through the orientation, Martinez was excited.

“Faith is the last thing you lose,” she said, a smile broadening on her face. “I feel more hope with this program.”

The mood was upbeat in the Denver Quality Inn; where most who attended the orientation were staying. The city has rented out several hotels to support the some 42,000 migrants who’ve arrived since the beginning of 2023. Now, the hotels are shuttered or winding down as the number of new migrants drops.

Over the last year, new arrivals strained the city’s resources, as they did in Chicago and New York City, prompting the mayors to slash city budgets after unsuccessfully asking for more federal aid from President Joe Biden.

“We were hemorrhaging money. We had over 5,000 people a day in our shelter system, and it was completely financially unsustainable,” said Plastino. “We knew we had to make a shift from reactive to proactive.”

New York City officials said 197,100 immigrants have made their way there. Some 65,500 are currently in shelters. Since a federally-sponsored Asylum Application Help Center started assisting with immigration applications, some 50,000 applications have been submitted, including for asylum, work permits and other forms of immigration relief.

Even while Denver’s new program is intensive, Plastino said it’s still more cost effective.

The city’s costs for supporting migrants will be roughly half of what they had initially expected in January. Services like recreation centers will open once again after their funding was sliced to help afford the city’s previous migrant housing strategy.

Renting hotel rooms and paying for premade meals is more expensive than providing rental support for an apartment on the market and food assistance for grocery stores, Plastino said, adding, “It’s also just the right thing to do.”

___

Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Story first appeared in:

ALAMOSA — Over decades starting in 1985, the Colorado Mushroom Farm northeast of Alamosa sold millions of pounds of mushrooms grown and harvested within the building’s dimmed cavern to grocery stores in Colorado. Along the way it offered year-round employment to generations of immigrant workers, many of whom came here from Guatemala fleeing civil war and searching for a better economic future. 

But when the farm filed for bankruptcy in December 2022, it owed thousands of dollars in unpaid wages to employees, some of whom had been subjected to unsafe working conditions and were injured on the job. 

Complicating the situation, a mix of documented and undocumented workers were employed by the farm. Without their jobs, many were unable to afford basic needs. And some were in fear of being deported if they spoke out about what they describe as abuses by the farm’s owner, Baljit Nanda.

Now, some of those workers are taking charge of their futures with the help of a powerful coalition of nonprofit and government supporters as well as Minsun Ji at the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, which works to dismantle economic systems that benefit a small few at the expense of many, especially working-class communities and communities of color. 

It’s an American Dream in the making, but not without funding for an employee-owned mushroom co-op and the workers learning to navigate the hurdles of business ownership in a system that favors wealthy white entrepreneurs. 

Reeling after an employer’s abrupt shutdown 

Alece Montez, co-executive director of the AJL Foundation, which came to the aid of the mushroom workers after they were forced out of work, said Nanda compounded his former employees’ problems by being “very elusive about the farm actually being bankrupt” in September and October of 2022.  

By then it was closed and the workers weren’t getting their final paychecks, she said. Flora Archuleta, the executive director of the San Luis Valley Immigrant Resource Center, reported some were “sitting on three or four checks” they weren’t able to cash. Others were owed vacation time and one $10,000 in unpaid wages.

But Montez said some workers didn’t want to open unemployment cases, because they feared being deported or blocked from working for Nanda again should the mushroom farm, where portobello, crimini and button mushrooms were grown, ever reopen. As time passed and the situation became dire, they needed help.

So Montez joined forces with a community outreach coordinator named Matias Francisco, who had deep ties to the mushroom farm and its workers. And together they began mobilizing efforts to help the growers and pickers, who would soon find themselves with a chance to shape their future. 

An insider supporting his people 

Francisco didn’t ask to become the farm workers’ leader, but in some ways he was a natural fit. 

Though never an employee, he migrated with his parents from Guatemala when they came to work at the farm in the 1980s. He knew the perils of farm labor having grown up around the workers. And he had good relations with many of them through his job doing outreach for Valley-Wide Health Systems in Alamosa. But when he offered to speak with Nanda on their behalf, “the workers were like, ‘No, Matias. Peace talks are over,’” he said. So he took a different path.

Francisco is an energetic organizer with a warm demeanor and easy smile. He is prone to spontaneous bouts of laughter as well as tears — “I’m a crybaby!” he says. He is trilingual, speaking English as well as Spanish and Q’anjob’al, the Indigenous language of the Mayan mushroom workers. 

These qualities make him easy to open up to. In the decade or so that he’s been assisting migrant workers by encouraging them to take advantage of government-funded medical screenings, passing out health kits, or helping uninsured families get discount cards for health services, he has become invested in their stories of abuse and disempowerment. 

The Colorado Mushroom Farm was a big offender, Francisco said. Federal records show the facility left employees at risk of being burned, shocked, electrocuted or falling. Terrible injuries occurred during production. And in a tragedy that stands out for Francisco, a woman was run over by a forklift. She survived and her son later worked for Nanda. “That’s why it’s not just a warehouse,” he said of the farm. “It has a story to it because the parents that worked here, their kids struggled. My own mom was always working, but we couldn’t afford running water. It’s so deep,” he said of the trauma. “It’s so, so deep.”

In the weeks following the farm’s closure, Montez said approximately 100 to 120 families faced an employment crisis, wage theft and a housing crisis after a local mobile home park housing mostly Guatemalans went on the market. The total number of families that lost their jobs over a year-long period was closer to 200, she added, or the equivalent of 14,000 jobs in the Denver Metro area.

The San Luis Valley Housing Coalition eventually raised the money to buy Century Mobile Home Park. But Montez said getting the workers money to cover food, rent/mortgage, utilities, internet, gas cards and basic needs would remain a problem because many lacked identification, were worried about their legal status, had language barriers or had no transportation.

The nonprofit Bondadosa delivered food to 125 families of four for one to two weeks. Some of the displaced workers found jobs elsewhere in the valley, but they were owed months of back pay and struggled to keep up financially. 

As winter began to settle over the San Luis Valley, the farmworkers grew more concerned with a need for long-term answers. Montez reached out to Ji of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center and, with Francisco’s help, they began discussing a seemingly radical idea.

A co-op started by displaced workers 

The RMEOC grew out of the belief that a just economy “works for everyone, is built upon inclusive and sustainable systems, and provides equitable opportunity to build wealth.” 

The current economy benefits too few at the expense of too many, RMEOC believes, but employee ownership can change that. 

Ji became the center’s executive director in 2022. A community-labor organizer and popular educator on labor and cooperative issues, she founded Denver’s first immigrant workers’ rights center, El Centro Humanitario para Los Trabajadores. And she is in the midst of launching the largest-platform worker co-op in Colorado, the Drivers Cooperative, to support rideshare drivers whose wages are about $5.50 per hour after costs. Through the co-op, drivers will take 80% of fares, while they are currently only getting 25% to 30% from Uber, she says. (She also helped The Colorado Sun navigate its conversion to an employee-directed nonprofit, though has no influence on its journalism.)

“After the laborers were kicked out of the mushroom farm, we were contacted by multiple people because we are experts in that regard,” Ji said.

Worker co-ops have become more popular since the global crisis in 2008 as more U.S. cooperative activists and community organizations have created economic development strategies, she added. “Before the crisis, the majority of community organizations didn’t see it as a new alternative economy strategy, but things have changed dramatically since then. While there were less than 100 worker co-ops in the U.S. before 2008, currently there are over 612, with hundreds on the way.”

These co-ops have also gained popularity because they’re more resilient to economic shocks, experience lower turnover among workers and have higher productivity levels than traditional businesses, says Merrit Stüven, who researches job quality and economic security for the Aspen Institute.  

When Roque asked Ji to help organize the farm workers, she began a feasibility study to assess the viability of converting the Colorado Mushroom Farm into an employee-owned cooperative. 

Ji did two studies, one assessing the potential for workers to purchase the farm and another in which a mushroom farm co-op would be created from scratch.

