House Judiciary [Mar 18, 2026]

Okay, now the committee will come to order. Ms. Shipley, please call the roll.

Excuse. Clifford. Here.

Flanell. Here.

LT. Here.

Zokai. Excused.

Mr. Chair. Here. All right, members, we have a full schedule today. We're going to hear five bills. I'll just note right now that we're going to flip the order of the last two bills so the 1255 will go last. and 1148 will go second to last. Starting with Senate Bill 14, Rep. Red, and welcome to the House Judiciary Committee. You may begin.

Thank you rep riding committee members questions for rep riding

um yes so when and i encourage you all to consult the little drawings i've given you just if you need to follow along but um there is a possibility when someone is found now guilty by reason of insanity through the court that then they could be released on bond Per House Bill 22 there are certain unreleasable crimes that do not allow any consideration of release on bond before they would get to the state hospital And that includes if their crime involved a deadly weapon, serious bodily injury to another person, essentially assault, if someone was killed, or if there was unlawful sexual behavior.

Rep. Brayden.

Rep. Calte. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Representative, for bringing this bill. Well, when we were discussing this, you had mentioned about the unreleasable information. So like an individual for this program with these certain criteria were not releasable. Like they're not part of, they can't be part of this program. Can you go over that, just expound on that a little bit about how the safety of that is and how like, you know, violent offenders and stuff like that are not under this bill, that they are not the ones who are going to be considered.

Rob Kelty. Rob Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just I'm curious something I don't know. So somebody who is determined not guilty by reason of insanity. That also, to some extent, takes away their agency, correct?

Yeah, I guess what I'm curious about is, so like, is it then a next of kin or is it a power of attorney that does the actual, like, is the one that actually says we want this expert to evaluate this person? So because the current process says that the person who is deemed not guilty by reason of insanity can choose their own expert. And so my question then is, but if they're determined not guilty by reason of insanity, can they effectively choose an expert? And how does that work?

Other questions?

Okay, further questions? All right, seeing none, we will head into witness testimony phase. Also, let the record show we've been joined by Rep. Soper and Rep. Sokai. Okay, we have four witnesses. One remote, three in person. David Rosen. Wendy Buxton Andrade. Samantha Garrett, who is here for questions only. And online, we should have Aubrey Shomo. All right, let's start in the room with David Rosen. You will have three minutes.

May begin.

questions. Thank you. Okay, let the record show we've been joined by AML Bacon. We will now hear from Wendy Buxton-Andrade. You will have three minutes. State any organization you represent. You may begin.

versus unconditional release. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, online we have Aubrey Shomo. You will

Thank you. Okay, we also have Samantha Garrett here for questions only. Ms. Garrett, if you just want to introduce yourself and any organization you represent, and then we'll turn to questions.

Okay. Committee members, questions for our witnesses? Okay. Seeing none. You know, first, thank you for your time. Thank you for your testimony. is there anyone else in the room or online who wishes to testify on Senate Bill 14? Okay, seeing none of the witness testimony phase is closed.

Do you have any amendments, Rep. Raiden?

Committee, do we have amendments on Senate Bill 14? Seeing none, the amendments phase is closed. Rep. Ryan, wrap up.

Okay, Rep Carter a proper motion is to the committee of the whole.

All right, that's a proper motion, seconded by AML Bacon. Committee members, any closing comments? Rep Soper?

Is that all you got?

Further closing comments? Okay. Seeing none, Ms. Shipley, please call the roll.

Respectfully, no. Garcia. Yes.

All right on about a 74 that bill passes you on the way to the committee of the whole Okay, rep ride in we'll stay in the hot seat rep sober. We'll join her. We're gonna hear house bill 1234 All right, bill sponsors. Whenever you're ready, you may begin. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Rob Sober. I see why everyone has problems. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Representative Wrighton did a great job of outlining the problem. Really walking through the solution is to make sure that it's abundantly clear that an attorney or another authorized person is able to access these abuse records where the person who was abused has allowed that to be accessed. throughout the bill and we're going to bring some amendments and really clarify a few things that some members of the committee had previously highlighted with us to just make sure that when it comes to the safe harbor provision for example that you see on page 3 that we're very clear A. this already exists in law so I know it's a bit of a restatement but that it's still clean And same in terms of whoever the authorized attorney is, that it's not talking about power of attorney, which is the current statute, and has really confused everyone and why a lot of these records have not been released. then as we go through and talk about some of the other records within the bill as you can see we've been very specific on I'll turn to page 5 for example we are going to move away from sort of the catch all unclassified to really being very specific that it's a petty offense because this committee has been very specific over the last, actually probably the entire time I've served in the legislature, that complete unclassified offenses are not what we want to see in statute. And I agree. And so that's why we're going to be much more clear here. And that's really the bill, aside from some cleanup and having conforming language that reflects what we have in the other parts of the bill. It's straightforward, but if you think about the situation where someone is incarcerated, they could be in detention awaiting trial, they really need their defense attorney to be able to, for example, be able to access records from the local county that would show a pattern of abuse because that could go to their defense. it could go to a reason for why they acted out a certain way. I mean, there could be a number of reasons why. But if the defense attorney is not able to access and gain access to those records, it could really frustrate an element of the case. And that's just one example. But that one where it very clear as to why there needs to be a change And with that would entertain any questions Committee members questions for the bill sponsors

Okay, seeing none, we'll go to the witness testimony phase. Okay, Stacy Nelson-Calling, Katie Hecker, James Carbach, and Stormy Husted. All right. Let's start with Mr. Karbach, state and the organization you represent.

hear from Katie Hecker. You will have three minutes to state in the organization you represent. You may begin. Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. My name is Katie Hecker. I am the Youth Justice Attorney at the Office of the Child's Representative. I'm here in support of this bill on behalf of the OCR. Our mission is to give children and youth a voice in legal proceedings across the state of Colorado through high quality representation that protects and promotes their safety interests and rights. Our work at OCR and more importantly the work of our contract attorneys often revolves around empowering young people and children to understand their story and to effectively tell their story and this bill fits squarely within that work. It removes barriers for individuals to access records that the government holds about them, about their families, about their history and it empowers those folks who are the subject of those records to work with Council to understand how they can use the records to effectuate their rights and interests. And importantly, it maintains protections to prevent any identifying information from being released publicly. You are going to hear from an amazing young person sitting to my right about the ordeal that she had to go through to get her own records. This bill doesn't solve every barrier, doesn't remove every barrier that she faced. But really, it's her story and stories like hers that motivate OCR's work and removing any barriers to someone like this young woman to be able to understand their life. So again, we are happy to work with the partners that we did on the language here and we ask you to vote yes on the bill.

you represent. You may begin. Good afternoon. Mr. Chair and committee, thank you for allowing me to speak today. My name is Sermy Houston. I spent six to seven years in the child welfare system. It was not as smooth writing as most people may seem. I had requested my records about three years ago, and I was told that I would need to go through my counsel for youth. So I proceeded to do that. As soon as my attorney had requested my records she was told that it was approximately to receive my records And from there, I proceeded to write a letter to the county commissioner's office to fight against that. And I had won. I received my records. but also it took a year and a half to receive them after I had got the clear to have them. So the whole process of getting them was about two years of fighting and trying to receive something that was my history, my childhood, something that it was written on paper, but it was my history. And so I think that having, you know, it became a financial burden to learn about my own story. And a big part of having the records and receiving them was to learn why certain decisions were made in my case that shouldn't have been made, in my opinion. And so it was really good to read why certain things happened the way they did and why certain people made the certain decisions that they did. And this bill is so important for young people to realize, you know, some things might have not been told to them. your history when you're in the system your history goes beyond you at that point you have a judge you have um attorney and you know gal and it's all these different people that come into your life that have a say on what you do and when you do it and so i believe this bill is super important to recognize that kids should have these. Thank you for your time.

Thank you. My name is Stacy Nelson-Calling. I am the Youth Defense Coordinator at the Office of the Alternate Defense Council. I'm here representing the Office of the Alternate Defense Council as well as the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar. where both agencies, organizations support this bill. Mr. Karbach touched on most of the things that we share, all of those similar concerns. Specifically, I would just say in the youth defense context, when a child is direct filed or a motion to transfer to adult court is filed, one of the factors that the court must consider is the social history of that child, including circumstances around dependency and neglect. involvement in their life. And so these are critical records that they need to defend themselves and that our lawyers need to get in order to be effective defense counsel. And so we've just been hearing for years about this issue and different attorneys having to go through different processes that are inconsistent throughout the state. Sometimes the records would be released only to a child's parents, which is problematic if the parents then don't want to release them to the child or the defense team if they're under 18, which can happen if there a conflict of interest And so we think this is a good fix We are just primarily concerned with the ability of defense counsel to obtain these records on behalf of their clients And beyond that I'm just here for questions. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Kavak, I want the question that I was trying to get earlier, I just want to make sure that it's the data or the information, that person's information. So can they also have the ability to allow the judge to release it to the judge or the judge be able to use it to give them a better, more effective sentencing to their well-being, you know, to be able to help them instead of to tailor the sentencing to their past traumas with that in consideration?

Further questions?

Mr. Karbach.

So then I understand how this bill works or who gets access to the records. My question is then, because of this definition or the narrow scope of this, that it's for people who have been abused or neglected as a child, those who have been, have had some sort of crime against them, whether it is sexual, child sexual abuse, kidnapping, or something that isn't done by anyone under the definition of abuse, would they then be able to access their records, or is that something totally different?

If there's a DHS investigation, they would access their records. Sometimes there's only a police investigation. Police records are dealt with differently. Generally speaking, if it's like police reports or records outside DHS, they can get access to their own records. Although if there's a criminal charge, victims don't always get the full records during that prosecution. A lot of that is controlled by the Criminal Justice Records Act, which is just completely separate and apart from DHS. So, yes, with some qualifications, but nothing in this bill or this law that's inhibiting people when there's DHS investigations. Like, we don't see the same craziness in the language that we're trying to fix here. But this is really specific. This bill and this area is specific to DHS investigations.

Mr. Kovach.

Amal Bacon. I think what I wanted to add, I can understand the line of questioning, and I'm sorry, I'm looking back in the bill and I'm not sure if there is a reference. I guess I think what we're just trying to figure out, or at least what I'm trying to figure out as I listen, is if in the bill we say records around abuse or records around anything DHS investigates, just to be sure that abuse and the latter mean the same thing. And so what I'm hearing is in the event that a child is harmed by someone who is not covered under the statutory definitions of abuse, it's like, one, where do those records live and can someone access that record? And my question is, it sounds like if a child is harmed by someone who is not under the abuse category, like a grocery store clerk, that might be a criminal record and not necessarily a DHS record because DHS did not investigate that harm. And in the event that DHS did investigate, I think we're just looking for synonyms because I'm like, should we just say DHS investigation records or just abuse in case they are not the same thing?

And they really are the same thing. DHS can investigate even if an act of abuse or neglect was committed against a young person that was not their parent. But the subject of their investigation is whether or not that was for any reason due to the parent, whether there was an injurious environment. So there may be circumstances where someone else is inflicting harm on a child and DHS investigates to see whether the parents are appropriately protecting that child, and then they may close their case. But there would still be a DHS record in that situation.

Mr. Carbuck, did you have more to add?

Amal Bacon, you good? Thank you. I guess I'm not, I don't want this line of questioning to seem like we are challenging the merits of the work that's being done. This is very important to do. My line of questioning is literally, I guess, what happens to the kids that experience a crime of something as a child and it's not investigated by DHS? That's the line of questioning I have. Will they like they not here they here they won be able to access their records the way that these people do Would they have some other avenue Because that also trauma That also trauma that leads into adulthood behavior So I guess my question is not about like discounting this important work It's just outside of this important work, how then, if they are not considered abuse, or just what the woman next to you, James, was saying, is like if that DHS has the authority to investigate any other adult that's not a parent, is that actually true or does it still have to fit within the adult in a position of trust?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I apologize if I wasn't clear. What DHS is ultimately determining is whether or attempting to determine is whether they believe that a parent, guardian, or legal custodian has subjected the child to, I'm reading the definition from the statute, has subjected the child to mistreatment or abuse, or that same person, parent, guardian, or legal custodian, has allowed another to mistreat or abuse the child. So the question always, regardless of who is abusing or mistreating the child, who's committing the acts, ultimately the DHS investigation surrounds whether the parent bears some responsibility for that child having suffered that abuse. So I hope that helps. But the central question is whether the parent or legal guardian or custodian contributed in some way. And it could be by omission, right? So there's multiple ways that that can happen. Mr. Carbine. I thank Rep. Garcia for fear of not answering your question, but to be clear. This, if it's a child and there's a DHS investigation, this will give them access to those records. If there's not a DHS investigation and there's other agencies like the police, it's really going to turn on what agency and who the custodian of record is, but it's a whole other body of law. It'll often be the Criminal Justice Record Act. So to the extent you're asking broadly about victims generally getting access to whatever state actors might become involved, the answer is there usually is some mechanism for them to get records. But if there's a criminal case going on, they might not get them right away. And it really depends on what agency and what law applies. But it wouldn't be the 19-1307. This would cover all the DHS records of child abuse, and it obviously wouldn't cover anything related to agencies not attached to DHS.

Okay, further questions? okay seeing none thank you for your time and for your testimony is there anyone else in the room or online wishes to testify on house bill 1234 that has not yet had the chance to do so okay seeing none the witness testimony phase is closed bill sponsors okay Rep. Soper. Oh, please come forward. I'm so sorry. We're going to hear from this witness. You're welcome to just sit at the end of the table. If the bill sponsors want to remain up there, that's fine as well. Okay State your name and the organization you represent You will have three minutes Thank you Mr Chair Make sure the mic is turned on. There you go.

Thank you. And could you repeat your name, please?

Okay, questions.

Yes, I'm sorry. That was a mistake on my part. We are testifying in support.

would you like to move your amendment? Yes, Mr. Chair, I move amendment L001 House Bill 1234. Second. Okay, that's a proper motion

I can explain it, Mr. Chair. Thank you Mr Chair and members of the committee Amendment 1 addresses some of the concerns of stakeholders I'll just walk through it. First, part of the amendment talks about what is not shared with the public. That would be personal identifying information. Then in Roman numeral 2, it describes what this information is, for example, the name, the address, any other identifying information. The end of Roman numeral 2 is the safe harbor provision for local governments in the event that a disclosure happens to be made. The Roman numeral 3 talks about who can access the records, the assigned designee of the person named in the report or a record who is acting on the person's behalf. Then lines 29 through 37 of the amendment. This is where we have cleaned up some of the criminal provisions to make sure that it's specific as a petty offense, not an open-ended offense.

Bill sponsors, rep writing. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think we can all agree that it's your record and you should have access to it. And, again, this bill is really attempting to make that as easy as possible. And then I just want to say I really appreciate the collaborativeness of the DAs and the public defenders and the county attorneys. and certainly OCR and OPRC and a couple of you who helped inform and make this a little bit better so that it was clear and we're not adding more confusion. So just thank you for this, and I encourage a yes vote.

It's great to be on this bill with you. Someone said to me this was an administrative cleanup bill, and I will say through the stakeholder work that has been done, and certainly I want to thank Mr. Karbach for leading a lot of those efforts, Many, many hours went into this. And to be able to solve several problems in one bill, all relating to the same issue, I mean, a person should, after they turn 18, be able to have a clear path to obtaining their child abuse records. End of story. Also, your attorney should be able to receive these records, just like they're able to access the client's medical records or school records and have those come directly. And then fixing another problem where apparently we deleted the penalties for certain educational offenses and then actually reconnecting the offense to the name punishment. I mean, those are some things where drafting errors do happen, but being able to fix all of these in one bill is pretty cool. but what's most important to me was the first two elements that I laid out and I'd ask for a yes vote okay reps upper proper motion is to the committee of the whole thank you mr. chair I move House bill 1 2 3 4 as amended to the community of the whole with a favorable recommendation second that's proper

Ms. Shipley, please call her up.

Senadibs Bacon. Yes.

Espinosa. Yes.

Garcia. Yes.

Law. Soper. Yes. Zocay.

I'm excused. Mr. Chair.

I am very proud and excited to bring forward House Bill 1148. In this committee, we have heard a lot about the dangers of social media. And this committee has passed a number of regulations on social media and on protecting kids' privacy, often through bipartisan efforts. However, as a parent, what I am seeing is that what we may all consider to be social media is not the same as what kids under the age of 12 think of as social media. Their social media is mostly in the online gaming space. When we're looking at minors defined as everybody under the age of 18, online gaming is nearly universal. 97% of teen boys and 73% of girls participate in online gaming. But focusing in more on younger kids, this has become increasingly pervasive in a way that is not just gaming. It is how younger kids communicate with each other and their gaming looks like social media. It has profiles that they share with each other. It has ongoing chat features. It is how they communicate and share their lives. It's also where they're spending all of their money, but we will get to that point later. So I just want to give some stats so you know how much this is being used. Over 80% of kids age 5 to 12 are online gaming every week. And I am going to give a statistic about a particular platform, and we are going to talk about a particular platform in this conversation. I want to be clear that this bill does address all online gaming that is targeted at minors, and that includes a number of platforms. But I am going to cite Roblox because it is used by two-thirds of kids ages 9 to 12 in the United States. And it has brought a lot of attention about how minors can be exploited on these platforms With Roblox in particular 20 of users are under the age of nine 20 are ages nine to 12 and 16 are ages 12 to 16 And the issue is that predators also know this information. One in five kids receive unwanted sexual solicitations online. Approximately 35 to 37 percent of kids approached by strangers online were first contacted via gaming platforms. And reports have documented kids being groomed through in-game chat features where they've also been exposed to sexual content and targeted by adults posing as peers. There are countless examples of this happening. I'm going to give details from a couple of cases. There's a lawsuit in Washington. It is against Roblox for violating the duty of care that Washington has for online gaming. And it alleges that Roblox violated that duty by prioritizing profit over kids' safety and creating an environment conducive to child exploitation. In this case, Jane Doe encountered a predator who was posing as someone her age. That predator groomed her, sent her sexually explicit messages and photos, and coerced her into reciprocating with explicit images of herself. When she resisted, that predator threatened her until she complied. That exploitation led this minor to multiple suicide attempts. Their legal representative said the case against Roblox is a terrifying reminder of the world we live in, where capitalist greed far outweighs humanity. The complaint emphasized the lack of adequate safety measures and argues that Roblox's misrepresentations about safety gives parents a false sense of security, while the platform's design makes kids easy targets for predators. Discovery in this case revealed disturbing Roblox experiences or user-created games with titles referencing controversial figures and themes such as Diddy Party and Escape to Epstein Island. In California, another lawsuit, which, yes, was also against Roblox, said that the gaming platform has repeatedly exposed kids to sexually explicit material, grooming, and exploitation. In a statement, the attorney of that case stated that this lawsuit is about a company that gives pedophiles powerful tools to prey on innocent and unsuspecting children. The suit alleged that it's easy for predators to masquerade as kids on the site, and it contains many allegations about the type of behavior that has occurred on roadblocks, including the simulated rape of a seven-year-old avatar in a digital playground environment and virtual strip clubs where avatars can disrobe and give lap dances. The complaint also mentioned a report from Financial Forensic Research Company published in October 2024. That company said that it found multiple groups on the site trading child sexual abuse material and soliciting sexual favors. The report also alleged that Roblox was cutting safety spending as these problems mounted. These stories are not unique. If you search for this right now, you will find hundreds of articles and cases of kids that have faced abuse on this site. And I can name other suits in states that have held this behavior accountable. Law enforcement has placed warnings that say that gaming platforms are increasingly used by predators because they are less regulated and more immersive than traditional social media. After this bill was introduced this impacted my family as well And I just want to say that without giving details because as a parent who is so concerned about this I introduced a bill and is so aware of what is happening on these platforms that I introduced a bill. I was not able to escape it from my own family. Okay. in colorado we lack a duty of care for the online gaming space and this bill brings us in line with other states and requires online gaming companies to take the problem seriously i am going to add that i have because i am mentioning them so much communicated with roblox in the stakeholding of this bill. I want to thank them for engaging in conversation around this problem. They have expressed that they take safety seriously. I do believe that the people I was speaking with do take safety seriously. And if the company targets this issue as they say they are, then I think they will meet the duty of care required in this bill, and that shouldn't be an issue. The bill addresses something more subtle as well, but it is also harmful, which is compulsive use. These platforms are engineered to keep children engaged for as long as possible through infinite play loops, rewards, social pressure, and algorithmic recommendations. Research shows that excessive gaming is associated with sleep disruption, decreased academic performance, and increased anxiety and depression in young people. The very design features that make these platforms profitable, constant notifications, in-game purchases, are the same features that undermine a child's ability to disengage. This bill recognizes that harm by prohibiting design practices that lead to compulsive use, where a child's autonomy and daily functioning are impaired. In Canada, there is a civil claim against roblox alleging that it is addictive, manipulative, and financially exploitative by design. It noted concerning practices around algorithms that are built with the purpose of extending playtime and incentivizing kids through gambling-like mechanics. and as a parent who has just seen this, I will say when I see these platforms, it looks like a casino. There is a lot of pop-ups. It is flashy. It tells kids to stay on. It asks them to spin for a chance to win, to keep that dopamine loop going, push this button five times, see if you can win something, and it is constantly trying to keep them engaged so that they cannot take a break. I will note an email to the CEO of Activision that said, the key here is real world rewards, which means virtual items and games. The Activision CEO responded, I'm all for indoctrinating kids into an economy. I love your example of real world rewards being virtual items and games. This is discussing making kids addicted to platforms with in-game purchases. And also, that email was from Jeffrey Epstein. Online gaming reward systems and immersive gameplay lead to compulsive use and it can resemble behavioral addiction. So these components that I've discussed are addressed in the duty of care requirements in this bill. It requires that online gaming companies targeted at kids create a safe environment for kids and don't design their platform to result in compulsive use. That is the crux of this bill. But you will also see that we have privacy requirements. There are privacy requirements for the more traditional social media companies that we have passed and very recently expanded upon in this committee through bipartisan efforts And because those data privacy protections for minors are lacking in the online gaming space, you will see that section, which includes default privacy settings for minors and restrictions on messaging between minors and unknown adults. There is also a section around data retention on the information collected on minors. And I will also note there there is a section on age assurance data. The response from online gaming companies that have been accused of providing unsafe environments has been that they will solve it by scanning kids' faces and having age assurance measures. So you will see a section on how that data is retained. As a note on how that has been going, there have been many reports that the AI age assurance tools are not working accurately and then do not allow parents or users to change that. So there are eight-year-old kids who are being told that they are 15, and then they are in spaces designed for 15-year-old kids and then are not able to be with their same age group. More disturbing than that, the age assurance accounts are being shopped by predators. After the rollout of age assurance data, there was a black market on eBay where sellers were auctioning off Roblox accounts that were age verified, providing predators the ability to shop the age they wanted to target. If they wanted to target eight-year-olds, they were able to buy an account that was verified as an eight-year-old, so they were just in a space with other eight-year-olds. And that was a workaround that they were able to have around the system. My co-prime will go over the next two sections of the bill, which are microtransactions and algorithms. I want to thank you for your attention through this long opening. And just note that if any of us could see what is happening to miners on these platforms in front of us, we would be screaming from the rooftops for regulations. But because it is online and hidden and in spaces where a lot of us are not, we have allowed this to continue happening. So I truly hope that all of you will join me in voting yes for this bill today. Thank you very much, Chair Mabry and members of the committee.

What she shared is absolutely horrific. It's scary, and frankly, it makes me sick to my stomach. I want to talk about this bill as a parent and share my experience with a 10-year-old and the culture of gaming that our young kids engage in. But first I want to share with you that when I was 10 years old, my social life was a phone cord that was stretched across the house. I was the party line queen, which meant that I was the person who was patching in friends into conversations that felt big and important, and they were very, very private. Today, my son's world looks completely different. He games online with his cousin in Virginia. He games with his friends from school. He watches YouTube videos of other people gaming, and then he jumps online himself. and just recently at a birthday party for one of his friends, six kids sat in the same living room, each on their own device, connected digitally but not always to each other, and they were all gaming at the same time. Now here's the difference between the world that my son grew up in and the world in which I grew up in. My conversations on the phone were private, but the conversations that my son is having in the gaming world, they're not private. His interaction are happening on platforms that are designed, monitored, and optimized by companies that we do not regulate and that we often cannot see. This bill is bringing basic guardrails to reality. So let's first talk about add-on transactions. In these gaming environments, kids are not just playing games. They are spending money. These platforms are designed to encourage what we call microtransactions. These are small, repeated purchases that enhance gameplay or give a competitive advantage to a player. And they're also what the bill defines as add-on transactions. And as a parent, this is something that I've certainly seen at my home. My son's come to me before he makes a purchase, but that wasn't always the case. And for many families, these purchases are happening rapidly, repeatedly, and without full awareness as far as what the cost is or why there's a cost. In addition to what Rep. Zokai outlined, this bill requires price transparency in U.S. dollars at the point of sale so that kids and parents actually understand what they're spending money on. It also establishes a modest 5% fee on those add-on transactions, with that revenue going directly into the state public school fund. The fiscal note, if you've had a chance to review it, estimates that this could generate up to $20 million annually, which is an opportunity to reinvest those dollars into after-school programs, community spaces, and opportunities that get kids off of screens and back into real-world connection. You all may not know this, but once kids go into the sixth grade, they no longer are eligible for before and after school programming at elementary schools, which means that we are seeing a higher rate of kids unsupervised after school hours. And so that's just another reason that we're seeing more and more screens that are filling that gap of after school care. Secondly, the bill takes on an important step in addressing algorithms. Historically, the state's not been able to regulate algorithms, but we know that these systems are designed to maximize engagement, to keep kids online longer, and as a result, can amplify harmful content that's linked to anxiety, eating disorders, and even suicidal ideation. I'll leave you with this. HB 1148 establishes common sense practices of privacy and safety by design with the core belief that if you're making money off of kids, you should be transparent about how. If you're designing systems for kids, you should design them to mitigate harm. And if kids are spending money in your ecosystem, a portion of that should come back to support their well-being in the real world. I ask for your aye vote. And as you consider this bill, I hope that you remember that this is not the only space in which we have consumer protections. We have sought to improve and establish consumer protections across the board, especially when it comes to dating apps, when it comes to social media, and even more recently, last session, as it relates to Uber and Lyft as well, with the ultimate goal of frankly just keeping people safe. So we welcome your questions and want to acknowledge that we do have individuals here to provide testimony in their own personal stories. I ask for your aye vote and thank you for your time. Committee members questions for the bill of sponsors E Bacon Thank you I wondering if thank you very much for your bill presentations I do have a few questions, but the ones that I wanted to start with are actually going back to the fee in the sense of if you or maybe any witnesses can also share potentially what we are beginning to understand about social media, online gaming use, and our public health. And the reason why I ask that is because historically we tend to look to, for example, substances, whether we have legalized them or not we still acknowledge that they might have potential impacts on our communities and we do have fees or and or excise taxes from them to cover the same concerns and so I'm wondering if in in addition to what you shared if you can expand upon or if you have any witnesses that can also share with us in regards to that impact, because the public health concerns are then things that the state has to pay for, not only through culture, but through services. And so I'm wondering if you can expand a little bit about that, because I do think that fund might be timely, given all of the things that we might now be coming across. and the question is how do we all share the burden between the business and our neighbors reps okay thank you mr chair thank you aml bacon um yeah i think the reason that you are seeing school psychologists and aap on this fact sheet is because what is happening online in these spaces is greatly impacting kids mental health and it is partially the compulsive use piece where you have essentially created addictions in children and that leads to other negative behaviors that are self-destructive many times. And because these are not safe spaces where kids are being exposed to things that are impacting their mental health. And just the amount of time kids spend online has a disproportionate impact on how happy they are. And I think there will be witnesses that can testify more specifically to that, but that is also why we want to provide an avenue for kids to be able to support other kids and why you see that fee as a way for children to support after-school programs. I should also note that we are working on expanding that fee now that our fiscal was a little more than we expected to see what other services and programs this can go to that will support children.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Representative Bacon, for the question. To add on to what my colleague just shared, you know, I think there are a couple of pretty significant public health impacts that we're seeing with the amount of screen time that kids are, you know, spending, right, on screens. you know first I think when they're on a screen they're physically sitting down right typically on a couch and a chair on the floor which means that all of those hours that they are sitting they are not outside they are not physically moving their bodies and so I think that there are some health impacts you know certainly that correlate there to health outcomes whether it the lack of physical activity lack of good food vitamin D just simply being outside in the sunlight I think those all compound and certainly have an impact on our kids. I think the other thing is when you're in front of a screen, you're not in front of another human being. You're not having a conversation. You're not learning how to pick up on social cues, on how to have tough conversations, how to navigate the complexity of simply being human. And so I think it creates this environment where if you're only communicating in a really competitive way online via a game, then you don't necessarily know how to interact with somebody when you do have an issue. And I think that that has led to the increase in violence that we've seen as a country and just an inability to know how to move through some of those difficult moments. And I think that that is a huge public health issue if we're harming each other instead of having conversations that need to be had.

Rep. Linnell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm also a little worried about the fees because so and I do agree with everything that you said, I didn't play too many games as a child growing up. So I typically and I don't have children myself, but when I see children play these games, so they get they're able to afford the games from two ways. It's usually via gift card, which there was already a fee imposed. there was already a tax and then um it's usually them saving up their money in order to afford this game so then we're essentially taxing children and i think that that's where i feel bad because we're essentially taxing children is that fair to you know is that a fair assessment it's okay thank you mr chair i we are putting a small fee these are again very small purchase

Rep. Fennell, did you have an, oh, sorry.

It's okay. Thank you for the question, Rep. Fennell. I appreciate that you recognize that gift cards are used. My son, you know, discovered that our mischievous leprechaun left him a gift card for his games yesterday, so I appreciate that you recognize that. And I hear you in terms of saving the money and using those dollars to be able to game. I think the piece that's really important to recognize is that if a gift card isn't present, then the user has to have a credit card or a debit card. And so if a kid doesn't have a debit card, then they're oftentimes using their parents' debit card. and we are not distinguishing between you know minors people under the age of 18 and individuals who are over the age of 18 and so it five percent fee across across the board and so it not just minors that would be paying into the fund It would be everybody across the board And again the intention really is to make sure that we are supporting kids and giving them opportunities that are off of screens to continue to develop and have supervision and other opportunities after school.

And then just another question, because I did Google Roblox lawsuits, and it said Roblox response. So, in the early 2026, Roblox announced mandatory facial age verification for users to access chat features, additional safety features. The company has implemented parental controls, disabled direct image sharing in chats, and increased human moderation. I'm curious, and then there's also additional legal positions. I'm curious if, because it seems like this was implemented pretty early on and perhaps maybe around the same time that this bill was written, if these legal responses have possibly fixed what this bill is trying to do.

I wish I could say that it does. If it does, then I would think Roblox would be compliant should this bill pass. In my opening, I touched on how that AI age verification is going. It has not been accurate and actually has led to kids being even more harmed as it's given predators an ability to really target children in a way they couldn't before. So I actually think it's made the problem worse. I hope that that gets fixed. And I do know that I've also mentioned Roblox a number of times. It is just one company in a series of online games that are targeted at kids. And so we do want to make sure that all online gaming meets the studio care.

Rep Sober. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, sponsors. I do want to preface my question by saying both of you said something I have agreed. firmly with. And that's that our kids these days spend way too much time in front of a screen, whether it's a cell phone, iPad, computer screen, TV screen, that their entire world is constrained by the digital world. And in many ways, it constrains their ability to think outside the box, to be kids, to be creative. I think about my own childhood of the outdoors was all we had really because we really weren't wealthy enough to have things with screens. But that was also a benefit. A question for you turning to especially the fiscal note. So just looking at the fiscal note, it projects the state revenue of up to $20 million in the first year, up to $22.8 million in the second year. I mean, assuming a 10% growth rate, because, I mean, that would be comparing the first two years over these. I mean, you can do the math. That will far exceed the $100 million in five years that Proposition 117 says that it was passed by the people. It needs to go to a vote of the people at the ballot box, because it's an enterprise that is generating that much revenue. Do you plan on sending this to the ballot box right away?