The first study determined success was possible with the sale of the Colorado Mushroom Farm to the workers, installation of Dutch growing equipment and the ability to access approximately $10 million to $12 million in startup financing, including money to buy the property and prepare it for cultivating mushrooms. 

But an advisory committee consisting of community members, state staff from the Department of Local Affairs and Office of Economic Development and International Trade, and Jason Medina, who took over for Mike Roque at the San Luis Valley Community Foundation, pushed for the pilot project “as it may have taken a long time for us to find a way to purchase the Colorado Mushroom Farm because it went bankrupt,” Ji said. 

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They decided to go with the four-year pilot program in which workers will spend two years learning all aspects of the business and growing the mushrooms in a temporary space before purchasing land, building a warehouse and hiring 20 to 30 employees in years three and four. 

The Sand Dunes Cooperative was set up as a Limited Cooperative Association so that all of the workers are included in the ownership of the business, Montez said. This structure takes advantage of an element of U.S. immigration policy that allows undocumented people to own a business even if they can’t legally work for it.

Immigrants Rising, which works to nudge the nation “closer to fulfilling its ideal as a land of opportunity and access for all,” says all immigrants, regardless of legal status, are able to earn a living as independent contractors, or start a business using a taxpayer identification number or Social Security number. They must pay self-employment tax and income tax. But as mandated by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, a client “is not required to obtain Form I-9, or otherwise inquire about immigration status from independent contractors or sporadic domestic workers.”

At $1.7 million, the budget for the pilot project was a fraction of what was estimated for the mushroom farm purchase. But Francisco recalls difficulty getting workers to buy-in. 

“We have a workforce, we have demand, now let’s bring the workers,” he recalled thinking. But some people were so busy trying to survive after the mushroom farm closed, they couldn’t join the co-op for training. “We tried doing webinars and other things,” Francisco said, but in the end, from a group of 80 who’d expressed initial interest, only five remained (although now there are eight).

“But that was OK,” Francisco said gleefully. “This is the team that’s going to make this project. This is the team that’s going to teach other people. This is the team that’s going to put the mushroom co-op on the map.” 

The problem with “unearned advantage” 

One of the many things that stand out about the Sand Dunes Mushroom Cooperative is the collective power of the organizations backing it.

Supporters include the Community Foundation of San Luis Valley, San Luis Valley Area Health Education Center, San Luis Valley Immigrant Resource Center, city of Alamosa, San Luis Valley Agricultural Coalition, First Southwest Community Fund, First Southwest Bank, and Office of Economic Development and International Trade and Department of Local Affairs.

There’s also the Colorado Health Foundation, Gates Family Foundation, Kenneth King Foundation, AJL Foundation, Philanthropy Colorado, SLV Funders Cohort, Caring for Colorado, Madge M & Joseph T Mohar Charitable Foundation, anonymous donors and others. 

Initial funding came in fits and spurts — a thousand here, a thousand there. One anonymous donor chipped in $75,000. Caring for Colorado has provided $20,000, Colorado Department of Agriculture provided a partial payment from a $48,000 grant and Mohar provided $5,000, Montez said.

She added Medina, from the community foundation, “has been a critical piece in making this come to fruition and to actually be a reality. He gave confidence to funders to be willing to fund a group like this. They weren’t technically a 501(c)(3), and even now as a worker cooperative, they’re not a 501(c)(3) but they’re not quite a for-profit either. So it’s, like, defying the odds of what can get funded.”

Meanwhile, the co-op’s “Denver team,” consisting of Ji, Montez and independent journalist Bill Adler, has been helping them navigate everything from locating a suitable warehouse, to paying for supplies, to invoicing for work they’ve been doing, all of which is happening as they work the new jobs they were forced to find after the Colorado Mushroom Farm closure.  

Montez calls the stakeholders’ help “good old-fashioned community wraparound support” and says as far as she knows, the Sand Dunes Cooperative is unique in Colorado. 

But, she adds, a “slew of barriers, some very specific” to “a marginalized group that doesn’t have access to privilege and unearned advantage,” have popped up, causing significant delays in the co-op’s progress.

But let’s be real. If I was a rich white person down there that could bring jobs to the county there would probably be tax increment financing and there’d be all these tax incentives … But we’re talking about a marginalized group with no power.

— Alece Montez, co-executive director of the AJL Foundation

The co-op needed a warehouse to start growing mushrooms, and they found one to rent for $2,000 a month. But the warehouse needed power, and despite repeated attempts by Francisco to reach Xcel for service, the utility never responded, Montez said. “Why? Because this is a group with no clout, no money and no power.” And yet a few weeks ago when representatives from Sen. Bennet’s office called on their behalf, she said, “sure enough, 20 minutes later, we got a phone call from Xcel.”

Regulations have been an issue as well, Montez said, with local officials requiring the workers to get a land-use permit and threatening to fine them for using water from a well designated for domestic use. “The co-op is hoping the county will allow them to purchase water elsewhere and have it delivered,” she added. “It will be a very minimal amount of water and nothing even close to what the Colorado Mushroom Farm used. But again, the warehouse is temporary, part of the pilot project. I would hate for them to expend their money on this as if it were a permanent site.”

Meanwhile, the money they have raised is dwindling. And one of the Denver team’s objectives was to pay the workers for training. “It was like none of you are going to do this work on the side,” Montez said. “We want to make sure you’re getting paid while you’re learning so you can dedicate the time. But that’s another unearned advantage. By being wealthier and white in America, you get this safety net of having ‘think time,’ without having to work three jobs just to put food on the table.”

Empowering workers incrementally 

Despite setbacks, the co-op has been moving forward with training, brainstorming sessions and more efforts at fundraising.

Along the way, they’ve settled on the kind of mushrooms they’ll grow — very different than the button, crimini and portobellos at the Colorado Mushroom Farm. Francisco says they will specialize in lion’s mane, blue oysters, chestnuts, pink elms, yellow oysters and king trumpets. 

They’ve been looking into different substrates they can use to cultivate their crops, such as straw, sawdust or manure, depending on the type of mushrooms they grow. 

And they’ve established their own business bank account, so they can start managing their own money.

Until Friday, Ji was optimistic that the The Latino Community Foundation of Colorado would award the co-op a $250,000 loan at 2% interest, which would have allowed them to buy land, build a warehouse and pay themselves “about $17 to $18 an hour,” a sizable jump above the $12.50 they earned while working for Nanda.

But the foundation opted not to, with the vice president telling Ji, “it appears that the advisory committee is not well aware of cooperative businesses yet, and it may take a while for these advisory committee members to understand how a co-op works,” Ji said in an email. “I told her that we would be happy to come out to educate them and hope they reconsider in the near future.”

On Saturday, Francisco texted his thoughts about the loss to The Sun. He said he was “pretty sure our team would have qualified as an agriculture/COOP,” and that he believes “not only the displaced workers but would benefit from the project but also the SLV community would benefit immensely.”

“Maybe we just have to work harder to show the need is there,” he added. “Maybe the lenders feel we are not ready for something like mushrooms. Maybe the lenders ran out of funds.

“But I know we will keep trying to keep looking into different ways to get funding” and “we’ll keep our (donation) website up, and look at different grants, loans and donations,” he said. “We have come so far and overcome so much as a team, we can’t look back and doubt ourselves.”

Only look forward

Back in February, The Sun stopped in to see the co-op’s progress. And true to their word, the eight owners, shivering against the cold in wool hats, fleece mittens and insulated jackets, were working toward their dream of prosperity. They were sanitizing the warehouse walls, covering them in plastic, preparing for the moment they could start growing and joking with each other in Q’anjob’al.

Meanwhile, Francisco revealed plans he had drawn for the interior of the warehouse. The lack of heat didn’t seem to bother him as he looked around the room and called out the names of the people he once knew as laborers but now as his partners. 

He smiled thinking of where they had come from and where they were going, despite the fact that they would likely not meet their original goal of growing mushrooms by April. They had hoped to be selling their lion’s manes and blue oysters at the local farmers market in May. But the electricity issues Montez detailed were holding them up. 