Excellent. Our fiscal analyst is here. I can add on to that. It currently is not in an enterprise. It is going to a fund. We have an amendment that specifies which fund, but this is something we are continuing to talk through. And I imagine this is going to finance and approach, so it will be something we will have to tackle before those committees. Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Soper, I just want to clarify one thing. If you look at the bottom of page three where it says state revenue, costs in fiscal year 2026-27 are prom rated for a 10.5-month impact. So you shouldn't interpret the growth that you're seeing between the budget year and the out year as a 10% growth that I expect to continue into perpetuity. It's really just the proration that you're seeing is the difference between those two figures.

Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Representative Soper, the 10.5-month impact is up to $20 million, and then the full 12-month impact in the out year is up to $22.8 million.

Mr. Amshar. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Representative Silber, for a great question that sort of looks at the future. Our forecasts and our revenue, as we get farther and farther out, they get a little bit more and more uncertain, I think is sort of fair to say. So we don't want to assume that just because there's a trend now that it will continue in perpetuity into the future unless there's pretty clear and convincing evidence that we think that that will continue to be the case. Admittedly, this estimate about the revenue is based on the most recent data that we could get for industry trends, and we attempted to project it and have it reflect the numbers that you see here. I'm a little hesitant to try and agree or disagree with some of the statistics that you're quoting right now. But, of course, I'm happy to take a look at them further if you want to talk about that in more detail.

Mr. Arumacher. Thank you Mr Chair Thank you Representative Soper Admittedly Proposition 117 was not something that I had considered and my co Amanda Little had potentially tried to look at specifically in result of this bill So I'd like to get back to you on that, if that's okay.

Rep. Soka. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Rep Soper. Of all the attorneys I've consulted with around this fee, that did not come up. I do not think that we have a Commerce Clause issue with these transactions being limited to Coloradans and this fee amount being negligible. I don't see it affecting negatively out-of-state residents versus in-state residents. And we really did look at what kinds of fees we have on online purchases and what range we see those fees. and it was around 3% to 7%. And so that's where we settled on 5%.

Reb Zocay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much for that question. So I will start with the fee piece, and I will say that we are continuing to work on it, but I really appreciate your question because I do want to, on the record, make it clear that this fee was not put in place as a deterrent, and we tried to pick an amount that would be negligible and not act as a deterrent. And you're right. It is mostly parents' money. I can attest to that. And I believe the minority leader also joined me in commiserating about how much we spend on these platforms. But if the impact is to be deterrent, I think that that's great personally. But the intent of this fee is to give children a chance to give back to programs that help them. And so we have an amendment we are running that will put this fee towards after school programs. With it being a bit more than we thought, we are looking into options of an enterprise. or a spa, and so we need to look around what is the best route to go. I do agree that there a lot of programs around schools and protecting children in schools that I think has a strong nexus here and is something that we want to explore of what programs can we safeguard this money to ensure that it really does go to helping children. So thank you for bringing that up and I will certainly let you know the direction that we continue to go with this as we are trying to diversify the funds in a way that's beneficial as much as we can. Around data privacy, the state has an interest to say that we have to safeguard kids' data. And we are able to say what data can be used and for what purpose. And so that is what we've done in this bill. The court challenges that you've noted come up when we ask for specific speech or action from platforms. And that is very specifically not what we are doing here. We have set expectations of what we like to see from platforms. And we have said that Data collected from minors cannot be used in these ways. And so that, I believe, will not have an issue with any sort of court challenge, especially as this language is borrowed from other areas of statute around social media data privacy. And so now we are just expanding that into online gaming.

highlighting them. So I will say that I think the language that you're pointing to is upon determining that a user is a covered minor. I did not want that to be restrictive, meaning that otherwise keep the data that was written in that way because this bill is narrow to protections for minors and we wanted to make sure that everything we are doing is within the scope of the bill, but I am happy to add language or if we are able to take that piece out and expand it, I'm happy to do that. I just don't know if it would fit within the title. So that is something I'm certainly open to because I don't want to have a reverse implication that otherwise it is okay. I don't know if I'm answering any of your other questions, but it is a deceptive trade practice to violate any piece of this bill and it has AG enforcement.

Reps, okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to just say I share all of your concerns with age assurance methods. As I highlighted, I don't think that they work. And the fact that AI is running a lot of them is problematic. And I, quite frankly, have concerns on if AI is running this, do the companies actually know all the data that is being used? Is it being used now in some sort of machine learning model and they don't have control over it? I do think that I want this provision to go a lot further, and I personally do not think that any company should require a child to scan their face to play their game. But we are trying to do what is feasible here and find some sort of middle road approach. But I am happy to look into that further to add some teeth to it and to be more clear about the rulemaking Great Okay further questions Rob Sober

Rep Soba.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Is this narrowly defined enough that it focuses on any certain set of games, or is this going to be open to any online gaming activities?

Thank you. Thank you, Chair, members of the committee. For the record, my name is Andrew O'Connor. I am testifying on behalf of the Entertainment Software Association in respectable opposition to House Bill 1148. ESA is the voice and advocate of the U.S. video game industry. I would like to start by saying I've submitted written testimony and information to the committee. I am happy to address any questions to that. But for the sake of timing, I just want to hit on a few key points for you today. First and foremost I would be remiss if I did not call out the constitutional conservatives bill while there I think there was discussion of the dormant commerce clause I not sure about that But House Bill 1148 is likely to conflict with the First Amendment because it strongly encourages online platforms to over and to avoid penalties tied to the law vague definition of what could be harmful to minors um i also want to point out that um colorado uh has done a lot in uh the online safety space and you've passed a very strong comprehensive privacy bill you've added minor protections to it and a lot of discussion around age assurance there is an age assurance bill that i believe has passed the senate it is now in the house senate bill 51 that is actually being considered So three things that are leading the country and to my knowledge have not – obviously the two laws have not been sued. Age assurance is a different issue I'll put to the side, but this one would be then likely to be litigated and move you guys to the courts. And finally I want to touch on the 5% fee. It may not sound alike, but obviously this is an additional burden that is placed on consumers in the state of Colorado. I echo some of the privacy concerns. This would now force companies to confirm your location and hold on to that location data to ensure that they are taxing you correctly and that people are not being overtaxed. So your neighbors in Wyoming or Kansas or anything like that would have to make sure that they are not being taxed as well if they're close to the border. And then with my last minute, I want to touch on a couple things to talk about the video game industry writ large. For 30 years, we have operated with the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. It is a self-regulatory ratings platform, E for everyone, T for teen, M for mature. Very strong content descriptors, interactive features. All of that is spelled out for parents, and parental controls are built around that. we also believe that screen time is not created equal and while there may or may not be mental health problems associated with certain terms of screen time the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that video games are a net positive for society it is a much more active engagement with screens and for parents that want to limit screen time all those protections are available to them and then lastly I want to touch on violence which is a very important thing to talk about There is no, through tons of research that our industry has done and that other academics have put together, there is no causal connection between video game violence and real world violence. over 3 billion people play video games worldwide but the united states is far ahead in violent deaths especially gun deaths versus other countries that play video games in a much higher clip than we do so this idea that video games cause real world violence uh is not true and should be dismissed and not be considered when you're talking about mental health for video games so with that happy to answer any questions or pass along to whoever else may be testifying

Got it. Thank you. I'm sorry for being late. Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify in opposition to House Bill 1148. My name is Andrew Wood, and I'm the Executive Director for TechNet Central Region. TechNet is the national bipartisan network of technology CEOs and senior executives that promotes the growth in the innovation economy TechNet and our member companies share the commitment to protecting minors online our members invest significantly in age design parental controls and safety infrastructure it's precisely because of that shared commitment that we urge this committee to oppose house bill 1148 as written because the bill's current structure creates compliance obligations that are ambiguous and in some cases technically unworkable our primary concern is the bill's age assurance provision. Section 61905 requires businesses to immediately delete all age-determined data once a user is identified as a minor. But the bill then imposes an extensive set of ongoing minor-specific obligations, privacy defaults, content restrictions, transaction fees, notification bans, all of which require the company to know on an ongoing basis that the user is a minor. The bill does not clarify whether a business may retain a minor status designation after deleting the underlying verification data, that gap creates substantial compliance uncertainty. Businesses do not know what records they may lawfully keep, and they face potential enforcement exposure under both the data deletion requirement and the minor specific obligations, regardless of how they proceed. We also have serious concerns about the bill's compulsive use prohibition. The bill defines compulsive use as repetitive use that, quote, materially disrupts major life activities, end quote, or quote, subverts a minor's autonomy, end quote. But these terms are highly subjective and do not correspond to any established clinical standard. The DSM-5 has not recognized compulsive gaming or social media use as a clinical diagnosis. Without a settled clinical benchmark, businesses cannot design objectively compliant products, and courts will be left to make subjective case-by-case determinations about individual user behavior. That is not a workable leaguer standard. Finally, the bill's 5% fee on add-on transactions by minors has no comparable precedent in consumer protection law and creates exactly the kind of per-transaction identification burden that depends on the same age data that the bill requires to be deleted. The practical effect is that companies face compliance uncertainty no matter how they structure their data practices. For these reasons, I respectfully urge you to vote no on the bill.

Amel Bacon. Thank you. I'm wondering if you can repeat in your testimony. What is subjective when it comes to our articulated duties of care? The reason why I'm asking is what I see in the legislation, it calls out imminent harm to self, imminent harm to other, enticing others to do something imminently harmful, which is, if not the same language for teachers when it comes to mandatory reporting. So I'm sorry if I missed it. I'm wondering if you could repeat then what your concern was by way of subjectivity.

Is that where you – I'm sorry, Mr. Chair, may we dialogue?

Sorry, it's a theme today.

Is that where you were referring to subjectivity?

In the compulsive use – oh, we're dialogue, correct?

Okay. Sorry.

Okay, thank you. Maybe one more question. I can understand.

Mr. O'Connor. Thank you. violence has been disproven multiple times over various studies. I'd be happy to supply the committee with data to that point, as well as data and information for health and well-being. I, off the top of my head, cannot think of anything in terms of sitting and adverse impacts on too long of time in front of a screen sitting down, specific to video games. But we have plenty of studies that show people have very positive experiences playing video games. It's an active, you are still working with a team, you're still working to accomplish goals, you are still, it is not the same as, which I'm sure we are all guilty of, of sitting in your bed and scrolling through and just taking information in. You are actively doing something in that point, You're still working your brain. You're building skills to that. So we can argue over indoor-outdoor activities, but as far as indoor activities go, I can give you guys a lot of information on the overwhelming positives that are associated with video game play.

Thank you. Happy to do so. Happy to give a bunch of materials around. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My questions are for Mr. O'Connor. And actually, if I could dialogue briefly.

Thank you, Mr. O'Connor. And I'm going to preface by saying I didn't hear the sponsors mention anything about violence, certainly on the mental health side. I happen to have a different view. I do think the proliferation of violent video games has led to a more violent society but you and I can debate that offline because that not in the four corners of this bill But I did want to lay it on the record that there are differing viewpoints between witnesses and the dais In terms of the constitutionality of this bill, you touched on several elements. From the First Amendment, I know we briefly touched on the Commerce Clause, and this may be a question for the other, Andrew. But could you walk us through a little bit more of the constitutionality issues that you see here?

Thank you, Mr. Paxton. I think we're still dialogue. Mr. O'Connor, I'm sorry. I looked down at my notes here. What steps, for example, has the industry already taken, and is this something where the industry as a whole can police themselves? Yeah. In regards to protecting content for children. Absolutely.

Cool. Thank you. And, Mr. Chair, I'd also like to ask a question of Mr. Wood.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Wood, you mentioned about location data of the user for being able to appropriately assess the 5% fee based on where the user was at the time. I wondered if you could, or Mr. O'Connor, well, okay, whichever one of you actually was talking about the location data and the fee, would you be willing to just elaborate a bit more? Because it was pretty quick, and I'd like to hear just a little bit more in terms of knowing exactly where someone was, like if they're in Wyoming versus Colorado, and making sure that it doesn't get caught up incorrectly.

I hope that answers that question.

Garcia, AML Bacon, and then Slock.

Okay. AML Bacon. Thank you. I'm sorry for being tongue-in-cheek with you because, you know, the late 90s were awesome for PlayStation. However, I do believe we're talking about online gaming, and this is why this line of questioning is about what we know now to be true about the business models of these games, their relationship to geolocating, not just in general, but also for purposes of marketing and whatnot. So is it, you know, in your experience, that in the online gaming space, that media and marketing is not a revenue stream for these platforms? And it doesn't necessarily need to be the most one game, but are we seeing in online gaming platforms that there are revenue streams that come from marketing and media that are targeted to people based off of where they live? And if the answer is no, okay, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. And I think my other question for you is, given the business aspect of this, are we saying online gaming does not – in the industry, they do not geolocate or use that kind of information to support them in any other endeavor in their business?

If I may, Mr. Chair, I'll read it. Sorry. I want to make sure I'm answering the questions. I think my question is given what you know about this space, the business aspect of this space, it is my assumption based off of just my experience as a consumer that the online gaming platforms, which span from everything from like moving blocks to team play, right? that there is a new part of this business that brings in revenue through marketing and through media outreach and touches. And in order to do that, my understanding is businesses do know where I am to target the right type of opportunities to me, a.k.a. geolocation. And so my question is, is it your understanding then in this space as a matter of business that they do or do not have geolocation functions? to determine where precisely people are?

Mr. Chair, if I may. It will be. Thank you. I think I understand what you're saying. And perhaps, you know, I think in me being more direct, I do think there is console play, And I do believe that when you plug into some of these consoles, you can play then online with other people from other. And I guess what I'm getting at is whether or not it's console play to online or just what we have called online gaming. Geolocating is a function that these businesses are using. And so I guess my question is, is that true? Because if we're in a place where it's true that none of these businesses are using geolocation, then maybe I would better understand how are we supposed to know where someone is. But what I think my experience is, I use that, the example of being marketed to, because I've seen that. I've gone online and they know where I am. And so while this question isn't necessarily limited to revenue streams, if that does or does not happen, The point I'm trying to ask about is do these businesses use geolocation, whether it is to market or whether it is to connect you to other game players? And the truth of the matter is they do, right? I mean, that's my question. Do these businesses use geolocation generally for purposes of their businesses, whether it's to bring in money or not, but do they?