On a brighter note, he would say, “everyone here is documented now and they have work permits. In the beginning some did not, and the co-op was the best way to help them get the process started.” 

And he said the shelves he built should soon be filled with mushrooms. 

As he explained the vision he and his team were creating together, his voice rose with excitement. 

“If we do it right, we can fit about 150 substrates and grow about 450 pounds of mushrooms. Then if that goes well, I don’t see why we can’t produce 1,500 to 2,000 pounds a month. And I don’t think we should sell them for less than $13 a pound. You can fruit off the substrate four times. There’s someone who will buy our used substrate. We just gotta get this down to a science.”

“Once our team gets a feel for it, we can’t fail,” he added. “It’s gonna be so good, people will feel bad about not buying mushrooms.” 

The Colorado legislature debated more than 700 bills in the lawmaking term that ended Wednesday. 

The Colorado Sun pored through the measures to highlight the ones that passed — and some that failed — that you need to know about.

Gov. Jared Polis has a June 7 deadline to sign or veto bills, or let them become law without his signature.

Housing

House Bill 1007: Starting July 1, local governments will be prohibited from limiting how many people are allowed to live together in the same dwelling, regardless of their familial relationship, under this bill signed into law by the governor. The only exceptions are if the limit is linked to health or safety concerns or to comply with affordable housing guidelines.
CPR NEWS

House Bill 1098: Landlords are now required to renew a tenant’s lease unless they have cause not to do so under this measure signed into law by the governor. Known as the “for-cause eviction” law, it still allows landlords to evict tenants in the middle of their lease for nonpayment and other violations. They could also refuse to renew a lease if they plan to make major renovations, take the property off the rental market or rent it to a family member.
READ MORE

House Bill 1152:  People who live in parts of the state that are in metropolitan planning organizations —  a list that covers most of the Front Range and the Grand Junction area — would be allowed to build accessory dwelling units or “granny flats” on their properties under this legislation, which is awaiting the governor’s signature. Parking would have to be identified for the new unit. The legislation would also block many existing local regulations that prohibit ADUs. Finally, the bill would create state grant and loan programs to help finance the construction of ADUs built by low-to-moderate income homeowners units and for local governments to incentivize their regulatory work on ADUs.
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House Bill 1175: This legislation would give local governments a new “right of first refusal” to buy publicly subsidized affordable housing properties when their rental restrictions expire.The measure would also require landlords to notify the government if they plan to sell older apartment complexes that aren’t subject to rental restrictions. The local government would then have the right to make a first offer on the property in order to turn it into affordable low-income housing.
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House Bill 1233: This measure, which awaits the governor’s signature, would roll back a requirement in a bill passed by the legislature in 2022 that homeowners associations must physically post a notice on a home when an owner owes them money. However, it adds that the HOA must mail a notice and contact the owner by two of the following: telephone, email or text message.

House Bill 1304:  Cities and towns would be prohibited from establishing or enforcing minimum parking requirements for residential buildings in specific areas under this legislation, which is awaiting the governor’s signature. The measure would take effect June 30, 2025, and apply to parts of the state that are in a metropolitan planning organization —  a list that covers most of the Front Range and the Grand Junction area —  and near certain bus or train stops or routes. Additionally, the legislation would only apply to multifamily residential developments, buildings redeveloped for residential purposes and buildings redeveloped for mixed-us in which at least 50% of the new use is residential. 

House Bill 1313: An estimated 31 local governments — most of them along the Interstate 25 corridor — would be required to change their zoning laws to allow more housing units near major bus and rail corridors under House Bill 1313. The measure would require that those local governments zone for 40 units per acre within a quarter mile of bus stops and a half mile from rail stations. The legislation, a key piece of Gov. Jared Polis’ housing agenda, includes $35 million in financial incentives over four years for communities that comply. The money could go toward things like affordable housing projects. The bill hasn’t been signed yet.
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House Bill 1316: This measure would create a pilot program to offer a new tax credit to developers of middle-income housing. Based on the affordable housing tax credit for low-income families, it would subsidize housing that’s affordable for those who make between 80% and 120% of the area median income. The bill hasn’t been signed by the governor yet.

House Bill 1337: This measure awaiting the governor’s signature would cap the attorneys fees a homeowner’s association can charge a homeowner facing eviction at half of the homeowner’s unpaid assessments and any other money owed to the association, or $5,000, whichever is less. There would be an exception for people who are able to pay higher amounts but wilfully did not pay their debts to the HOA and the cap would increase annually based on inflation. Additionally, the measure would impose a “first right of redemption” on HOA-foreclosed homes sold at auction, giving homeowners, tenants, affordable housing nonprofits, a community land trust, a cooperative housing corporation and the state or local government — in that priority order — 30 days to file an affidavit stating their intent to purchase the property. They would then have 180 days after the sale to come up with the money and complete the deal. House Bill 1337 came after The Colorado Sun published an investigation in August revealing that Colorado HOAs had filed roughly 3,000 foreclosure cases since 2018, more than 250 of which — or roughly 8% — resulted in properties being auctioned off, most for well below market value.

House Bill 1434: This measure would expand Colorado’s affordable housing tax credit, which helps fund development of low-income housing. The bill, which the governor is expected to sign, would allow the state to issue $20 million in new credits this tax year, then lesser amounts through 2027. The bill also includes $30 million through 2029 to fund grants for transit-oriented communities.

Senate Bill 94: This legislation, which the governor signed into law, updates Colorado’s so-called warranty of habitability law, including to require that landlords complete repairs for most issues — like fixing loose tiles or ensuring adequate trash pickups — within 14 days. The bill would give landlords seven days to resolve more serious conditions that can threaten a person’s life, safety or health, like gas leaks, broken heating systems, inadequate running water and pest infestations.
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Senate Bill 111: Senior homeowners wouldn’t lose a popular property tax break if they move under this bill that makes the so-called senior homestead exemption portable. The measure awaits the governor’s signature. 

Senate Bill 134: This legislation, signed into law by the governor, prohibits a homeowners association from restricting someone who lives in their community from operating a business out of their home. 

Senate Bill 174: Under this measure, local governments would be required to conduct housing needs assessments every six years and create action plans to meet those needs. Local governments that make progress on their housing plans would have an advantage in winning grant dollars from a number of state agencies. The bill awaits the governor’s signature.

Guns

House Bill 1174: This measure, awaiting the governor’s signature, would changes to Colorado’s laws around who can obtain a concealed carry permit and how they obtain that permit. It would mandate that training classes to qualify for a concealed carry permit offer at least eight hours of instruction, including a live-fire test where participants shoot at least 50 rounds. Passing the live-fire test, as well as a written exam, would be mandatory to get a concealed carry permit.

House Bill 1348: A gun would have to be in a locked, hard-sided container — including a glove box or center console — out of view when kept in a vehicle under this bill awaiting the governor’s signature. The bill would also require the vehicle to be locked. Violators would face a fine, though there would be exceptions for people who work on farms and ranches or for the military or as law enforcement. 

House Bill 1349: Colorado voters will be asked in November to impose a 6.5% excise tax on firearms and ammunition sold in the state beginning on April 1, 2025, under this measure passed by the legislature. The revenue would go to crime victims, schools and behavioral health programs. 

House Bill 1353: This measure would require firearms dealers in Colorado to obtain a state permit and be subject to random and regular inspections. The legislation, which hasn’t been signed by the governor yet, would also require employee background checks and training for employees to identify people trying to illegally purchase guns. Employees would have to report anyone who tries to unlawfully purchase a gun to law enforcement within 48 hours. Finally, the measure would require  gun stores to lock up their firearms. 

Senate Bill 3: This legislation, which hasn’t been signed into law yet, would give the Colorado Bureau of Investigation authority to investigate firearms crimes. It would also allocate $1.7 million to the agency to investigate people convicted of felonies who are attempting to illegally purchase a gun. 

Senate Bill 66: The governor has signed this measure, which requires that credit card companies assign specific merchant codes to firearms and ammunition dealers by May 2025. The legislation is aimed at making it easier to track gun purchases. 

Senate Bill 131: The Colorado Capitol, courthouses, child care facilities, K-12 schools, colleges and polling locations would be added to the list of places where the open or concealed carry of a firearm is prohibited under this measure awaiting the governor’s signature.

Transportation

Senate Bill 65: Colorado drivers would be prohibited from using a mobile electronic device, such as a cellphone, while driving under this measure awaiting the governor’s signature. The measure has exceptions for drivers using hand-free accessories or those making a call in an emergency. 

Senate Bill 79: Starting in August, motorcycle riders will be allowed to “lane split,” or drive between vehicles in two lanes, when traveling up to 15 miles per hour and overtaking stopped traffic under this measure signed into law by the governor. The change will expire on Sept. 1, 2027, unless extended by the legislature. 

Senate Bill 100: Commercial vehicles would be prohibited starting in August from traveling in the left lane on treacherous sections of Interstate 70 through Colorado’s high country, including Floyd Hill, Georgetown Hill, near the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnels, Vail Pass, Dowd Junction and Glenwood Canyon, under this measure awaiting the governor’s signature. Additionally, the bill would increase fines for commercial vehicles that speed through Glenwood Canyon and add a list of mountain routes to the areas where commercial vehicle drivers must carry chains between Sept. 1 and May 31. Finally, the legislation would require the Colorado Department of Transportation to study locations on I-70 through the mountains where additional chain-up and chain-down stations can be built, as well as how to improve existing stations.
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Senate Bill 182: This legislation, which hasn’t been signed into law yet, would make it easier for people living in the country illegally to obtain a driver’s license by eliminating the state’s requirement that they be a Colorado resident, have filed a tax return and have a social security or taxpayer identification number.
CPR NEWS

Senate Bill 184: Colorado’s daily rental car fee would increase to $5.13 from $2.13 under this measure awaiting the governor’s signature. The revenue generated — estimated to be more than $55 million annually — would go toward transit projects, predominantly efforts to build a Front Range passenger rail system. The fee would start in 2025 and increase annually based on inflation starting on July 1, 2026.
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Changes to the tax code or that would otherwise affect your wallet

House Bill 1052: When they file their taxes next spring, qualifying seniors 65 and older at the end of 2024 who make up to $75,000 — or $125,000 if filing jointly — can collect an income tax refund of up to $800 under the measure, which passed with wide bipartisan support and is expected to be signed into law. Homeowners who receive the senior homestead exemption are not eligible.

House Bill 1134: This measure, which the governor is expected to sign into law, would expand the earned income tax credit for low-income households by as much as $200 million annually. Households that make under $65,000 would qualify for a refundable credit worth as much as 50% of the federal tax credit of the same name. The exact value of the credit would rise and fall with economic conditions.
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House Bill 1311: Under this measure, which awaits the governor’s signature, low- and middle-income Colorado families would qualify for income tax credits worth up to $3,200 per child. The exact value of the credit depends on economic growth.
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House Bill 1312: This measure would create a $1,200 income tax credit for child care workers and nurses who provide at-home care or work in certain skilled nursing facilities and make up to $75,000 a year and are a single tax filer. The legislation is a bid to address staffing shortages in the industry. Joint filers who make up to $100,000 would qualify a $2,400 income tax credit. The bill hasn’t been signed by the governor yet.

Senate Bill 228: Coloradans would get temporary income tax cuts in years when the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights surplus exceeds a certain level under this measure, which would also create two new taxpayer refund mechanisms. The bill, which awaits the governor’s signature, would temporarily cut income taxes to 4.25% from 4.4% this year, the maximum cut allowed under the bill. The legislation only triggers cuts if there’s $300 million leftover after a senior property tax break is funded. In years where the leftover surplus is larger than $1.5 billion, the sales tax rate would also be cut. The measure is part of a deal struck between Democratic lawmakers and the governor, who pushed for temporary income tax cuts as a condition of using large parts of the surplus to fund income tax credits.
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Senate Bill 233: Property tax rates would hold steady this year under this bipartisan, last-minute measure passed by the legislature and awaiting the governor’s signature that wouldn’t affect K-12 funding. The bill would then offer a property tax break in all subsequent years, in part by capping the annual revenue increase for local governments to 5.5%.
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Health care

House Bill 1058: Starting in August, the Colorado Privacy Act will be expanded to protect biological data, including neural data, gathered through new neurotechnologies, used for everything from anxiety treatment to dating app optimization, under this first-in-the-nation bill signed into law by the governor.
THE NEW YORK TIMES

House Bill 1081: The sale or transfer of products with a potency of 10% or greater of sodium nitrite will be limited starting July 1 to verified commercial businesses under this measure signed into law by the governor. The measure is aimed at preventing people from obtaining the chemical to kill themselves. Sodium nitrite products will also have to contain a warning that they are deadly if ingested.
CPR NEWS

House Bill 1136: Starting in 2026, social media platforms would be required under this measure to give pop-up warnings to Colorado youths after one hour of daily use if a teen is using social media after 10 p.m. The notifications would provide information on the harm of social media use, which has been linked to anxiety and depression. The bipartisan measure passed both chambers and awaits the governor’s signature.
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House Bill 1231: Colorado will create its third medical college — at the University of Northern Colorado, likely in 2026 — after the governor signed this bill that also includes a plan to develop a Health Institute Tower at Metropolitan State University of Denver, construct a veterinary health education complex for Colorado State University in Fort Collins and renovate and expand the main building at Trinidad State College’s valley campus in Alamosa to house all the school’s health care programs.
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House Bill 1380: This measure, which hasn’t been signed into law, would prevent hospitals from publicly concealing their involvement in debt collection lawsuits against patients. It was introduced following a joint Colorado Sun/9News investigation into the practice The bill would apply to all debt collection lawsuits broadly, not just those over medical debt.

House Bill 1456: Rates of syphilis infections are booming in Colorado, as they are across the country. This has also led to an increase in the number of babies infected in utero. Current law requires health care providers to offer testing for syphilis — which is treatable by antibiotics — early in the first trimester. This bill, which hasn’t been signed yet, would also require providers to offer syphilis testing early in the third trimester.

Senate Bill 68: Colorado’s waiting period for terminally ill people seeking to use the state’s medical-aid-in-dying law would be shortened in August to seven days from 15 under this bill passed by the legislature and awaiting the governor’s signature. The measure would also waive the waiting period for people expected to die within 48 hours and let advanced practice nurses prescribe aid-in-dying medication.
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Senate Bill 203: People who live with rare diseases are worried that actions by Colorado’s Prescription Drug Affordability Board could make their drugs unavailable. The board has the power to set price caps on drugs it declares unaffordable. But patients fear that a cap might cause a pharmaceutical company to pull out of the market in Colorado or cause pharmacies to stop selling the drug. This bill, which hasn’t been signed by the governor yet, would require the board to consult with the state’s Rare Disease Advisory Council before reviewing a drug.

Criminal justice

House Concurrent Resolution 1002: Colorado voters will decide in November whether to amend the state constitution to once again allow judges to prohibit people charged with first-degree murder from being released on bail from jail ahead of their trials. That’s the effect of House Concurrent Resolution 1002, which was brought after the state Supreme Court ruled last year that the legislature’s 2020 decision to repeal Colorado’s death penalty meant that those defendants were eligible for pretrial release and that judges had to set their bail.
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House Bill 1071: People convicted of a felony can only change their name in Colorado if they can show they have “good cause.” This bill, signed into law by the governor, adds changing a name to conform to a person’s gender identity to the legal definition of “good cause.”

House Bill 1103: The term “excited delirium” is banned from being used in first responder training, in police incident reports and from being listed as the cause of death in Colorado death certificates under this measure signed into law by the governor. The bill was inspired by the death of Elijah McClain in Aurora after an encounter with city police and paramedics.
9NEWS

House Bill 1355: This measure would divert people accused of low-level crimes into mental health treatment instead of requiring them to be “restored to competency” to stand trial, a process that can involve a monthslong wait in jail. District attorneys, public defenders and judges could refer people to the new Bridges Wraparound Care Program, housed within Bridges of Colorado, an independent state office.
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Senate Bill 35: The criminal penalties for human trafficking for involuntary or sexual servitude have been increased under this measure signed into law by the governor. The maximum penalty has been increased to 48 years from a maximum average of 28 years. Additionally, the bill increases the statute of limitations for prosecuting those offenders to 20 years.