So thank you. No, thank you.

something that you were saying around the topic of adverse impacts of gaming amongst minors and that you were unaware of any sort of research that indicates that. And I'm just curious if you're aware of the current study under review that is actually addressing that exact thing. excuse me I just had the title of it but essentially it's saying that there's nine different categories that actually demonstrate that online gaming does lead to mental health disorders and I'm just curious if you all have seen that

I'm sorry what was that last part? internet gaming disorder

Rob Garcia. Thank you. And then to follow up outside of that, there is also found in the National Library of Medicine studies that demonstrate the effects of excessive screen time on child development. It does indicate some positive impacts, yet conclusions indicate that there has to be efforts to reduce screen time because it does lead to social isolation. It leads to poor social development. It leads to poor cognitive development. So I'm curious how you would respond to that, which is not actually a study that's up for review. It is one that has been approved and is peer-reviewed. And screen time is screen time, whether you're online gaming or not. So can you please address your thoughts there? Mr. O'Connor. Through you, Chair, to the Representative. Um, I, from what you discussed on that, it sounds like an entire, um, study of screen time leading to those adverse impacts. Um, I would respond to that, that we stand by the idea that not all screen time is created equal, that there are many positives to playing video games. Um and for parents and for consumers that want to limit their screen time we offer tons of tools that limit screen time turn it off It can be done from a telephone app or a cell phone app on a parent phone It can be done through the console. We offer a lot of those tools to stop overexposure to screen time. That's something that our industry values player safety, values consumer health. And, again, I stand by the fact that we maintain that not all screen time is created equal, that the positives of playing games are there and are proven. And if we're going to have an entire talk about screen time, then I think that that then also kind of shows that this bill needs to address a much wider swath of online actors and not just the video game industry. Rep Garcia. Based on your response there and looking at what are the provisions that this bill is bringing forward and you saying you already offer all of these tools to parents, how do you know that they're a parent to then say, here are the tools you can use to help protect your kid? Or is this something that is just expected for parents to have to investigate? Mr. O'Connor. Through the chair, roughly 75% of parents are aware of and utilize the ESRB ratings. There are numerous public relations campaigns, numerous awareness campaigns that the industry puts out through ESRB. ESRB is constantly taking parental feedback to see how their tools can be better broadcasted to a much wider audience to make sure that that number gets as high to 100% as it possibly can be. The parental controls are easy to set up upon setting up of a console. There's things that automatically put it in where when you sign up, you can put in pins, You can put in certain controls. If you set up a kid account, it will push you to set up controls around that to see if you want to. I do not think that there is an issue with parental awareness of these parental controls. Rep. Garcia, you're good. Rep. Slough. Thank you, Mr. Chair. With regards to location data and things like that, I know we've had a bunch of questions about that. and I was not in line when that line of question was being asked, but are there any – when you talk or when you bring VPNs into this space, what's the concerns about being able to track, being able to charge fees? If people are using VPNs, is that still something that they can see through, charge the fees? not and it's for whoever can or wants to answer that question. Whoever would like to take that. Through you, Chair, to the Representative. I am not sure, to be quite honest, about the use of VPNs for it. I know that's something that other industries struggle with and things of that sort. I would have to ask our members specifically to any issues they encounter with VPNs, any problems they encounter with VPNs. But it comes back to the fact of if you're a company that is not actively taking location data now you will have to take location data and how is that data If a VPN is being bounced through Colorado as far as the company is concerned that is a Colorado resident if that how they going to do it So I would have to get more information for you but I hope that that helps at least address some of your question. Rob Slough. I think it mostly does. And I'm trying to think through this as a parent of four kids, right, that probably doesn't want to pay extra fees and whose kids don't want to pay extra fees and things like that. and just the practical application of it and if it is something that is going to be escaped by X percentage of people anyway. We say, hey, you have to do this, and then all of the people who have more time to be more tech savvy than me and already have VPNs set up and established that say they're in Kentucky or pick your state, is it just going to be another thing? That's kind of my question. I guess you kind of answered it. If there's anything more to add to that, because I just see that as a possibility that there won't be the teeth in the requirement there because of those other things. I don't know if that – yeah, so is there anything more to that questioning that you could answer or not? Mr. O'Connor. through you, Chair, to the Representative. Again, I don't have the specifics. Those are obviously concerns that have been raised by our member companies as to how they would go ahead and administer and collect this fee. I'd be happy to try to get some more information and follow up with you, but I do not know the specifics then of that. So apologies. I don't know if, yeah. Okay, we got to move on to more witnesses. We have two more bills and many more witnesses this evening. So thank you. Thank you for your time and for your testimony. Okay. Stuart Jenkins, Don Reinfeld, Kaori Kaiser, Jonas Salehai, Emily Harvey, and Elizabeth Newman. Do we have Stuart Jenkins? Okay. Let's start in the room with Don Reinfeld. You have three minutes to state in the organization you represent. You may begin. I just made it racing down from Boulder. So thank you. Thank you, Chair Mabry and the rest of the committee for the opportunity to address you today. My name is Dawn Reinfeld, and I'm the executive director of Blue Rising, and I'm here in support of HB 26-1148. We believe that HB 1148 is a strong first step in addressing the way the gaming platforms have been created to addict young children and to profit from their time on the platform. There are several elements that are in this bill that we believe create a solid foundation for future efforts to regulate the Wild West of the digital world and how it impacts kids. We appreciate this bill that this bill includes a duty of care strong default privacy setting requirements prohibits design or data processing practices that lead to compulsive use the addition of age assurance in this bill is vital for the proposed safety. to actually be applied to children. When legislation uses age attestation or lacks age assurance or age verification, those safeguards are often rendered meaningless. And just to refer back to some of the comments earlier, age verification does not, in our experience, require facial scans in all cases. It doesn't have to. The bill also prohibits the use algorithmic recommendations system and to sell or distribute illicit substances to minors. This is of course necessary given how reckless some of the platforms are, but we would like to see criminal penalties here for targeting kids with recommendations to buy drugs illegally. For all these reasons, we ask a yes vote on HB 1148. Okay. Now we'll hear from Kaori Kaiser. You'll have three minutes to any organization you represent, you may begin. Thank you. Good evening, chair and committee members. My name is Kaori Kaiser. I have been a social media user since about 2009, and I was a late adopter among my peers. Prior to that, I was using online gaming platforms, including things like Toontown, Club Penguin, and PopTropica. Every time I logged in to these platforms, I was presented with fun new features and cute digital outfits that I would beg my parents to purchase for me. And in the mid to late 2000s, the use of algorithms to individualize what's presented to us was not widely adopted. As a kid, I put everything on the internet aside from information about where I lived because I was told in school that that would lead to someone breaking into my house. And that was because at the time, internet safety was all about other users. Now the platforms themselves are able to not only enable predatory behavior, but to be predatory on their own through algorithms that target people's interests and through constant notifications. As an adult that's more aware of these algorithms, I'm a lot more cautious about what information I provide to these platforms. And still, the algorithms suck me into hours of scrolling sometimes. Committee members, I'm not sure how many of you have kids, but for those of you that do, these platforms often know your kids better than you do, and that should scare you. The information that these platforms use and collect are shaping who these kids grow up to be. My sister, only five years younger than me, was targeted and influenced to pay $400 in one month on microtransactions, which for a family where I grew up on Medicaid put us in extreme financial strain. the fact that the opponents to this bill either failed to acknowledge or failed to understand that there are nine proposed criteria for a clinical diagnosis of internet gaming disorder in the current edition of the DSM-5 and that the diagnostic features section of the disorder references formal recognition of internet gaming disorder in China and other Asian countries should demonstrate to the committee members that they are not a credible authority on what keeps Colorado children safe It is vitally important for protecting children and families and the future of our state that we pass this bill And I ask for your yes vote. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I will note that Megan McKillop has joined us for Stuart Jenkins. We'll now hear from Jonas Sailhai. You'll have three minutes. State and the organization you represent. You may begin. Good afternoon, chair and committee members. My name is Jonah. I'm speaking for myself today in support of this bill. I'd first just like to mention as a longtime gamer myself, the ESRB is notoriously bad and especially does not make sense when applied to social games. It's actually commonly used as a joke among people who are younger actually play games and are aware that it has nothing to do with safety. Many games have what are called social hubs, which are places that I, as a child, spent a great deal of time sitting and chatting with random strangers, some of which exposed me to some very vulgar concepts and topics, even though the game was rated T14. It's almost like you can't regulate games that involve social interactions with real people the same way that you would regulate a movie that runs off of a fixed script. I think that as a piece of media so reliant on social interactions, it should be regulated as a social media. As for microtransactions, we live in a game where gambling addiction and related suicide is reaching a point of crisis due to extraordinary levels of accessibility on sports betting apps. I fear how much worse that can become given how gaming platforms are presently designed in such a way to start addicts young. Microtransactions are gambling designed specifically to appeal to children. If you play some of these online games, you will see, in many cases, an interface that is literally a slot machine producing little collectible cartoon characters with varying levels of rarity. If you can understand how the addictive design of gambling can cause an adult to spend their money far beyond their means, it should be easy to realize that a child will often lack the judgment to stop pushing the button that might result in an ultra-rare tra-la-lero tra-la-la. It's an even easier habit to form when the currency used is abstracted beyond dollar amounts to some made-up currency like coins or gems. We need to take seriously what behaviors and impulses microtransactions promote in children long term. I have seen my childhood friends who moved on from gambling on these app games to gambling on sports and how much they've lost from it. While I think we should go further to stop these companies from preying on children, I'm happy to see regulation on this issue and thank the sponsors for bringing this bill forward. Thank you. Okay, now we'll hear from Megan McKillop. You'll have three minutes to stay in the organization you represent. You may begin. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Megan McKillop. I'm the contract lobbyist for the Boys and Girls Clubs in Colorado. The Boys and Girls Clubs serve more than 70,000 youth across our state. We are hearing to express our strong support for House Bill 261148. And apologies, our Executive Director, Stuart Jenkins, could not be with us today. At Boys and Girls Clubs we see every day how young people are navigating social media These platforms can foster connection and creativity but without the right safeguards they also expose youth to real risks to their safety privacy and mental health Our perspective is grounded in what we hear directly from young people. Last year, we hosted a youth town hall with club members and legislators focused on social media. Youth were clear. They want to build healthy relationships online, but they do not feel adequately protected. They share concerns about harmful content, unwanted contact, and a lack of accountability from platforms. House Bill 1148 takes important common sense steps to address these concerns by strengthening privacy protections, limiting harmful interactions, and requiring greater responsibility from social media companies. We also want to express our appreciation to Representative Zokai and Representative Wilford for supporting an amendment to dedicate revenue from certain online gaming transaction fees to Colorado's out-of-school time grant program. This is a smart and meaningful connection. As we work to reduce harms in online spaces, we must also invest in the real-world environments that help young people thrive. After-school and summer programs provide safe spaces, supportive relationships, and opportunities for youth to build healthy connections. These programs are essential to student engagement and success, yet they remain underfunded and are currently facing potential cuts. This approach helps align new revenue with proven solutions for kids and families. On behalf of Boys and Girls Clubs in Colorado and Stuart Jenkins, I respectfully urge you to vote yes on House Bill 1148. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Turning online, we'll hear from Emily Harvey. You will have three minutes. State in the organization you represent. You may begin. Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Thank you to representatives Zokai Milford and Senators Weissman and Roberts for bringing this important legislation forward. My name is Emily Harvey. I'm co-legal director at Disability Law Colorado. Disability Law Colorado is a nonprofit disability rights organization authorized by federal law to combat discrimination, abuse, and neglect. We want to make Colorado the best place in America for people with all types of disabilities to live and thrive. I'm here today to testify in support of Hospital 26 1148. Studies have shown that social media use is linked to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and sleep disruption. Young people are particularly susceptible to these negative impacts as their brains are still developing. For youth with disabilities, these harms can be amplified. I've practiced disability rights law for nearly 12 years, including in special education and youth mental health. What I can tell you is that we are in a youth mental health crisis and youth with disabilities are disproportionately impacted. More children are identified as having mental health disabilities every year, placing increasing strain on systems like Medicaid, schools, and community-based services. At the same time, these youth often face barriers to appropriate supports and services, making prevention and early intervention even more critical. From a disability rights perspective, House Bill 261148 represents an important step toward creating safer online environments. Guardrails around privacy, design, practices, and data use are not just consumer protections, they are disability protections. They help ensure that youth with disabilities are not disproportionately targeted, harmed, or left without recourse in digital spaces that are now central to daily life. We must do all we can to support youth mental health in Colorado. That includes implementing the thoughtful guardrails in House Bill 26-1148 to reduce harm before it escalates into further crisis. For these reasons, I urge you to support House Bill 26-1148. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. Thank you We now hear from Elizabeth Newman You have three minutes State in the organization you represent You may begin Thank you and good afternoon Mr Chair and members of the committee I Elizabeth Newman here in support of House Bill 1148 on behalf of the Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault CECASA is a leading voice in the state's anti-sexual violence movement, along with our 100 plus members working to promote healing and prevent harm. While technology has brought us convenience and connection at the tip of our fingers, it has also given rise to serious harm, including sexual violence, stalking, sextortion, and image-based sexual abuse. One perpetrator can reach many more victims much more quickly through technology and cause devastating impacts, including depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality. Because the harm that happens through social media and other platforms that allow users to communicate does not stay online. It causes pain to their victims, families, and our communities. And this harm is unfortunately not rare. An estimated 92% of children age 5 to 15 go online, and 70% of families have a child who plays online video games. This puts children in direct connection with peers as well as adults, many of whom will pose as friends and other kids to disconnect them from their parents and real-life friends, gain their trust, and slowly begin exploiting them through inappropriate messages, webcam chats, or sending pornographic content, and eventually extorting child sexual abuse materials through threats or even offers of gift cards or monetary awards in the game. Some even make plans to meet in person. A recent study estimates 21% of U.S. teens have been the target of sextortion, up from just 5% a decade ago. The majority of these cases are never reported. Children may not realize what is happening. They may be embarrassed or ashamed, or they may not think that there's anything that can be done. This causes overwhelming trauma for kids, many of whom are boys, which can compound that shame and humiliation and lead to high rates of suicide and severe emotional distress. A 2024 survey found that half of 215 male financial sextortion victims experienced suicidal ideation. Half. Unfortunately, too many times the victims are told that there's nothing that can be done, that these cases are too hard to investigate or that they can't get the information from these companies, and this leaves others to be harmed and victims without justice. This has been a known problem for at least a decade, and while While there may be earnest attempts to police themselves, it's clearly failed as the rates of harm continue to rise. We cannot continue to allow online gaming companies to ignore their very real role in facilitating harm. We urge you to support House Bill 1148. Thank you for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions. Okay, do we have any questions for our panel of witnesses? No questions? Okay. Seeing none, thank you for being here. Thank you for your time and for your testimony. Okay. Okay. Michael May, Ben DiNardo, Calvin Satterfield, Caleb Cunningham, and Megan Elazer and is there anyone else in the room who wishes to testify on House Bill 1148? Okay. And then, Rep Soper, once we get that witness on the Zoom, we'll just have the tech add them to this panel. Okay, and if there's anyone else online who wants to testify on this, but we can promote them to this panel, too. Let's start with Michael May. you'll have three minutes. State in the organization you represent, you may begin. Good afternoon. Can you all hear me? Yes, we can. All right. My name is Michael May. I'm a resident of Fort Collins, a longtime gamer and a graduate student at CSU. I'm here to represent myself primarily, and I'd like to say thank you all for allowing me the opportunity to testify today. I'm here to urge the committee respectfully to vote yes on advancing this bill to the house floor. I think this bill is a great first step towards regulating these increasingly chaotic and dangerous social hubs. This sounds pretty embarrassing looking back, but I started playing Roblox when I was 10 to 11 and have played the game on and off since. I find it an incredible outlet of creativity that so many people have spent hundreds of hours to create small games within a larger platform. And despite this nostalgic wonder, it has been obvious that throughout the years, this and other platforms have been increasingly less safe for miners. We've all heard the viral narratives of groomed children initially meeting these groomers through social hubs like Roblox. I'd like to talk about the changes that have generally made the culture of Roblox unsafe for minors. For example, a small thing like a user's character avatar where any user can upload a costume. Any other user can purchase this costume through a rather in-depth shop within the in-game currencies of Roblox. and generally through a quick moderation process, these things show up and can be bought by any user. However, these avatars range from the obscene racist caricatures, radical political statements to the overtly sexual naked characters, lewd animations, and more. These are all things that outside the chat restrictions that Roblox has put in place still affect the culture of Roblox. So those recent changes that they put in place in 2026 will not actually do enough to seriously protect children on this area, on this platform. These are all, excuse me, many of these things became issues as Roblox was looking to expand their profitability. Meaning at the one point, this game had a far more child friendly design. No differing avatars. Everyone had basically the same models. and with common sense legislation that implements a duty of care, these child-friendly designs can be preserved so the spaces where children like me 10 years ago can hang out and play games with their friends. I also wanted to say that a 5% fee on microtransactions to be put towards community spaces for children is a great idea. Microtransactions has always been a way to keep kids, teens, and adults addicted to the same simple dopamine loops in the same way the gambling platforms do. As someone who has fallen into these loops quite often in my teenage years, anything that this state can do to regulate these activities would be much appreciated. I'll end by restating that this committee should pass this bill onto the House to protect kids, put more money into alternate activities, and regulate addictive algorithms that affect all of us gamers. Thank you very much Thank you Okay we now hear from Ben Donato You will have three minutes State any organization you represent and you may begin Thank you very much Thank you Okay we now hear from Ben DiNardo You will have three minutes Stay in the organization you represent You may begin Thank you Members of the committee, thank you for your time today. My name is Ben DiNardo, and I'm here representing myself. I'm here in support of House Bill 261148, and I want to thank the sponsors of the bill for bringing it, because online gaming is a space where it's far too easy for companies to take advantage of consumers, particularly when those consumers are children. Online social games can be fun and enjoyable places for people of all ages to experience. However, these spaces have been warped by the companies that run them in an ever-expanding attempt to extract as much money from the player as possible. These companies do this by engaging in very addictive marketing and reward pathways where players are incentivized to pay real money for an in-game advantage and or spend an unhealthy amount of time on the platform to gain rewards. While this is a problem for players of all ages, children are particularly vulnerable to internalizing such practices and hardwiring their brains to be responsive to such addictive loops. This mental training can last a lifetime and predispose individuals towards gambling and other addictive behaviors, such as drugs and alcohol, as their brains try to reclaim the high they found in games they played as children. And while I agree that video games don't lead to violence, they can lead to addictive and excessive thought patterns. This bill does several important things to address these issues. Importantly, it ensures that companies that run games played by children will have an affirmative duty of care. This is critically relevant because without such a duty of care, companies can knowingly try to amplify these addictive and harmful practices they engage in because they are profitable, while disregarding the safety of the users of their platforms. With a duty of care, companies can no longer ignore the safety of minors for profit and must take steps to ensure kids are safe. In addition, this bill will force companies to list their prices in the USD equivalents rather than the company's own premium currency. Companies do this because by not listing their prices in USD, it's very easy for consumers, including children, to spend more money than intended. And this is by design because by pricing items this way, the company will make a larger profit. I like video games, including socially online video games, and I think they can be appropriate for children if companies put the safety of children above their own corporate profits. We just need to ensure that companies have a burden of care to protect the children on their platforms. I want to thank the committee again for their time and implore you respectfully to vote in favor of House Bill 261148. Thank you. Do we have questions for this panel? Oh, sorry. John Caldera. State your name, who you represent, and you'll have three minutes. Thank you for your time, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm John Caldera. I'm the president of Independence Institute. I'm here to talk about a clarification that is obviously missing from this. I taken a quick look at the fiscal note for House Bill 1148 which comes in at close to million a year But I don see anything in this bill or anything on this fiscal note requiring a vote of the people one as required under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights which I believe this does, but certainly under Prop 117, which says that anything that brings in $100 million worth of new fees requires a vote of the people. I've got some strong objections to the chilling aspect of this bill on free speech, on ability of people to express themselves. And I also wonder about the parental role of keeping kids working properly with video games. I always wonder about when government wants to become the nanny and parent of children that are not theirs. But quite simply, the main problem here is this is a direct violation of Prop 117, and this change requires a vote of the people. I do not see anything in this bill that makes that clear, nor do I see something that should be in the fiscal note to make that clear. It's that type of lack of transparency that I think is causing some serious issues with trust with our government. And with that, I'll give you back my time. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Is there Megan Easler? Hi, yes. Three minutes. State your name and who you represent. Hi, yes. My name is Megan Eliezer. I am a Colorado resident here representing myself today. I am a millennial and I grew up as the Internet came into existence. Gaming back then was still attention grabbing and still entertaining, but it was not filled with the same things that we are seeing in games today with addictive gambling like loot boxes and different incentives that cost money with microtransactions. I do think that this is a good bill for us to put forward as a step in the right direction to protecting our private data from these companies and especially for children. There are even some of the different things in the bill that I would like to see also protect adult data in these gaming platforms. But I am very happy that we are going to protect our children here in Colorado with this bill. I do think that, you know, parental control is important. But I do echo the concerns of the chair when he mentioned data privacy for adults as well. So I would love to see that dialogue continue because I do think that it is important to not infringe upon the freedoms and privacy of adults while also protecting our kids. So I will say that some of the privacy info in there would be good for adults. And I do think that games nowadays are much different than the games were back when I was much younger. Some of you may be looking for an opportunity to protect the profits of these multimillion dollar tech companies and gaming industries. But I hope that you trade that for an opportunity to protect the safety of our kids as they engage on an anonymous platform that could open the door to many areas of concern. So thank you so much, and I urge your support for this bill. Okay, committee members, are there any questions for this panel of witnesses? Rep Sober. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My question is for Mr. Caldera. I have a two-part question for you. First part, as the bill is written,

Hang on one sec, Rep. Sobrior. It just came to my attention. We did promote another witness who didn't get a chance to speak. So we'll... Hold for a moment, Mr. Caldera. We're going to hear from one more witness, and then we'll get back to questioning. Caleb Cunningham, you will have three minutes. State any organization you represent. You may begin.

All right. Committee members, questions. Rep Sober, if you want to pick up where you left off.

Mr. Caldera.

Rep. Sober.

Amy Albekin. Thank you. My question was also for Mr. Kaldar in regards to your organization's position on data privacy and if you believe that data should be collected and if not sold to others or that data and children should be exposed so that they can be targeted. I'm wondering if you have any concerns or issues with other aspects of this bill around the data privacy components.

Thank you. That's a wonderful question. Of course, we have concerns about data privacy. Mostly we have concerns about data privacy when it comes to government organizations. When it comes to private organizations, if there is consent given by users, adult users, then by all means that can happen. I don't know how effective it is to try to deal with data privacy on a catch-as-catch-can basis. We're going to go after this company or industry that does video games. Well, then what about the other ones and what about the other ones and what about Target, who keeps eyes on everything you buy? What about all the other data collecting services that keep an eye on every every purchase you make with your MasterCard and Visa? I believe and I think most of us believe that privacy is for people. Transparency is for government. And the best protection for children is not government oversight. It's active parents.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, committee, for a thoughtful discussion today. I hope that we all maybe learn something and that this generation does treat online gaming as social media and that there's a lot of great risks that come from that, both in sexual exploitation, but as well as increases to anxiety, depression, and reduced academic performance. I think that this bill is a really important step for us to take, but I am also hearing some lingering questions. And so with that, Mr. Chair, I would like to ask to lay this bill over.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon. Committee, I'm proud to present House Bill 1256 today, and I want to begin by thanking my co-prime sponsor, Rep. Mabry, for his partnership on this bill. and his shared commitment to improving reentry outcomes in Colorado. I also want to recognize the many coalition partners and stakeholders who helped shape this legislation, including CEO as well as DOC. This bill is the result of a thoughtful, collaborative process grounded in real-world experience, bringing together those who are directly responsible for implementation and those who are working every day to support individuals transitioning back into our communities. At its core this bill is about something very simple whether we are truly setting people up to succeed when they leave incarceration or whether we are setting them up to fail We know that the first 72 hours after release are critical and yet too often individuals are leaving custody without the most basic tools they need to stabilize their lives, without valid identification, without financial resources or transportation, And then we expect them to find a job, secure housing, access services, and successfully reintegrate. The reality is, if we're not properly equipping people for reentry, we're really expecting something for nothing. And that's just not realistic and it's ineffective. This bill takes a practical, common-sense approach to this challenge by ensuring that individuals leave custody with basic support, with identification in hand, and with a clearer path towards stability from day one. And I would urge a yes vote.

Thank you, Vice Chair Carter. So what we're trying to do here is to close the gap between what Colorado law has promised since 1972 and what people actually receive. Let's talk about gate money. So Colorado has required a hundred dollar release allowance since 1972. That's real. Since 1972, more than 50 years ago, this is what we have promised people who are being released from incarceration. In that time, that amount has lost over 85% of its value just to inflation. We've never updated the amount. But the problem isn't just the amount. More than half the people who are leaving our correctional facilities return home without any cash at all because the current system allows for deductions for restitution fees, closing, and transportation that eat into that $100 before it ever reaches the person being released. One survey respondent when talking about this program put it plainly. He said, they told me I'd get $100. I left with $40 and a bus ride that didn't even get me through the first day. This bill guarantees the full $100 reaches every person before being released, free of deductions. It also requires a transit pass for individuals released in metropolitan areas with fixed route public transit so they can actually get where they need to go. This is how we address recidivism in our communities. Now, the department – I also really want to thank my co-prime sponsor for all of her amazing work on this. She has done a great job dealing with the fiscal issues in this bill, talking with the JBC. You will note that on the fiscal note, it says this bill does not require an appropriation. Now, there are amounts listed in the fiscal note, but those are amounts that are already allocated to this program in the DOC budget. And I will also shout out DOC for working with us on this policy as well. So the Department of Corrections asked for initially a reduction of The department argued that that line had been underspent and that true but we need to consider why that was being underspent The data shows that over the past five years, fewer individuals received gate money than qualified for gate money, but the money was allocated for this. And Rep. Jackson, again, did a good job, and all of our advocates did a good job of working with the JBC and DOC to address that issue in the budget. With more than half the people leaving without the funds they're legally owed, of course that line item looked underspent. So we also want to address identification in this bill. Nearly one in four people who leave DOC custody do so without a valid ID. without a valid ID, you can't get a job, sign a lease, access healthcare, apply for benefits. And we already have an identification program for our incarcerated neighbors on the books, but it has gaps. We're looking to close those gaps and make participation in the ID program the default. Finally, this bill requires some transparency reporting to us so that we can see what's going on with the gate money and participation in the ID program. Research on this is unambiguous. The first 72 hours after release are critical for successful reentry and for public safety. This is a public safety bill. Let's keep the promises Colorado already makes to people who are leaving incarceration, and we urge you guys about it.

Representative Jackson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Basically what the amendment does, it clarifies language throughout the bill to make it more consistent and easier to operationalize, including replacing outdated terminology with clearer references to release. Second, it strengthens accountability by requiring regular reporting to judiciary, including data on release outcomes, access to identification, and barriers within the system. This ensures that we're not only implementing this policy, but also tracking its effectiveness and making improvements over time. Third, it improves the identification process by creating a more proactive system. The department will engage individuals earlier, 180 days prior to release, to confirm participation, while also allowing individuals the opportunity to opt back in. This helps ensure that fewer people fall through the cracks and leave custody without the identification they need to access employment, housing, and services. And finally, the amendment streamlines provisions in the bill to align with what we know works in practice, making implementation more efficient and more effective.

Mr. Chair, I'd just like on your amendment, line 7 through 11, we're striking what's in there and just striking 1A then? Will that just be stricken since most of that? What is being stricken in 7 to 11 seems like it's existing law, so we're just taking that out of the existing law? Is that what we're doing? And not replacing it with anything because we're striking what was in there as well.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll ask our drafter that question I'll answer it during closing It's my understanding that the striking means that Just the changes we've made to 1A Are not being made And not that we're striking that from the Red Books But I'll confirm with our drafter

Thank you Mr. Chair I have a question so this is for someone coming out of a correctional facility what if they're a repeat a repeat offender they're in and out multiple times of the correctional facility wherever they've gone to do they continue to get this each and every time they're released? Thank you

Representatives Jackson.

expansion of eligibility. Representative Kelty.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question about the ID stuff. I'm trying to get the timing understood better. So in the bill you are adding a provision that says that if somebody decides to opt out of the Colorado identification program you have to come back and ask them six months before release then three months before release I guess my question is, at what point are the people who are incarcerated asked, do you want to participate or not? Representative Jackson.

Chair Mabry.

so i did see that but then i also saw um in your bill that you also have um a section here that says if they are getting like if they haven't opted out then the department does have to support them in getting any other documentation necessary to get their IDs, but that doesn't have to happen until 128 days, so it's still the same timeframe. So I guess I'm just curious if there needs to be maybe an adjustment for more lead time. So let's say if the first moment that somebody is like, no, I don't want this, and then three months later you come back and you say, are you sure you don't want this? And they say, actually, I do want this, then the department will already be in violation of the second provision that says you have to help them within six months of release to get their paperwork ready.

Thank you, Vice Chair Carter. I would ask witnesses from DOC about this because the changes that we made was working through this language with them about, like, how it would be feasible in practice for them to do the 180-day check and also have an opt-back-in option, like you're talking about. And so we've had these conversations through stakeholdering. I don't know firsthand enough about, like, how it goes. And so I would ask if we have witnesses from them.

Representative Espinoza?

belt in suspenders here. Representative Espinosa, Representative Slaw, did you, any further questions for the sponsors?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And what this bill does is it prevents deductions from that $100 gate money. So any co-pays that are to be owed would have to come from somewhere else because this prevents deductions. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you. Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you for the opportunity to testify on HB 26-1256. I'm here representing myself. My name is Kenneth Spindon, and I live in Denver. I was released in June of last year after doing 13 years in prison. Coming home, I had transitional housing at Hope Homes, and without the help and support I got from them, I truly believe I would be back in prison right now. On the day of my release, I was given my state ID and my social security card, but I did not get the $100 in gate money, nor the $1,000 that I had saved while working in prison, so I had nothing. I was lucky that one of my housemates took me to the dollar store and bought me food, toothpaste, and other basics that I needed to survive. He also gave me a few bus passes so that I could get around. Without his help, I would have been lost. After checking in with my parole officer, I went to the Department of Human Services to apply for food stamps and old age pension. And in the prison reentry program, I was advised to wait to apply for my Social Security card until I got out. I'm glad I didn't, because to apply for those two programs, I needed two forms of ID. And then getting a Social Security appointment usually takes six weeks or even longer. Parole reentry was helpful with clothes, food, hygiene, and bus passes, as well as connecting me with community resources, but they no longer provide phones for anyone, and trying to get things done without a phone nowadays is almost impossible. Finally, after about three and a half weeks and multiple emails from parole, my in gate money and my savings from inside the prison were sent to me but it was in a check and luckily I had the two forms of identification or I wouldn have been able to cash it Because no matter what they tell you your prison ID cannot be used as a form of identification With that money, I was able to get a phone, and that made things a lot easier. finding long-term employment has been difficult but I've been working with the Center for Employment Opportunities and applying for jobs through them and I'm also on track to become a peer coach for Hope Homes where I hope to help people successfully transmission back into life after prison I know from my own experience that having your vital documents and some money when coming home is extremely important to make it through those first few days and weeks of starting to rebuild your life, and it can be the difference between success and failure. So I ask that you vote in support of HB 26-1256. Thank you.

My name is Antonio Aguilar. I represent myself. Good afternoon. I'm a Denver resident. I was released after 22 years of incarceration, and since then I am seeing firsthand what the other inmates have told me during our one-on-one sessions, for I was a mental health peer assistant and a facility mentor. I realized how vital and important being day one ready is upon anyone's release. Personally, I purchased my birth certificate and received my Social Security card, as well as participated in the DMV to go so that my ID will be in the DOC's ID bank. This DMV to go is done months prior to release. Unlike parolees, I weighed my parole to go to a halfway house so I can get on my feet, But even then, I didn't receive my ID that was sitting in this ID bank until 15 days after my release. Then about 10 days later, my birth certificate and Social Security card followed. Even being prepared, this time frame is ridiculous. Now imagine if I had to order all of this after my release. Now being a DOC client in the community corrections, you're not entitled to the gate money until you're paroled. Which makes no sense because I'm still in the same situation as a parolee. Not only that, when I complete the program and get paroled, I will have already established myself, which entails the saving of money, paying off restitution, and having a full-time job. The gate money will help anyone just getting out more than it would for anyone who is established, because when we get out with nothing, we're in need of everything. I ask you to think about this scenario and put yourselves in it. If you were dropped off in the city with no money, no ID, and no support, what would you do? Where would you go? What we're asking for aren't wants, they're needs. You cannot survive without your documents, no matter which class of society you come from. If a person with a leg up in life will struggle in this scenario, how much worse is it for someone fresh out of prison? Their mental mind frame is already being stretched with just being released. Now add in these major life-changing obstacles. I believe the best approach we can have to reentry is to be day one ready upon release. That takes away a lot of stress, negative thinking, and fears. For now, you can rent a room, go to a labor ready, and start to earn money your second day out, which helps to feed you and shelter you and set you up for success. Without this, now you're struggling with the choices of stealing food to eat, stealing a bike or car for transportation, or stealing just to make money to make more illegal money. We're not asking you to create a whole new foundation. This foundation is already there. We just need you to pass this bill that will hold DOC accountable and create a smoother transition for men and women to receive their vital documentation. This all can be done because DOC closes your inmate bank account 7 to 10. working days before you're released. That's enough time to receive your documents from their ID bank to any facility in Colorado since they do transfers every day, all day, and even on weekends. I want to thank yous and hope you take this bill into consideration and pass it to help those in need in the near future. Right now, only yous can help to make sure nobody coming home from prison faces this unfortunate situation. Oh, if you guys have any questions, please ask.