Environment

House Bill 1379: This measure was introduced in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision curbing the federal government’s power to regulate wetlands. The bill, which hasn’t been signed yet, would hand the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment that responsibility, and require the agency to create a framework to protect the waterways the federal government no longer oversees.
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House Bill 1436: Colorado voters will be asked in November whether to let the state keep all of the sports betting tax revenue it collects under this measure that passed the legislature. Right now, the state is required under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to refund any sports betting revenue it collects in excess of $29 million. If voters reject the ballot question, the excess will be refunded to casinos.
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Senate Bill 81: This bill, which hasn’t been signed by the governor yet, would close loopholes in a 2022 state ban on perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, known as “forever chemicals,” that are polluting the water supply. It would move up the deadlines to phase out the sale of certain products with those chemicals, and also expand the list of those products.
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Senate Bill 171: Colorado Parks and Wildlife would be authorized to reintroduce the North American Wolverine in Colorado under this measure awaiting the governor’s signature. CPW would be required to create rules to repay livestock owners for losses caused by wolverines. Lawmakers allocated more than $100,000 next fiscal year for the reintroduction efforts.
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Senate Bill 229: State regulators would be required by Aug. 31, 2026, to adopt rules to reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from the oil and gas industry by 50% between May 1 and September 30 from their 2017 levels by 2030 under this bill awaiting the governor’s signature. The measure would also change how the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment enforces emissions violations and requires the agency to gather and publish data and publish that enforcement work.
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Senate Bill 230: This measure would impose a new fee on oil and gas produced in Colorado, generating an estimated $138 million a year, 80% of which would go to transit projects and the rest of which would go to public lands. The bill, which awaits the governor’s signature, would also require the Regional Transportation District to prioritize completion of its long-promised commuter rail lines between Denver and Longmont and Denver and north Adams County.
READ MORE: Governor, Democrats reach long-term air quality and transit deal
READ MORE: Governor, legislature have spent 2024 trying to reshape RTD

Senate Bill 218: This measure would direct Xcel Energy to develop more comprehensive plans to upgrade the distribution grid, which brings electricity to homes and businesses and is under pressure from increased use. The bill, which is awaiting the governor’s signature, would allow the utility to recover costs by adding charges to residential and commercial bills.
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Business

House Bill 1121: This so-called right to repair legislation, when signed by the governor, would require tech and appliance companies to make available tools and software to repair their products. Sponsors of the measure say it would apply to everything from blenders to cellphones.

House Bill 1129: This measure, which hasn’t been signed by the governor, would place new requirements on third-party delivery companies like DoorDash or UberEats, including that all tips be paid to drivers, that drivers be told up front how much they are expected to earn for a trip and that the companies develop a driver deactivation policy that is made available in multiple languages. The bill would also require that the companies give drivers at least a minute to decide whether to accept a delivery.  

House Bill 1378: Venues would be required to admit ticket holders to an event regardless of where they purchased the ticket under this measure awaiting the governor’s signature. The bill would also make it a deceptive trade practice for a company to not disclose fees associated with a ticket purchase before a buyer tries to complete their transaction.
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Senate Bill 173: This measure, which hasn’t been signed into law yet, would require funeral directors, mortuary science practitioners, embalmers, creationists and natural reductionists to obtain a state license starting in 2027. To get a license, people working in those professions would have to graduate from an accredited institution, pass a national board exam, complete an apprenticeship and be subject to a criminal background check. Colorado is currently the only state does doesn’t require licensure for directors and others who work in the funeral industry.
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Senate Bill 75: Ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft would have to disclose to their drivers starting next year how much riders are paying for each trip and make it clear to riders how much their drivers are being paid under this bill awaiting the governor’s signature. The legislation would make a host of other changes to the way the state regulates the rideshare industry.

Senate Bill 205: Companies that use artificial intelligence to make “consequential” decisions — such as whether a Coloradan gets a job, house, loan or medical coverage — would have to disclose to consumers when they are using AI under this measure awaiting the governor’s signature. Some in the AI business community criticized the bill as coming too early, while consumer advocates feel it doesn’t go far enough. While other states have been pursuing similar legislation this year, the Colorado bill appears to be the first of its kind nationwide. If signed, it would take effect Feb. 1, 2026.
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Education

House Bill 1003: This measure, signed into law by the governor, gives school bus drivers and other school employees who accompany students on buses the same civil and criminal immunity as other staffers when it comes to administering opioid overdose drugs. The legislation also lets schools keep a supply of fentanyl test strips and provides civil and criminal immunity to school personnel who use them. Finally, the bill also lets districts keep those overdose reversal drugs at schools, on school buses and at school-sponsored events.

House Bill 1017: The measure gives foster children their own official “bill of rights,” strengthening a number of existing protections in state child welfare laws. The rights include freedom from discrimination and harassment, invasions of privacy and unreasonable searches. Transgender children would also have the right to be referred to by their preferred name and pronouns. The law, signed by Polis in April, requires the state to notify foster kids of their rights at every placement and explain what to do if their foster parents violate those freedoms.
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House Bill 1039: Public school employees are required to address pupils by their chosen name and knowingly or intentionally using a different name would be considered discriminatory under this measure signed into law by the governor. The legislation defines chosen name as “any name that a student requests to be known as that differs from the student’s legal name, to reflect the student’s gender identity.”

House Bill 1044: Under this new law signed by Polis, hundreds more retired public school teachers can return to work after they’ve begun drawing pension benefits through the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association. The measure raises the current limit of 10 retired teachers per K-12 district, allowing schools to hire one more retiree for every 1,000 students in district’s with 10,000 or more pupils. The pension system is required to report every five years on the financial impact of the changes, which could add as much as $200 million to PERA’s unfunded debt.
THE UNAFFILIATED

House Bill 1164: Under this measure, K-12 schools across the state would be required to provide free menstrual products to students in all applicable bathrooms as soon as the 2025-26 year. Initially, the requirements would only apply to urban and suburban school districts and charter schools; they would kick in for rural schools and the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind starting in July 2028. The governor hasn’t signed the legislation yet.

House Bill 1394: Starting next school year, the state will provide additional funding to state-sponsored charter schools in communities where local voters have increased property taxes for traditional public and charter schools. The bipartisan measure, which Polis signed into law, equalizes the per-student funding received by Charter School Institute schools that don’t benefit from the local property tax bumps, known as mill levy overrides.

House Bill 1448: Many rural schools and districts with high concentrations of at-risk kids would benefit under this attempt to rewrite the school finance formula for the first time in 30 years. But wealthier districts with a high cost of living could lose out under the measure, which would prioritize student need-based factors over local economic conditions that districts say make it hard to pay teachers a living wage. The bill awaits the governor’s signature.
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Senate Bill 188: Next school year, Colorado would fully fund K-12 education for the first time since the Great Recession under the annual School Finance Act, which has passed both chambers and is expected to be signed into law. The measure boosts base funding per pupil to $8,496 and eliminates Colorado’s long-running school funding deficit, known as the budget stabilization factor.
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Senate Bill 216: Public libraries in Colorado would be prohibited from banning books or other resources based on the ethnic origin or gender identity of the creator, nor could they enact a ban because of partisan disapproval under this bill awaiting the governor’s signature. The bill would also prohibit a public library employee from being fired, demoted, disciplined or otherwise retaliated against for refusing to remove a book or other resource before it has been reviewed in accordance with the library’s policies. 

Other bills that passed

Senate Concurrent Resolution 3: Colorado voters will be asked in November to amend the state constitution to remove the ban on same-sex marriage under this resolution passed by a supermajority of the legislature. Same-sex marriage is legal in Colorado, but the constitutional provision defining marriage as being between a man and a woman remains.  