Yes, good afternoon. My name is Alana Jones, and I'm representing myself. First of all, I want to thank you, chairperson and committee members, for considering this bill. I'm a resident in Denver, and I was released from prison on August 7th of last year. Two years prior, I ordered my Social Security card, and it was informed it would go to the ID bank in Colorado Springs. Four or five months before my release, my case manager told me there was nothing in my file at the ID bank, so she ordered me a Social Security card. One week before my release, my case manager said nothing was in my file at the ID bank. I was shocked and scared. Upon release, I had nothing to my name except the $100 gate money and no ID except the useless DOC ID card, which no one accepts. I was released from Sterling and took the bus all the way to Denver, filled with anxiety and uncertainty. I suffer from complex PTSD. It was traumatic and extremely disorienting enough to be sent into the community, but not having any form of identification made it worse. I was scared wondering how I was going to make it. I was unable to get work knowing I had no ID, but I looked anyway and made use of that time building my resume and making contacts. Fortunately, my family came to the rescue and within one month or two, I had my driver's license and my social security card, which are two critical forms of ID necessary for obtaining work. However, some are not as fortunate. I've heard horror stories about their struggles getting IDs. HB 1256 is critical in helping people on parole. With proper IDs, most of us can get work, stay focused on building a positive life, and avoid going back to prison. This bill is also beneficial to the community since incarceration and reentry doesn't just affect the people who are justice impacted, it affects everyone. I ask for your support of HB 1256 because it's a step in the right direction for much needed reform. It builds good community and it simply makes sense. Thank you for your time and consideration in this most important matter.

Thank you. I want you to represent and make sure I get it right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, committee members. My name is John DePeace. DePeace. And I'm actually here asking for your support on Bill HB 1256, and I would like to share my story of hope. For over 20 years, I've either been in prison or out on parole. The best way I can describe it is that I was renting my own life never truly investing in myself my future or anything meaningful I take responsibility for that and I only share that brief history to show how different my life is now When I was released from prison this January, I walked out with my driver's license and full gate money. My mom had my birth certificate, and my wife had my social security card. I also received a free phone and bus pass from parole services. For the first time, I had the basic tools I needed on day one. To me, that's what hope looks like. And when the system invests in my success, I invest in my success. Now, I'm happy to report that just 55 days after leaving prison, I am gainfully employed at the Center for Employment Opportunities, and I'm currently pursuing my commercial driver's license to build a career in the transportation industry. That progress was possible because I had my vital documents when I needed them and a little bit of money for unexpected make-or-break moments, like the day I was able to pay for an Uber to a random drug test appointment. To say all of this feels like a miracle would be an understatement, and none of it would have been possible without those day-one tools and support. But my story isn't unique in the sense that anyone can succeed with the right tools and support. However, not everyone has a mom or a wife holding their vital documents, and not everyone receives their full gate money. That's why I'm respectfully asking for your support for HB 1256 so the next person returning home from prison can have the same chance I've had. Thank you very much.

AML Bacon. Sorry. Thank you all. Thank you all for coming and sharing your stories. I'm wondering if any, maybe not all of you, but if anyone can share how you are actually prepared for parole and what that kind of looks like by either way of your counseling or any sort of checklist that they hope can be met before you're eligible, let alone before you're actually paroled. Alana? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I met with a pre-release case manager who actually happened to be new to Sterling. He was very eager to help, too, so I was very thankful for that. But he set me up with housing, and he also set me up with, you know, places that he would recommend to help get employment, one of which was Second Chance Center over on Aurora. And that was very vital for me because as soon as I got out, I made use of Second Chance. He also connected me to an organization called Hope Homes, in which I had a video conference or interview with the owner of Hope Homes. And so I was already determined to go there directly from release, which was a blessing because I was scared. But still, I didn't know what to do without my IDs.

So the sad part is the ID bank. So DMV2Go comes to the facilities only four times a year And when you guys are saying you ask to opt in or whatever normally that not really an opt kind of question for them because once they give you the little thing, they're going to keep telling you to go over there and do it. Well, this ID sits in Colorado Springs, and that's why I had mentioned that they could get your vital documents to you. DOC does not pay for your birth certificate or your Social Security card. You've got to find your own funding and do all that on your own. and not only that, they don't want to hold on to any of this for you because DOC in 2017 transferred from paper a file, your normal file that you had. It used to be a thick file with paper. They transferred everything to digital. So now they no longer want to hold on to your Social Security and your birth certificate. That's one of the major problems that is being brought up. But if you're going to actually have a physical ID sent in a bank, you know what I mean, then you should be able to do the same thing with your birth certificate and your Social Security card. And then even on that token, I've had that stuff sitting in there, and it still took weeks for them to even give it to me. Granted, I was in a halfway house, but I'm still struggling with the same things of getting a job and doing all of that. Am I making? And so when – thank you.

Mr. Spindon.

Mr. Aguilar.

Alana Jones.

AML Bacon.

That was commentary once again from Representative Bacon. Thank you. Sorry. Representative Slaw.

You've got to go, like, to the chaplain. Most likely it's going to be Christian, Catholic, faith-based, you know what I mean? And if you contact them, they're more than happy to help you get your birth certificate. Because I think it's like $15 or $20 when you order it to receive it.

Reps Law. I don't have any more questions. Thanks for I think that illustrates that there is still a variety of possibilities that could exist.

I apologize, Mr. Aguilar.

Representative Espinosa.

Mr. Spender.

Actually, Alana Jones.

Representative Espinosa. You did eventually get the money, though, hopefully. Is that for Mr. Spenden?

Representative Garcia.

Lana Jones.

Mr. Spindon.

Representative Garcia, any other questions for this panel? I want to thank you very much for coming in and speaking. Next panel will include Megan McKillop, Evaldo Chavez, Megan Burnham, and Eric Leitner. If you can state your name and who you represent, you'll have three minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. McKillop. Mr. Chavez, you will have 30 minutes. Please state your name and who you represent.

Thank you, sir. Ms. Burnham, you will have three minutes. Can you state your name and who you represent?

Thank you. Mr. Leitner, if you could state your name and who you represent, you'll also have three minutes. Yes, it's on. Oh, you just turned it off.

Thank you. Members, do we have questions for this panel? Amel Bacon.

Mr. Lightner.

Okay, panel. Oh, I'm sorry.

Mr. Leitner.

Representative Sobel. Okay

Can I add something It'll be real quick

Representative Soper Please Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you were to have any question for the General Assembly, what question would you hypothetically ask?

I wanted to reply to what one of them said about purchasing their own birth certificate, and somebody mentioned state pay. State pay, when I left in 2021, was 61 cents a day for whatever job you worked if you're not in industry. That's roughly $18 a month. DOC does not provide any of the necessities, soap, lotion, deodorant, or toothpaste. You have to pay for that out of your state pay if you don't have support from your family. If you want to write your family, you have to purchase your own paper and stamps. That comes out of that $18. So now that further complicates the process for somebody to save enough money to purchase their own birth certificate.

okay thank you thank you uh my name is gino shvedoff i with hazel brook recovery um good afternoon chair members of the the committee Like I said my name is Gino Shvedov I the CEO at Hazelbrook Sober Living and Recovery Hazelbrook is a leading reentry services and housing provider in Colorado. We operate over 40 recovery homes across the state and are a wages provider, both here in Denver and in Colorado Springs as well. At Hazelbrook, we work closely with many individuals returning from incarceration on a daily basis. We provide them with housing, care management, peer, and clinical support. I want to share what we see every day. When people are released, many of them come out with no ID, no money, and no way to get where they need to go. Within hours, they're expected to figure out housing, treatment, and employment. People getting out without IDs is a real and significant problem. We work closely with parole and DOC to try to mitigate this, however frequently we aren't able to be successful. Those first few days are critical. That's where someone either stabilizes or falls back into survival mode. This bill sponsored by Rev. Jackson addresses these basic gaps. Having an ID, a small amount of money in transportation might seem simple, but it makes a huge difference. It gives people a real chance to take the next steps instead of immediately struggling. In many cases, we see the case managers don't do the necessary legwork to get individuals their required identification. In fact, several parole offices that we work with have implemented a policy where they will not allow us or similar organizations to accept clients into housing without an ID. I can tell you firsthand, this is a real problem because many individuals aren't able to even get released because of this barrier. At Hazelbrook, we see the difference firsthand. When someone shows up prepared with identification, a way to get to their appointments, they're far more likely to engage, stay in the program, and start rebuilding their lives. This bill will make a huge difference and solves a lot of the problems the individuals being released are currently dealing with and are preventing their success. If we want better outcomes and safer communities, we have to set people up for success from day one, and this bill will have a huge impact. I strongly support this bill. Thank you for your time.

Representative Clifford?

All right, thank you. My name is Richard Templeton. I'm here representing myself today. And I want to thank everybody for taking the time for all these testimonies. I reside in Denver, Colorado, and I came in here today in support of this bill in hopes that more people will thoroughly understand the difficulty struggles of the future parolees face. I started learning about the darkest side of prison life in June 2001. I would hear others talk about getting on parole or their MRD and it became apparent to me that many were struggling and stressing about what they needed to be prepared for when the doors to freedom opened for them DOC did little or nothing to help anyone I myself started to fall into the same feelings of hopelessness and despair I was fortunate enough to get some very helpful information from other inmates that put me in touch with other individuals and organizations that I should contact upon my release, and they provided me with assistance. Over one year before I got paroled, I started going to my case manager to seek help in getting the required documents I would need. I was one of the lucky few as my case manager did help me to get all my Social Security card, birth certificate, state ID, and sign up for Medicaid and a letter of incarceration. But there are many more who are not as fortunate. They have to struggle. I still talk to many who have just been recently released, and they were not given any help or guidance. This makes it almost impossible to survive on the streets. This makes it necessary to get these documents because you need them for help, for getting with housing and jobs. They give no help, and $100 of gate money upon release? No one can survive with nothing but $100 in their pocket and no way to provide who they are except for a prison ID. This is absurd. Too many people fall back into the behaviors that put them behind bars to begin with, and then the cycle starts all over again. DOC needs to provide the documentation and resources that need to ease people going out on parole. Case manager must have a checklist of things that need to be done so parolees will have the much-needed documents. The pre-release classes in DOC are woefully inadequate in both staff and resources. Pre-release staff should be trained in how to assist those in class to make them successful. In both of these situations, DOC has it in their budget to provide the assistance to future parolees. This bill will empower those released so that they can succeed, return of their family and friends, and the community as a productive member of society. I ask for your help and support of this bill. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, Vice Chair Carter. I move L1.

Thank you, Vice Chair Carter. So we previewed the amendment and had some discussion. In particular, we had discussion about the impacts of the amendment on the opt-out process for the ID program. But we crafted this amendment in conversations with DOC to clean it up and make sure that the bill was workable. So it's mostly a cleanup amendment. There are some changes to the reporting timelines from July 1st to September 15th. and some clarification that the reporting requirements are directly to our committees and not just to be presented in the SMART Act hearing. On the opt-out piece, the introduced bill required offenders to affirmatively opt-out with the department checking in at six months and three months. L1 replaces this with a single check-in at 180 days, and it also strikes subsection 8, which allowed fees incurred during the ID document process to be charged back to the offender after release. And then there's conforming changes throughout the amendment.

thank you Mr. Chair colleagues this bill is about humanity and responsibility If we release people from custody without the most basic tools to survive, without identification, without resources, we are not giving them a second chance. We are setting them up to fail. And when they fail, it's not just their burden. It becomes all of our burden and our responsibility. This bill says we can do better. It reflects a thoughtful, collaborative approach with community partners and the DOC to ensure that when someone leaves custody, they are prepared and not abandoned. because we cannot expect success from people we haven't equipped, and we shouldn't build policy around unrealistic expectations. This is about safer communities, stronger reentry, and smarter systems, and I respectfully ask for your support.

I move I move House Bill 1256 to the committee on I was getting to that I move House Bill 1256 to the committee on appropriations as amended with a favorable recommendation

Representative Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sponsors, for bringing this. I want to thank the witnesses who came and shared your experiences of what it's like to have to rebuild your life after time inside. And I think what strikes me with this, having to bring this bill, is having to come back and, like, re-legislate what DOC should already be doing. and when I see this and I'm saying that it's $100 and from your opening statement, Representative Jackson, I'm just like, that's nothing. That's a night. That's one night of survival and with inflation, as you mentioned, what we should be doing is at least $800 and I think if we are true to what it should be the intention of the Department of Corrections, then we should actually consider coming back again and saying this absolutely does need to change with inflation. It should not be kept at this minuscule amount that can definitely make a difference but is not what is necessary. The idea that we are letting people operate in society without identification, which that in itself could put people back inside is just, it's wild to me. And that then people are having to take this amount of money that they work for at a dollar a day or a dollar an hour and not even get that until three, four months later. I just, I wish DOC had signed up for questions because I have questions. I have so many questions about why are people not getting their final paycheck until months later? How is that allowed? How are we just being okay with that? How is the decision being made of who actually gets their gate money and who doesn't? This is great. I'm so glad you're doing this. I'm so glad to support this. and we have so much more to do. Another question, for the record, that I would have asked DOC had DOC signed up for questions is do we track recidivism around how many people actually got their gate money or not? Do we know that? What is the relation there? So I just, there's so much more in this. Thank you for bringing this up. Thank you for bringing this. Thank you for your experiences and your testimony. and I will obviously be a yes.

Representative Slaw. I thought there were others before me. Thank you, Chair. And thank you to everybody who has come and been witnesses. I appreciate the information. I can recognize real problems in our system. I still don't know if this addresses all of those problems exactly the right way. But, yeah, I certainly can recognize problems and hope that we can address those. I mean this is a topic that has some ties to personal things as well not for me but for family and for me in other circumstances in other ways too as I'm still fighting the army for a piece of paper that they owed me three months ago that holds up my insurance for my family. So I can understand when you have things that you need and you cannot get a government agency to let go so that you can take care of the things that you need to take care of. So I can understand that, and that is a real problem. I do think and I am grateful to know that there are charitable organizations and things that are willing to be there. I wish that they were more there. I wish that this was an easier system and process to go through. I appreciate those of you that were here and are fantastic, shining examples of people who are trying to make things right and to get back on your feet and do those things. I'm still not committed for sure in my mind on a couple points, so I'm not going to say either way. but I wanted to definitely on the record recognize that there are problems in this system that have been brought up and need to be addressed. I don't know how we address them. I don't know if this is exactly the right way to address them. I think it does some things. There's probably some good in it. So I just want to thank everybody for at least for the discussion and continue to think while others make their comments too. Thank you.

Thank you Mr Chair I have to tell you after hearing everything at first I was like what I just had to wrap my head around it But I pretty irritated that the fact that we had our SMART meeting our joint judiciary SMART meeting in January, and all of us were on that SMART meeting. And I don't know if I don't remember anyone bringing this up back then because, honestly, when they were in front of us, I gave them a what for. And then it sounds like they need to have another what for. So the fact that we did not as a group and one of us was in there, and I don't remember it being brought up. That's the time it should have been brought up. DOC should have been here today to answer some questions. They're not. But at the SMART meeting is when this should have been brought up and this bill was created around that time, so I don't know why it wasn't brought up then. I don't like inefficiencies. I did 21 years in the military, and I ran a tight ship and this is not a tight ship. I'm irritated because we have to now close some loopholes. A program that has been working all this time or should have been working all this time for all this time but now we can make a law for it because they can't seem to follow rules. So I begrudgingly am going to be a yes today but I'm really irritated. Thank you.

Representative Sober.

Representative Clifford. You know, I like saying a lot on closing, but Rep. Soper just said everything I was going to say, so I'm going to give it a pass this time. Except for if you really want to get DOC to answer questions, call News Channel 9.

Ms. Shipley, call the roll. Representatives Bacon.

Clifford.

Espinosa.

Flannell.

Garcia.

Kelty.

Slob.

Soper.

Zokai.

Mabry.

Mr. Chair.

I'm going my way to the bathroom.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I did have printed good afternoon, but good evening, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present House Bill 26-1255, which concerns reducing the judicial search warrant response time for social media platforms and a duty to report under certain circumstances for social media platforms. I'm very proud to bring this bill before you today, which has been painstakingly drafted over the last seven months and involved countless hours of meetings with stakeholders, community members, and organizations across our state. In particular, I'd like to thank Jefferson County Sheriff Marinelli, Boulder District Attorney Doherty, and the whole Evergreen community for their consistent support and partnership in this effort. and we have a number of them here tonight. On September 10th, 2025, the shooting at Evergreen High School shattered the peace of our community. This unspeakable tragedy left a profound, lifelong impact on everyone within those school walls. Even now, some teachers and students struggle to return to the building, haunted by graphic memories that stay with them every single day. Families are left to wrestle with the heavy uncertainty of whether their children and loved ones are truly safe the moment they leave home. This event has permanently altered our community and its effects will be felt for years to come. As we looked for answers in the wake of this tragedy, we discovered a systemic failure in the search warrant process that unfolded. We learned that a social media post foreshadowing this event was flagged by the Anti-Defamation League in New York as early as July 5th, 2025, over two months before the shooting took place. A complaint was filed with the FBI in New York, and the search warrant process began. Under our current system, it can take three separate judicial search warrants just to identify a single individual, as each respective search warrant uncovers the IP address, the URI, and email address of the individual. In total, this process took about 75 days to identify the user and hand over the judicial search warrant file to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. The user was the Evergreen High School shooter, and the shooting had already happened two days prior. The clock ran out because the process was too slow, and that is a failure we are here to fix today. In Colorado, social media companies technically have 35 days to turn around a single search warrant, and they often take every single day, not turning over life-saving information until the very last second. This bill modernizes Colorado's public safety standards by requiring social media companies to comply with search warrants within 24 hours. It also requires social media platforms to provide a streamlined process to allow law enforcement agencies to contact the platform, including a 24-7 staffed hotline that is available to law enforcement. These provisions will bring the legal process into alignment with the modern speed of the Internet, ensuring that law enforcement can act while a threat is still preventable, rather than investigating a tragedy after the fact. In addition to these requirements, another crucial piece of this legislation is that it establishes a duty to report for social media companies. In accordance with the amendment that I'm bringing today, this duty to report is triggered when a social media platform takes an adverse action specifically the restriction suspension or termination of a user account in response to the user posting content in violation of the platform policies concerning threatening or criminal behavior. The platform must report the content in question that was allegedly posted by the user to a local law enforcement agency no more than 24 hours after the adverse action is taken. In drafting this legislation, we have engaged a significant number of stakeholders across the spectrum who have provided crucial input in the drafting process. This legislation is backed by extensive support from the law enforcement community, including the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police and the County Sheriffs of Colorado. This broad coalition also includes the cities and municipalities of Fountain, North Glen, Woodland Park, Castle Rock, Monument, and Parker, as well as health care, educational, and civic partners such as the Colorado Nurses Association, Common Spirit, the League of Women voters of Colorado and the Jefferson County School District. With the inclusion of our recent amendment, the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar has now moved to an amend position. Additionally, we were working in tandem with Congresswoman Brittany Pedersen while she works on a parallel policy to reduce the judicial search warrant process time for social media platforms at the federal level. Having a uniform response time for judicial search warrants across the country will allow for more expediency when lives are on the line, helping to interrupt or disrupt planned acts of violence no matter where in the country a search warrant process is initiated. Based on our extensive conversations, I can't overstate enough the importance of the duty to report element in this bill. Law enforcement can only act on information they receive. If it were not for the Anti-Defamation League flagging the Evergreen Perpetrator post, no search warrant ever would have been initiated in the first place. Without a threshold by which social media companies must report the information they flag, information around a direct threat to commit a crime could be taken down from public view before the legitimacy of the threat can be investigated. This element provides officers with an actual opportunity to disrupt a plan before it turns into a tragedy. And the information that was gathered from the search warrant process from the New York FBI, while it did not help out in the Evergreen community because the shooting had already occurred. It is reported that the information gathered from that search warrant process did interrupt and save lives in five or six other situations. We have also been intentional in the drafting process about protecting our fundamental liberties and ensuring we do not violate First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights. There is a vast body of case law that outlines the bounds of government and private searches in the digital realm. In United States v Wilson the court established that law enforcement may only view the exact files provided to them by a private party and must obtain a warrant for any further search Under United States v. Reddick, automated scanning by a private platform is classified as a private search rather than government action, which allows police to view the flag content without a warrant. These precedents provide the legal foundation for our bill, clearly defining the distinction between private platform moderation and government intervention. We will also have attorneys testifying in support of the bill who can speak more to this case law and the sheriff's office as well. This bill does not ask companies to remove posts or shut down websites. It simply demands that when a specific imminent threat is identified, the information moves fast enough to save lives. You are about to hear firsthand testimony from Evergreen and Conifer students, teachers, parents, and grieving families who will speak to the immense ongoing toll this horrific day has taken on their community. By passing this bill, we are offering an opportunity to prevent future acts of violence before they happen, sparing other communities the trauma and PTSD that still haunt Evergreen and Conifer today. It is quite simply about saving lives. We owe the people of Evergreen and all Colorado residents nothing less. Thank you, and I'm happy to address your questions.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, committee. I am Sheriff Reggie Marinelli, Sheriff of Jefferson County, Colorado. I am very much in support of House Bill 26-1255. Today is about protecting our kids, supporting families, and making sure we learn from tragedy. As we speak here today, just to give you a little background on myself, I've worked for Jefferson County for over 39 and a half years, which puts me in the reality that I actually worked as a deputy the Columbine High School shooting. And now with Evergreen, I have overseen a shooting in my agency. lessons were learned back in 1999 from columbine high school and it's time for us to learn lessons today uh to make changes in reference to the shooting at evergreen high School Last September our community experienced the unthinkable at Evergreen High School In a matter of minutes a student fired several rounds critically injuring two students before taking his own life. So how did we get here? I will reiterate a little bit of what Representative Story stated. within 48 hours of that school shooting in evergreen i was um received a phone call from the fbi to let me know that they did in fact put in three search warrants one for the ip address one for the url and one that eventually gave them the email address and the home address of the person that was threatening to shoot a school somewhere in the world. That led to my talking to Michael Doherty, the DA of Boulder, and then with Representative Story to write this new bill. The legislation we are announcing today would require responses within 24 hours when law enforcement has legal authority and judicial approval. This is not about expanding government power whatsoever. It is not about bypassing the courts, and it is not about weakening privacy protections. I can tell you back in 1999, when I transferred to be a criminal investigator with Jefferson County, we had one financial crimes investigator who was brand new. We had never had that position before. Today we have seven. just because technology has expanded to the point where we had to expand law enforcement to include these episodes. We are dealing with the same thing today. We have gotten to a point where social media platforms and the usage of social media has taken a toll on what we do and our abilities to stay ahead of it. I really don't think our leaders of this country many, many years ago when they were building our constitutions thought about what we would be dealing with today. So we have diligently put in the efforts to make sure that due process is still very much part of this bill, that the First Amendment is not violated and the Fourth Amendment is not violated. And so I will be here for questions at the end, but I ask you to please support House Bill 26-1255. Thank you for your time.

Good evening. Thank you. My name is Paul Smoker. I'm a sergeant with Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I too have been around a little bit with the sheriff, 36 years in law enforcement. I currently supervise a school resource officer unit. In this role, I oversee deputies assigned to schools across our community and work closely with administrators, students, and families to identify and respond to safety concerns. Over the course of my career, I was a first responder at Columbine High School Shooting. I then was a first responder at Evergreen High School Shooting. with that my experience has given me i've worked special investigations unit which provided me an opportunity to work numerous threats cases whether they were against schools or government etc i want to stress when a student makes or a person makes a threat the attempts to lure and cause bodily harm or death to others is the most critical thing especially to our students We cannot sit back when we have the power and we have the technology to do these things, to identify these things. And if you can't gather that information using technology, you'll never solve the case. You will never get to disrupt what is about to happen. I can't stress how critical that is. The providers do a wonderful job most of the time getting us the information, but when they don't and it's late, it's catastrophic. None of us can live with that. This bill addresses the gap by requiring a streamlined, always available process for law enforcement and timely responses for social media platforms. That's all it's asking for. For the perspective of someone who works in a school every day and who has seen firsthand the consequences of targeted violence, improving communication and response timelines is not just helpful, but it is absolutely critical. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. My name is John Zanatti. I am an investigator with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I've only been with the agency nine years, but my last three years have been assigned to the Criminal Investigations Division, working in units, the family crimes unit, dealing with domestic violence and child crimes, the financial and fraud unit, and currently I'm assigned to the property unit. I have written my fair share of production of records orders to social media platforms and have experienced firsthand the hurdle that a lack of timely response can be both to an investigation and to the quality of service that we provide to our constituents. this bill does not change the burden that is on me as an investigator to prove my case to a judge, does not lower the threshold for probable cause. In fact, it actually probably puts more pressure on me to make sure that I'm doing my job better to get a timely response from these social media platforms. Thankfully, these social media platforms have kind of evolved to where there is a – they've streamlined the process of how we serve our warrants. We can submit them electronically. We can give them every bit of information they need to do their job quickly. It has been my experience that their responses are kind of hit and miss. In fact, one of my most recent cases, I submitted a production record order to TikTok on July 30th of 2025. And in fact, didn't get a response at all in reference to a burglary case. I had to resubmit that order this February and still got service within about 37 days. That's a burglary case, but we all know that technology has far outpaced the courts. I've investigated stalking cases where the stalking and surveilling of the victim is going on through social media, through electronic means. Having 35 days puts that victim at risk. There's no excuse for the fact that I'm investigating a potentially life-threatening incident, and I'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs waiting for a response when we know that information is readily available. The other kind of component to this other than the life and the speed and need for life measures is the fact that most of these warrants and most of the returns are multi processes Oftentimes we get to a point where we getting limited information that we have to write additional orders for, which take additional time. So the need for expeditious response from social media platforms is immense. A lot of times the information that we receive, Most of these platforms do not verify the IDs of the people holding the accounts, which require extra work. So my support for this bill lies in the fact that from an operational standpoint, it's necessary to save lives. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Deputy Eric Towne and I serve as a school resource officer with Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. In my role, I work directly inside our schools with students, staff, and administration. What we are seeing today is that serious threats are often made or shared through social media platforms before law enforcement becomes aware of them. I was a part of the response to the incident in Evergreen High School. In situations like that, time and access to information is critical. Right now, even when we identify a credible threat, our ability to act quickly is limited by delays in obtaining information from social media platforms. In some cases, those delays can be hours, days, or even longer. Right now, the speed of our legal process does not match the speed at which threats develop online. This bill addresses that gap by improving access to platforms, shortening response times for search warrants, and creating a duty to report imminent threats so that critical information reaches law enforcement when it can still make a difference. As someone who was also a student in a nearby school during the Columbine incident, I understand how these events affect not just responders, but entire school communities. Earlier awareness and faster access to information can directly translate to prevention. This bill helps us act within the reality of how quickly threats develop today instead of behind it. I strongly support this legislation and respectfully ask for your consideration.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and this is for Sheriff Marinelli. I appreciate your activity with a number of bills this year. We have another bill that went through here through committee just last week that's somewhat similar to this. I'm interested a little bit in the research that went in and kind of how we arrived at the language that's in this bill. Yeah.

Thank you, Chairman, and thank you for the question. a fair amount the majority of the research on this was done by myself and my team we were really looking at the radicalization that happens to these young people on social media that caused them to commit such a such an act as the one is at evergreen high school we did find out that our our shooter had been radicalized i cannot tell you exactly how because he was in several different social media platforms. So because of the fact that he committed suicide, we cannot talk to him. So we don't know how. So when we were drawing this bill we wanted to hit the radicalization We realized after many hours that we were not going to be able to do that without affecting due process without affecting basically the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment. So when we got to looking at what already exists in the law, that was when we went to the duty to report topic. When we look at, for instance, First Amendment rights, the companies, that First Amendment right and freedom of speech is already out there when the person puts it on social media. So the company is not necessarily the person with the right. It's the person who put it out there on public forums. forums. And then looking at the Fourth Amendment, believe me, we sat as a team in my office for many hours wanting to make sure we did the right thing for the victims. We did the right thing for everyone. And so when we looked at the Fourth Amendment, it's a report. It's not to ask a social media platform to continue a search. What we're asking them to do is to report to law enforcement what it is that they have, to not search any further. That's our job. But report it. It goes back to the whole see something, say something. And when you look at the totality of it, to simplify it, it's no different than if you have an assault that's occurring in a public park and there's an eyewitness to it and that eyewitness calls 9-1-1. It's technically the exact same theory as that. So the media platform is basically calling 9-1-1 and saying, hey, we saw something. Can you take a report? Can you look further to see if there's a crime being committed here? So what we're asking with this bill is to just give us as law enforcement the ability to do our jobs. It's a tool to give us that report so that we can look at it and then we would have to do the work to find the probable cause, to move forward, to get a judge to understand that we have probable cause. And the judge would then sign off on that search warrant so that we could go further then to do our jobs to investigate a crime. Rep Clifford.

Thank you, sir. the volume we've had a lot of discussion to that it's I can tell you the people talking about the volume thus far in the last six months have not been law enforcement it's been people outside of law enforcement that keep asking that my response is do you know how many resources and how much time it takes to investigate a mass shooting or a school shooting. I personally don't think it's going to cause us that much more time to do these. It's like I said, it's no different than a 911 call that comes on. Let us do our jobs. And as I stated earlier, back in 1999, we had our very first investigator in Jefferson County assigned to financial crimes We now have seven investigators doing that We have got to put the resources and the time in where it needed We no longer need to have an investigator quite frankly, that's jumping into people that are washing checks. That's a crime of the past. But we have to stay with technology. We have to stay with the times. If it means that law enforcement will have to take one investigator to do this and quite frankly it may not even have to be a post-certified deputy to take those calls and those reports from social media so if if i as as one of the people that helped to write this bill i don't see a problem with it um i'm not i'm not seeing that we would have that much more because like i said once we have a mass shooting once we have a school shooting, and in Jefferson County in my 40 years, we've had our fair share. The resources and the time it takes after the fact when we have to react to it is outrageous. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of resources. Let us have the ability to be proactive and stop them before they happen. And I'm telling you the time and the resources should be minimal compared to being reactive.

hello my name is Amy Hidon I am the parent of a senior at high school a senior at Evergreen High School thank you for giving us the time today to tell you about a horrible day that happened in September in hopes that you'll support HB 26-1255 to possibly prevent the same thing from happening in the future. Today was a really hard day, as I thought back on what happened. I don't really want to remember any of that day. I don't want to tell it again, but I'm here because my son cares that I do. And so I hope that you will take us all very seriously and consider this bill as much as you can. I feel like I should be fine. It was 189 days ago, but it's also been 9,829 days since Columbine, 7,121 days since Plant Canyon and Emily Keys, 4842 days since Sandy Hook, 2554 days since Stoneman Douglas and we are still here talking about mass shootings in schools. I don't feel normal, I don't feel right, what happened is not normal. We cannot accept it as normal. I haven't given up hope that we can have schools that are safe and healthy for our kids. My son is 17. He's a senior. His schedule has been completely compressed because he missed almost three weeks of school, and he wants to get out of there completely. He doesn't want to go back. He's glad he's a senior, And I know there are other kids in the school that are not seniors and are looking at going back to the school again next year and facing the same place that this happened to them. We own a small retail business in Evergreen. And in the days that followed the shooting, the stories that we heard were crazy kids who kept running. They ran out of the school and kept running. They ran and they ran and they ran. kids who assisted the victims they tied tourniquets they dealt with blood they they did whatever they could kids who ran with their their trays of food because they didn't know what else to do because they were so scared kids who hid in garages the wave of emotion in our community was massive and i i know that it wasn't felt down here because we came down and it was like everything was normal and it wasn't for us um i never want anyone else to feel like this no child no teacher no parent no friend, no neighbor, no one ever again. And when I think about another policy, yet another iteration to address a horror like what happened in Evergreen, I don't know how to feel other than angry. We've done so much and it doesn't stop. But I think this bill is the right thing to do, and I think it's a good start to help us move forward, to learn and to address some of the mistakes and the errors that have been made so far. So I hope you'll support this bill and make sure that no other parent has to come in front of you again and talk about a horrible day that they really want to forget. Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Victoria Hutchin. I lived in Evergreen, Colorado for 14 years with my husband, daughter, Evergreen High School class of 2025, and sons, classes of 2028 and 2031. I am PTA and an educator, so keeping kids and school staff safe has always been a priority. I also have a duty to report. On September 10, 2025, our then 15-year-old called at 1225 p.m. I will never forget hearing his out-of-breath voice blurting out, Mom, there were gunshots. We ran. I had been leaving for work and went straight down. The photo in that handout that you have in front of you can't possibly do justice to the tear that hit as I drove down the dirt road next to our school. You are looking at just a few of the backpacks, shoes, and water bottles that sprinting high schoolers had frantically dropped that I threw into my car, worried kids would lose things, as a neighbor shouted to anyone he saw that there was an active shooter. I'd been given the wrong address, was at a bad place at that time, and when I made it to the house where my son and about a dozen other students had sheltered, I gave hugs to boys who I had known in some cases for years, who were now in shock, filled with adrenaline, and just wanted to get home. The next couple of days were testament to what our town does in tough times. Hugs, tears, and determination to figure out how to start patching ourselves back together. On September 12th after leaving a community event a peer PTA teacher mom texted me about Desmond Holly TikTok account It had hundreds of videos and photos from months and months I reluctantly got his TikTok handle from someone how, why was this account still active, to see what was traumatizing our kids all over again.