House Bill 1048: Veterinarians will be allowed to provide telemedicine under this measure signed into law by the governor. 

House Bill 1051: This measure, which hasn’t been signed by the governor yet, aims to tighten regulations on towing companies, including by prohibiting them from patrolling or monitoring a parking area for enforcement purposes. It would also require tow companies to return vehicles to their original location within 48 hours of an improper tow. 

House Bill 1059: An independent commission would be created and meet every four years to recommend pay adjustments for elected officials in the state under this legislation passed by the General Assembly. The first report would be due in December 2025, with recommendations to take effect Jan. 1, 2027. Annual wage adjustments would be made to account for inflation. The measure would also increase the per diem pay for state lawmakers.

House Bill 1147: Colorado campaigns would be prohibited from using artificial intelligence to create and disseminate deepfakes — an image, video or piece of audio that falsely appears to be authentic but really depicts someone appearing to say or do something they didn’t say or do — without a clear disclosure under this bill awaiting the governor’s signature. 

House Bill 1150: It is now a crime to be a presidential elector who doesn’t back the presidential candidate who wins the most votes in Colorado presidential elections under this measure signed into law by the governor. The measure also makes it a crime to assist someone in becoming a false elector or conspiring with another person to become a false elector. Violators face a fine of up to $10,000 and if convicted would be barred from serving as a member of the General Assembly or holding any office of trust or profit in the state.

House Bill 1244: Colorado coroners would be restricted as to whom they could release a child’s autopsy report to under this measure awaiting the governor’s signature. Members of the public could not obtain a child’s autopsy report unless the juvenile’s death happens while they are in custody or under the supervision of the state or a local government, including foster care or in a public school.

House Bill 1280: The state would provide around $2 million in grants to community organizations to help integrate migrants in Colorado under this measure. The welcome grant program created by the bill is aimed at helping recent arrivals to the U.S. find a job, enroll their kids in school and access certain social services.

House Bill 1360: This measure, passed by the General Assembly and awaiting the governor’s signature, would create Colorado’s first ever Disability Opportunity Office, which would be housed within the Department of Labor and Employment. The office’s four employees would provide guidance to the governor and state agencies on accessibility problems, and implement a statewide strategy to promote economic stability and societal integration for those with disabilities.
COLORADO NEWSLINE

House Bill 1430: The long bill, the central piece of a budget package of more than a dozen pieces of legislation, authorizes $40.6 billion in state spending for Colorado’s 2024-25 fiscal year, which starts July 1. The state budget funds large pay raises for state workers and increases spending on health care services, K-12 and higher education. General fund spending is set to increase by $1 billion next year under the measure, which Polis signed into law. That’s a 7% bump from the current budget year. The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which administers Medicaid and other public health programs, was responsible for about half of the general fund budget growth.
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House Bill 1472: This measure, the product of a deal between trial lawyers, business interests and the insurance industry, would raise award caps in Colorado personal injury and medical malpractice cases to as high as $2.1 million. The bill was negotiated with the help of a bipartisan group of lawmakers, as well as the governor’s office. It hasn’t been signed yet. In exchange for the legislation, lawyers have agreed to abandon a ballot effort to eliminate the caps altogether, including a $300,000 cap on medical malpractice claims.
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Senate Bill 53: This measure would create a commission to study racial inequities affecting Black Coloradans and propose solutions to address them. The bill calls for an economic analysis on the generational harms caused by systemic racism, and directs History Colorado, the state historical society, to help study discriminatory policies dating back to slavery. If the governor signs the bill into law, the commission’s work would be funded through $785,000 in grants and donations.
CPR NEWS

Senate Bill 58: If a landowner erects signs — at least 8 inches by 10 inches — warning of dangerous conditions, structures and activities on their property, they cannot not be sued by an injured visitor for “a willful or malicious failure to guard against a known condition,” under this legislation signed into law by the governor. The signs may be installed at trailheads, instead of at each and every hazard.
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Senate Bill 157: This bill, which was signed into law by the governor, changes how the state’s open meetings laws apply to the legislature, including making written communications among two or more lawmakers exempt, though still subject to Colorado’s separate open records laws. Additionally, the legislation exempts lawmakers from having to provide advance notice of a meeting, or recording and taking and posting minutes of a gathering, unless public business — like legislation, resolutions or memorials — is being discussed and only when there’s a contemporaneous quorum. Exempt from public access are conversations that are “by nature interpersonal, administrative or logistics or that concern personnel, planning, process training or operations.” The legislature’s executive committee is also required under the bill to take public comment on how open meetings laws apply to the legislature and consider changes to the statutes.
THE DENVER POST

Notable bills that failed

Senate Concurrent Resolution 1: This measure would have referred a question to the November ballot asking voters to amend the state constitution to let victims of child sex abuse from decades past sue their abusers even if the statute of limitations has run out. It needed a supermajority of support to pass, but fell one vote short in the Senate after every Republican in the chamber voted against the resolution.
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House Bill 1028: Local governments in Colorado would have been able to authorize the formation of centers where people could openly use illicit drugs under the supervision of workers trained in reversing overdoses under this bill. The measure passed the House, but was rejected in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

House Bill 1057: Landlords would have been limited in how they can use computer algorithms in setting rent under this bill, which would have made it a violation of consumer protection laws to use nonpublic data from competitors to set rent prices. The bill passed the House, but was amended in the Senate to allow the practice in many circumstances. The House rejected the Senate’s changes and the Senate refused to revisit the measure, killing the legislation in the final days of the session.

House Bill 1158: This measure would have required that the minimum bid for HOA-foreclosed homes being sold at auction be set at roughly 60% of the property’s market value. Right now, the minimum bid is set at whatever the homeowner owes their HOA, which may only be a few thousand dollars. The bill failed by one vote during its final debate on the House floor.
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House Bill 1162: This measure would have increased the criminal penalties for stealing a firearm valued at up to $300 a Class 2 misdemeanor, punishable by up to 120 days in jail, up from a petty offense. The measure was rejected in its first committee hearing.
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House Bill 1163: This measure would have required pet owners to register their animals with the state each year for a minimum fee of $8.50. The fee revenue would have gone to shelters. Violators would have faced a $100 fine. The bill was unanimously rejected in its first committee hearing.

House Bill 1169: Colorado’s public pension would have been able to invest in companies that economically boycott Israel under this legislation that was rejected during its first committee hearing.
THE DENVER POST

House Bill 1239: This measure would have required local governments to change their codes by Dec. 1, 2026, to allow a single stairwell exit for buildings up to five stories tall. The legislation, pitched as a way to increase housing, was rejected in its first committee hearing.

House Bill 1270: Coloradans who own a firearm would have been required to have homeowners, renters or other liability insurance starting in 2025 under this bill that died on the calendar in the Senate. Gun owners would have been able to petition a judge for an exemption in certain situations, including after being denied coverage by at least two insurance carriers. The bill would also have required insurers to make firearms coverage available as part of liability coverage for homeowners and renters policies, though they could offer discounts for people who own a gun safe or other secure firearm container. Violators would have faced fines.

House Bill 1292: For the second year in a row, a bill that would have banned the purchase, sale and transfer of a broad swath of semiautomatic firearms, defined in the measure as assault weapons, failed in the Colorado legislature. House Bill 1292 was killed in its first Senate committee at the request of one of its Senate sponsors, who said “more conversations need to take place.”
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House Bill 1296: This measure would have increased the time government agencies in Colorado have to respond to open records requests to between five and 10 days from three to seven days, with an exception for requests made by the news media. In some cases, agencies would have had a month to respond. The bill was rejected in the Senate.

House Bill 1299: This legislation would have imposed Colorado’s commercial property tax rate on properties offered as short-term rentals when they belonged to a person or business that owned at least two other homes. It was rejected during its first committee hearing in the House.
VAIL DAILY

House Bill 1363: This legislation was designed to tighten rules for Colorado charter schools and make them more transparent and accountable, but it was fiercely opposed by both Democratic and Republican supporters of education reform. It was rejected in its first committee.
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House Bill 1433: The parole board would have handed the responsibility to make decisions on whether to grant parole to Young Adults Convicted as Adults Program within the Department of Corrections under this measure that was rejected in a Senate committee. Right now, the governor makes those parole decisions using recommendations from the parole board.

Senate Bill 33: This measure would have quadrupled the property taxes on Colorado homes rented as short-term rentals for more than 90 days a year. It was rejected in the Senate Finance Committee.
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Senate Bill 43: Coloradans would have been allowed to buy raw milk at farms, farmers markets and roadside stands under this measure that spoiled in the Senate. Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat, said he sidelined the measure because of the bovine outbreak of avian flu.
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Senate Bill 106: This so-called construction defects measure aimed to limit when lawsuits could be filed against developers over building errors and in turn encourage condominium construction in Colorado. It passed the Senate but was rejected unanimously in a House committee when it became clear it wouldn’t have enough support to pass.
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Senate Bill 146: Renters would have received an income tax credit worth up to $1,000 under this measure that died on the calendar in the House. Only renters who make less than $75,000 — or $125,000 if filing jointly — would have qualified for the credit. 

Senate Bill 159: New oil and gas drilling in Colorado would have been banned by 2030 under this measure that was rejected by a bipartisan majority of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee during its first hearing.
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Senate Bill 181: This measure would have imposed beer, wine and liquor fees on alcohol manufacturers and wholesale distributors, the revenue from which would have gone to substance abuse treatment. It was rejected by the House Finance Committee. 

Colorado Sun staff writers Sandra Fish, John Ingold, Tamara Chuang, Parker Yamasaki and Mark Jaffe contributed to this report. 

Transgender and nonbinary people held in an Aurora immigrant detention center are routinely locked down in their cells, barred from speaking to one another, taunted by guards and deprived of medical care, according to a civil rights complaint filed Tuesday with the Department of Homeland Security. 

The National Immigration Project, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network and American Immigration Council filed the complaint on behalf of five people alleging ongoing discrimination, harassment and mistreatment at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, owned and operated by GEO Group Inc. under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Women at the Aurora facility are being abused, and it’s clear ICE is not able to keep them safe or ensure their well-being — and so, for that reason, they should be released,” said Ann Garcia, a staff attorney at the National Immigration Project. 

The complaint asks that transgender and nonbinary people facing immigration charges be supervised in the community while waiting for their court hearings, rather than be exposed to the dangers of incarceration.  

The groups allege that ICE, which uses the facility to detain people held on immigration charges, is in violation of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and its own 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards, which provide guidance on how to create a safe environment for survivors of assault and violence including transgender and nonbinary people held at the facility. 

Violence against people who have transitioned from one gender to another is on the rise. According to the FBI’s national crime statistics released in October 2023, there was a 33% increase in the number of reported hate crimes based on gender identity compared to the previous year. 

The civil rights complaint is the latest to allege poor treatment of people detained at the Aurora Contract Detention Facility, which has faced lawsuits, including one after a Nicaraguan man became the third person to die in custody.

Immigrant rights organizations have also filed numerous complaints about the facility to the federal government alleging racial discrimination and excessive force, arbitrary and overuse of solitary confinement and poor health policies that led to a coronavirus outbreak at the center.

The GEO Group said in a statement it continues to follow the 2011 standards set by ICE that govern contracted services at all federal immigration centers, including the care and treatment of transgender people at the Aurora center. 

“We are committed to providing a respectful, safe, and secure environment for all non-citizens, including those individuals who identify as transgender and who are generally at a higher risk of victimization,” Christopher Ferreira, a GEO Group spokesperson, wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson Steve Kotecki said the agency is committed to ensuring that people in custody are held in safe, secure and humane environments. “ICE regularly reviews each case involving self-identified transgender noncitizens and determines on a case-by-case basis whether detention is warranted,” he wrote in an email to The Colorado Sun on April 11.

The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties said it would evaluate the allegations to determine if it should open an investigation, and that the office would notify the complainants about that decision, spokesperson Dana Gallagher wrote in an email to The Sun on April 12.

Past complaints about the Aurora detention facility allege assaults by guards, rampant sexual violence, rape, medical abuse and neglect and other harms, according to the complaint.

In 2020, a group of trans and nonbinary people detained at the Aurora facility filed a petition that said they could not receive therapy or treatment and that they faced significant delays in receiving medication to control their symptoms from HIV.

Similar problems persist, according to the complaint, which says it takes two to three days for medical staff to respond to written requests for care. 

One transgender woman who had exams on her thyroid and liver almost a year ago still has not received results of those tests, according to the complaint.

The woman, Elsa, a pseudonym, was initially detained in a men’s dorm at the Aurora facility, and reported a sexual assault she said happened in a bathroom with no cameras. 

“It took others reporting the same behavior for guards to act,” the complaint says. 

Elsa was assaulted by guards, the complaint says, some of whom also laughed and pointed at her while she used the bathroom. 

A nonbinary detainee, Omar, also a pseudonym, said they will not start hormone replacement therapy because it would mean they must be placed in solitary confinement, the complaint says.

Trans people held at the Aurora facility said they can talk to other people in their room but not others in the trans pod — a rule that applies to no one else at the facility.

Transgender people are routinely barred from going outside for recreation and have no access to books in their native language or in-person visits from loved ones.

One trans woman said she was allowed outside this month for the first time in eight months, according to the complaint.

“ICE needs to permanently end keeping trans and nonbinary people in detention, because the agency clearly cannot guarantee basic standards of care,” said Rebekah Wolf, senior advocacy strategist at the American Immigration Council.   

If the Department of Homeland Security believes immigrants would be a flight risk, it could turn to community-based treatment providers and nonprofits to ensure immigrants make it to their hearings, said Laura Lunn, director of advocacy and litigation at Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.

“It costs far more for the federal government to keep people in civil immigration detention than it does to provide them care in the community,” Lunn said.

The American Friends Service Committee of Colorado, an immigrant rights nonprofit, is organizing a fundraiser to help support transgender people detained at the Aurora facility, including help with clothing and access to messaging apps.

This story was updated at 3:14 p.m. on April 12, 2024, with responses from the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Denver is creating an “asylum-seeker program” that includes six months of rent and food assistance as well as job training and English classes to help migrants who continue to arrive daily by the busload. 

Mayor Mike Johnston announced the city’s latest plan to help newcomers from South and Central America during a news conference Wednesday, describing a shift from putting people up in city-funded hotels and supplying three meals a day toward helping them get apartments and legal jobs. 

The new program is part of nearly $90 million in migrant services expected in the 2024 city budget, about half as much money as the city had said in January that it was likely to spend this year. The new spending plan will allow Denver to restore cuts previously made to public services, including reduced hours at community recreation centers, the mayor said. 

“This really represents a new moment for Denver, which is the ability to take what has felt like a crisis and turn it into an opportunity, to provide newcomers that arrived for the first time a real path to work and independence,” Johnston said. 

The new plan focuses on setting up migrants to work in Colorado and avoids cuts to core city services or layoffs of city staff, he said.

The city’s recreation centers will be fully open for the summer, Parks and Recreation programs will take place this summer and fall as planned, and seasonal staff who had their hours cut will have the chance to return to work, he said.

“That all starts today,” the mayor said. 

The city estimated in January that it would spend $180 million on migrants this year. In December alone, the city spent $15 million. That number led to the $180 million estimate for 2024, Johnston said. 

But since then, the city closed six of the seven hotels it had provided for migrants and began enforcing time limits on hotel stays — 14 days for adults and 42 days for families with children. 

“The current system we had is not a way you would support your own family,” Johnston said. “You wouldn’t eat out three meals a day and stay in a hotel every night. That would become very expensive.”

The city will still operate an emergency shelter for new arrivals, and as space is available, they will be allowed to enroll in the new “asylum-seeker program.” 

Under the program, the city will coordinate with nonprofits to provide rent assistance for six months — the same amount of time needed for migrants to gain work authorization under federal law. 

The program will provide help with applications for asylum, which can take up to 20 hours per application. Migrants are eligible for work authorization six months after they complete that application. 

The first people in line for the program are the about 1,000 now staying in a northwestern Denver hotel and an emergency shelter. They will be offered six months of help with rent and food, and can sign up for unpaid on-the-job training and certification for jobs in construction or other fields that are in need of workers. 

“This is our path to help these folks get to legal work,” the mayor said. 

Nonprofits, including ViVe Wellness and Papagayo, have helped the city house more than 8,000 migrants in apartments, with about 2,000 leases. 

More than 40,700 migrants have arrived in the city since December 2022, and about half of those have stayed. The other half received bus tickets, and in some cases plane tickets, to other cities across the country. At the height of the influx, Denver was paying to shelter and feed 5,000 people per night.

The pace of arrivals has slowed in recent weeks, with 24 people arriving Tuesday. 

Migrants, mostly from Venezuela, began arriving by buses from Texas around Christmas 2022, many without winter clothing or shoes. Those first arrivals were granted temporary protected status by the federal government, which meant they could quickly get work authorization. But anyone who arrived after July is not eligible. 

Those who arrived in the fall had access to an application at the border that allowed them to apply for work authorization once they settled in Denver. But the people arriving now have neither of those options, Johnston said. 

The mayor said he would ask the City Council within the next few weeks for approval of the new plan, which requires $45 million in migrant spending this year to meet the $89.9 million estimated annual cost of services.

After this week, Denver will have just one hotel for migrants who need a place to sleep after arriving in the city, a sign that the 15-month, $63 million effort to shelter new arrivals is winding down. 

The announcement Monday that Denver Human Services would close three of the remaining four hotel shelters this week came as a surprise, since Mayor Mike Johnston had previously said the city would continue operating three hotels as shelters. That’s down from a max of seven hotels around the city that Denver was leasing for migrant housing. 

The decision comes as the number of daily arrivals has been declining. About 60 people, mainly from Venezuela and other South American countries, got off buses in Denver on Sunday, and 50 more arrived Monday — that’s a significant drop from previous months when migrants were coming at the pace of 200 or 300 per day. 

Denver was paying for shelter for nearly 5,000 people in January. That number dropped to 730 this week. 

The single hotel, in northwestern Denver, as well as a congregate shelter in a church, can provide beds for about 800 or more people if necessary, Denver Human Services spokesman Jon Ewing said. The city also has “bridge housing” to temporarily shelter families with children as they transition from hotel rooms to apartments. 

“We’ve gone from 10 facilities to three and have avoided widespread encampment issues,” he said. “The goal now is to continue working toward a long-term plan so we can take care of people and our budget at the same time.” 

Authorities were working last week to clear a migrant camp that had grown in a parking lot at Elitch Gardens, where tents stretched along a sidewalk across the fence from a roller coaster. Campers packed up after receiving notice that they had to vacate before the camp was cleaned up. The amusement park opens this month. 

About half of the 40,295 migrants who have arrived in Denver since December 2022 have stayed in city-funded hotel rooms, while the other half chose to continue on to other cities across the country. Adults are allowed to stay 14 days, while families have 42 days to find a more permanent place to live, typically with help from various nonprofits that have covered their first month’s rent. 

Denver Human Services is continuing to help migrants apply for work authorization, assisting with 1,400 enrollments in the past two months. 

Reducing hotel shelters to a single site will save money on staffing and security, Ewing said. “We’re working toward long-term sustainability,” he said. 

The downsize comes only about a week after volunteers were scrambling to find shelter for families with children who had timed out of their hotel stays and had nowhere to sleep. As a winter storm loomed, Denver opened a city building in Civic Center park as an emergency shelter for kids and their parents, who were rescued from hotel lobbies after having to vacate their rooms. 

About 10 families needed the shelter.

Volunteers were rescuing Venezuelan families with young children from sleeping outside this week as Denver has scaled back migrant services and the time people were allotted to stay in city-funded hotel rooms expired.

The city, in response to complaints from volunteers that children were ending up outside, decided Thursday afternoon to reopen a city building in Civic Center park to house migrant families with nowhere to sleep. 

Denver Human Services officials said they were rushing to reactivate the McNichols Building on Colfax Avenue, including sending staff and ordering meals. They expected up to 10 families Thursday night, and possibly more during the next few days as a weekend storm approaches. 

The re-opening of the congregate shelter in a civic building meant for arts and culture was not part of the plan as the city scales down migrant services that have already cost $61 million. But Mayor Mike Jonhston and his staff have said multiple times that they would prevent kids from ending up on Denver streets. 

“Nobody ever said this was going to be easy,” said Jon Ewing, spokesperson for Denver Human Services. “You are going to have families who haven’t figured it out yet. There are a lot of factors competing against them. It’s not a problem of their own making.” 

The city is in the process of decreasing the number of hotels it has used to house migrants to three from seven, closing about one each week for four weeks. The third one closed as a city shelter on Wednesday. 

And after a pause on hotel room time limits, the city is sticking to the policy of allowing adults to stay 14 days in city-funded hotel rooms while families have 42 days. 

The number of migrants in city-funded hotel rooms is now about 940, down from more than 4,500 in January. Hundreds of families have left hotels in the past month, and many have moved into apartments with financial help from nonprofits. 

But Wednesday night, multiple families were stranded throughout Denver as they had to vacate hotel rooms. 

The families sat in hotel lobbies, hoping that nonprofits or Denver Human Services outreach workers would tell them where they could go. Hours passed, and the families began to panic, in some cases sending requests for help on Facebook pages created by grassroots volunteers. 

Lydia Flynn runs a Facebook group to help migrants in northeastern Denver. She had 40 followers when she started it in October. Now, she has 1,400. 

Flynn found a volunteer to pick up two of the families in different hotels, then drive them and their belongings to a McDonald’s, where she met them and bought them dinner. 

“We are talking about 9 p.m.,” she said. “It’s late. It’s cold. These kids haven’t eaten.” 

One family includes a 7-year-old and a pregnant woman. The other is a couple with a 3-year-old, and the father was just released from the hospital and his leg has an infection, Flynn said. 

With no help from nonprofits or the city, Flynn ended up paying for two hotel rooms. “I am eating spaghetti for the rest of the week,” she said. Flynn was advised by one local organization to take the families to an encampment, but she refused. 

“I am not putting a pregnant mom in a tent,” she said. “I’m not putting kids in a tent.” 

The only bright spot is that the families became fast friends and are now hoping to find an apartment or a basement to rent together. What they want most are work permits, so they can legally find jobs in Denver, Flynn said. 

While Flynn was helping those two families, a city outreach worker was working late into the evening to find temporary shelter for seven other families. 

The city occasionally uses the McNichols Building as an emergency shelter for the chronically homeless population, including last week when Denver received about a foot of snow. The city also used the building as a shelter when it cleaned up a giant migrant encampment near Speer Boulevard and Zuni Street in January, offering people in tents to hop on buses for a ride to the congregate shelter. 

This week, city outreach workers are trying to move about 50-60 people out of a migrant encampment in a parking lot at Elitch Gardens. Tents are lined up in the shadow of a roller coaster, and the amusement park is scheduled to open in April.

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters

This school year has been overwhelming for teachers like Joel Mollman.

As an English language development teacher at Hamilton Middle School in Denver, Mollman has had to take on more work to keep up with the growing number of students who need help learning English.

In previous years, for example, his school might have only received three students a month who needed to be screened for English fluency. This year, he screens at least three new students each week — a process that takes one to two hours per student.

“It could quickly take up two of my mornings where I could be in classrooms,” Mollman said.

Across the state, English language development teachers describe similar scenarios.

As many schools have experienced an influx of new students with limited English skills all year, their roles have been changing.

Traditionally, these teachers are tasked with screening new students, teaching English as a second language, administering English fluency tests, and coaching other classroom teachers.

Now they must also support many students who are new to the country in much larger classes than typical.

Read more at chalkbeat.org.