Thank you, Chair, Representative. I'm not an attorney. I'm not a lot of things that I'd like to be. And from a technical and policy perspective I don have some of the answers to some of this in particular or to solve the problem that this bill seeks to solve I think forgive any phrases that sound like they might match something in the law I want to be very careful that that's not deliberate if it happens. The first question I would ask is how would independent proprietors, often working for free. We're making little services that we think are fun or funny that don't come with an explicit harmful message or outcome. Think the kind of sign I might hold in protest outside the General Assembly, the building you're all in right now, and you might drive by it and say, that's a reasonable political take that I do or don't agree with. it's hard for us to know where that speech starts and ends. There might be language, maybe foreign language stuff. There might be deep internet culture stuff, phrases. If you all have children under the age of 15, there are two numbers that said back to back really gets the kids going. I don't understand what it means or why. I'm led to believe it's innocuous. My own 10-year-old leads me to believe it's innocuous. But I would have no way of knowing without researching it. And that's recall. There's a difference between recall. I'm sorry, that's recognition. If you give me four things and say one of these might be offensive, I can then go look it up. But if I'm just looking at a bunch of plain text or images and I don't understand the implications behind them, it's almost prohibitive for me to look at every piece of content I have and proactively research what it might mean, what it might have meant in the context by the person who shared it, and whether their intent was malicious or not. I'm trying to give you as black and white an answer as I can. There are other implications here. For example, there are think tanks and civil society groups like the Anti-Defamation League that identify patterns of hate speech that a reasonable person might look at and say, in the ADL's case in particular, this is a valid criticism of the state of Israel and their actions. It does not actually represent anti-Semitic language or speech. And of course, I want to cap this off. No part of this conversation has anything to do with First Amendment protected speech or expression, because in every case we're describing, the platforms are nominally private. When we talk about government compelling speech or government compelling participation from technical proprietors like us, we're three individuals. I've never met these gentlemen in person. They seem lovely. But ranging from them to large scale organizations, it gets prohibitively complicated. I will say there was a big push in the late 2010s for organizations like Facebook to have independent panels trying to look for these things proactively. That is financially expensive. It's a lot of work. I think it's noble. I would really love to see that kind of thing take fold. I'm going to leave it there and allow the others to speak and engage follow up as appropriate.

Yeah, I'll also say that I am not a lawyer. I guess as a more disturbing and explicit example, of the 6-7 that Mr. Benjamin was referring to. There is a very famous example of a clear through line of a drawing of a person wearing a purple and green striped shirt goes back like 10 generations of memes and is explicitly to those who made it a sexual assault joke. But to anyone looking at it who was not part of the people that made it, they would have no idea.

Mr. Evans. Thank you. In the language of the bill, and I could be missing something here, but it seems like the thing that triggers this response is another user reporting something. so under that case like i i can't see this as being too much of an issue just that something needs to be reported but then it goes back to um it may be possible for us to know where this person is, but with VPNs and tunnels and Tor, you know, for any service where you don't know every single person in there, you're not going to know all the time where they are and which law enforcement agency to report to.

Who is that for?

Further questions? Okay. No, she said she was good. All right. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your time and for your testimony. Okay. Next panel, Andrew Harrison, Beth Clark, Aaron Kinworthy, Haley Shea McMore, who is virtual, and Tyler Guyton. Okay. Okay. Do we have Andrew Harrison? Okay. Okay, let's start with our witnesses in the room. Beth Clark, you will have three minutes to state in the organization you represent. You may begin. Did I get the button pushed? Good. Yes. Good evening.

Thank you. Okay, next we'll hear from Erin Kinworthy. You will have three minutes. State in the organization you represent. You may begin. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, now we'll hear from Tyler Guyton. You will have three minutes. State in the organization you represent. You may begin.

Thank you. And then one last call for Andrew Harrison or Haley McMore. Haley McMore should be virtual. Okay. Oh, yes. Okay. Okay Hayley McMoore you will have three minutes State any organization you represent, you may begin. Wonderful.

Thank you. Okay, committee members, do we have questions for this panel of witnesses? Okay, seeing no questions, thank you for your time and your testimony. Okay, the next panel is going to be all virtual. The Honorable Evie Hudak, Jake Norton, Mark Longshore, and Peter Barkman. Okay. Okay I actually going to combine some panels here with some in folks Andrew Spears Colin Boot Nicole King Stephanie Seavers and online Julie Boulding. Okay. We'll start with our testimony in the room before going to our virtual witnesses. Let's start with Andrew Spears. You will have three minutes. State in the organization you

Okay, next, Colin Booth. You will have three minutes to stay in the organization you represent. You may begin. Thank you.

significant. It could put people on law enforcement's radar, and they could act in a much more timely way to hopefully prevent others from going through what we've been through and continue to go through. I implore you to take this step and make our schools safer. Thank you. Thank you. Nicole King, you will have three minutes to state in the organization you represent. You may begin. My name is Nicole King. I'm a teacher at Evergreen High School. And I'm here today to urge you to pass legislation requiring social media companies to comply with a search warrant within 24 hours when a credible online threat has been made. On September 10th, 2025, I, along with many people in this room, experienced a school shooting. Several of my colleagues and I, while looking for students to move to safety, encountered the gunman, one of our own students we were shot at. Bullets struck the doorframe and ripped the gun. into the wall beside us. We survived, but we were not unharmed. Being shot at by a student we cared for broke my heart and my sense of safety in a place that should have been secure. But what makes this event even more tragic, as you've already heard, is it was preventable. Law enforcement had already secured the warrant. They were working on identifying the person who had made the threat. It was the media platform who failed to respond in a timely manner. That online threat became our physical reality. That delay cost us an opportunity to stop the shooting before it happened. Because of this, two students were severely wounded and an entire community of staff and students have been left with deep, permanent scars. The impact of that day didn't end when the shooting stopped. Even now, when I hear students raise their voices, even in excitement, I feel panic and I instinctively listen for gunshots. I keep my classroom door closed at all times and I check every person, even administration, before I let them in my room. And I no longer allow backpacks in my classroom because I'm afraid of the weapons that could be hidden inside. The reality is I'm still living in the aftermath of that delay every single day. This is how I teach now. This is what school has become. I didn't want to come here today. Speaking about this reopens wounds that are still very raw for me. But if this law had existed last summer, there would have been a real chance to stop it before it happened. It should not take a month for a company to respond when there is a credible, imminent threat to children or anyone. I know this bill won't stop every school shooting, but combined with other security measures, it is one more way to act faster, to intervene sooner, and to protect our students and teachers. You cannot undo what happened to us that day, but you can act to prevent it from happening again. Please support this bill. Thank you. Okay. Stephanie Seavers, you'll have three minutes state in the organization you represent. You may begin. Now it's on. I'm the engineering teacher. I'm Stephanie Sievers. I teach science and engineering at Evergreen High School. On September 10th, I fled the sounds of gunfire and sheltered with students and some other staff at a nearby rec center. It was a terrifying and chaotic day, but it wasn't the worst day people had. Students were shot. Other students and faculty were shot at, chased, trapped in a room watching the window get shot at, and more. I almost did not volunteer to come testify today because I feel like I'm doing pretty well. I feel like I'm emotionally resilient. And so many more of my colleagues could give more harrowing testimony. I think that they could help you understand just the terror of being in that day better than I can. But a lot of those people started saying they didn't feel like they could come here today. They said they couldn't get through this without crying, that they couldn't face having to talk about it and relive it, and they just couldn't come. So I agreed to come and speak for them. Here's the thing, though. A month ago, there was an event that made me realize that even I am not doing as well as I thought that I was. On February 12th, we were all at the high school for parent-teacher conferences, and in the middle of that, I got a call from my husband telling me that there was an active shooting incident in Evergreen a couple of miles away from the high school, and I started to panic. I got dizzy. my heart rate escalated, I had to sit down, I couldn't stop myself from crying and it made me realize that the effects of trauma are still with me and probably will be. So I guess that I here to express to you that really the impacts of a school shooting are just much wider ranging and longer lasting than most people could really fathom or understand I also want to add that I'm not insensitive to the concerns that we heard from the small platform operators this evening. The engineering teacher, I get it, I understand. Those nerds are in my class, you know. But, you know, I think they made some interesting and valid points about the difficulty of defining and fully understanding their potential responsibilities, but I think a lot of the concerns they mentioned were hypothetical and speculative. I think that it's time to get started on catching up with the vast criminal networks that are operating boldly and openly on these social media forums. I think the details of the edge cases that were brought up this evening can be hashed out in the courts. Let's pass this bill and get going. We're here to weigh the interests of these social media companies against our interests as teachers, students, citizens, community members. And I want to express my opinion that the possibility of avoiding the next incident like ours outweighs whatever the burden of compliance might wind up being. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll next hear from our online witnesses. Let's start with the Honorable Evie Hudak. You have three minutes to state in the organization you represent. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm Evie Hudak, representing Colorado PTA. We support this bill. PTA has a long history of advocating for the safety of children and youth. And one of our key priorities is keeping children safe from gun violence, suicide, sexual abuse, and substance misuse, and strengthening laws to protect children from the harmful impacts of social media. We strongly believe this bill will help keep our children safer. We recently testified in favor of the bill that required a 72-hour turnaround, but the 24-hour turnaround in this bill is even better because sometimes threats aren't discovered until the last minute. I would like you to hear what Sarah Roberts, the president of Jeffco PTA, said about what this means to PTAs and the community. Working with Evergreen PTSA in the aftermath of the shooting is not an experience I will ever forget. The way the community of parents, students, and teachers banded together to support each other was both heartbreaking and inspiring. I have never been more grateful for what PTA can do in a community. The overwhelming feeling of helplessness is also unforgettable. Protecting students and teachers and making crimes like this harder to commit is worth it. We will never know if a law like this would have made the difference at Evergreen High School, but I know it will make a difference in the future. Not only do we owe it to the Evergreen community to make strides towards solving the problem of gun violence, we owe it to future generations as well. In conclusion, I, as PTA's Vice President of Advocacy, would like to say that this is about kids going home at the end of the day. We ask you to work out the details to make this bill viable and help us keep our kids safe. Thank you. Okay we now hear from Mark Longshore You will have three minutes State in the organization you represent You may begin Thank you Mr Chair I am Mark Longshore a registered nurse and executive director of the Colorado Nurses Association CNA represents all nurses in Colorado and our mission includes improving health for all. We support House Bill 26-1255 in an effort to improve the health and safety for everyone in Colorado. In March of 2026, a gunman in Austin made hateful posts before opening fire in a bar, killing three. August 2025, a shooter made multiple posts about school shootings before killing two children in a Minneapolis school. January 2025, a shooter of a Nashville high school posted writings about his plans before shooting two in the school cafeteria and killing himself. There are some reports that this individual was groomed through other sites into committing the crime. And of course, September 2025, an unknown individual who turned out to be the shooter at Evergreen High School, posted what the FBI called a viable threat to social media. We act surprised when these shootings happen, but uncovered too often after the fact that the signs were there, but not acted upon because, in part, of delays by the megacorporations that are making money off the posts of extreme ideology. Nurses have a duty to warn. Therapists have a duty to warn. Attorneys have a duty to warn. Notably, all three of these groups are legally expected to maintain confidentiality of their clients unless they learn about behavior by their client that is likely to cause harm to others. Social media companies have no such requirements of confidentiality. In fact, again, they make money from facilitating the sharing of information. They take that money and then respond with delays to law enforcement. There are those concerned about either a restriction of or retaliation over First Amendment rights of expression, but this bill neither curtails anyone's right to say what they want, nor does it arbitrarily punish someone over that speech. It establishes a mechanism to mitigate harm to self or others, a mechanism which necessitates showing probable cause to a judge. House Bill 26-1255 requires the social media corporations to cooperate with law enforcement in a timely manner so that we can improve the health for all, literally save the lives of both the victims and the perpetrators of acts of violence. I ask for your yes vote for Senate Bill 26-1255, supporting law enforcement and the work they need to do and improving the health of all Coloradans. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now hear from Julie Boulding. You will have three minutes. State in the organization you represent. You may begin. Good evening. Thank you to the Judicial Committee and Mr. Chairman. My name is Julie Boulding. I'm the school psychologist at Evergreen High School, and I'm representing myself, but I'm also a member of the Executive Board of the Colorado Society of School Psychologists, on which I've been a member for 29 years, and our organization also supports House Bill 26-1255 and I encourage you to pass this bill. I would like to talk about my experience today during the shooting in Evergreen High School, but first I want to share that this is actually my third school shooting. My first school shooting was in my first years of teaching in 1990, in the early 90s, at Zia Middle School in Las Cruces, New Mexico. My second shooting was my first year as a school psychologist. I was a first responder to Columbine High School, and I was at the evacuation site where students were getting off the bus with blood splattered all over their shirts, which is a moment that will live in my memory forever. Now this. on Wednesday September 10th at lunchtime I was hosting a brand new club meeting in a lower classroom in a classroom in the lower level of our building at about 12 20 the student was going to leave the meeting arrived with her lunch I said great let get started I heard a series of loud noises from the stairwell. My initial thought that someone had thrown a chair down the stairwell. I turned to the teacher in the room and I said, what was that? She said, I don't know. I was hobbling on my broken foot towards the door to go out into the hallway to investigate. And she grabbed the door and locked it as we suddenly heard two or three more, what we now know our shots that hit the very first student shot in our building, and he was shot right outside our door. He was on his way to our meeting. I stepped into that hallway as I intended. I likely would not be here to share the story today. Once the door was closed, I turned around to see that the 12 students in the room scattered. They drove into empty cupboards. They moved a big metal bookshelf and hid behind it. One student exclaimed, I don't want to die. The three adults dove under desks and a table and I was trying to fit my two therapy dogs under the desk and they didn't understand and they wouldn't fit. It felt like several minutes later the lights lock and out of sight signal went off but we were already. I got up and I moved across the room and hid behind the big student teacher desk where my dogs would fit and I looked across because the doorway was directly across through me and I realized if a gunshot if someone were to come in that room This desk isn't going to stop any gunshots. So I pulled out my cell phone and I began texting my family, telling them I love you guys. Jumping ahead, when we were evacuated to Wilmont Elementary School, one of our staff members was reunited with her child who attends that school. He said, Mommy, is this your first school shooting? This is my first school shooting. This is not a question that children should be asking. This is not an experience that children should have. I know that the standard response protocol and that wonderful teacher saved my life, but there are countless of heroes in our building who hid students in their rooms, shielded students from gunfire, helped students escape out the library to get to Wolf. Lives were saved because of their standard response protocol, but more lives could have been saved had we had a release of this information that we all know was on the radar months and months ahead of time. As an educator of 35 years, I can tell you that kids talk, they post, they look for connection of like-minded people. They're not good at keeping secrets. This bill can help prevent future violence. Less than 1,000 students attend our school, but many, many thousands have been impacted by what happened on the violence on that day. I know I personally am attending trauma counseling twice a week, and I'm on pharmaceuticals. I don't sleep without pharmaceuticals. And I know strongly that one school shooting stopped by passing this bill is worth it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, committee members, we have questions for this panel of witnesses. Okay. Seeing none, I do want to thank you for coming out and sharing your stories. It does mean a lot to our work. Thank you. Okay, Echo Robbins, Jarrett Jost, Evelyn Seavers. Okay, let's start with Echo Roberts. You will have three minutes. State in the organization you represent. You may begin. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to present to you today. My name is Echo Robbins. I'm a junior at Evergreen High School, and I am here to proudly support the 24-hour expedited search warrants brought by House Bill 1255. Back in mid-July, a boy whom I'd helped with a film project in ninth grade started talking online about mass shootings. September 5th comes around and he posts a photo of a revolver online. This was Desmond Holly who came to the school five days later with that weapon. I sat in lockdown for a few hours with some of my closest friends in the choir room. We heard the first gunfire outside of our door. I shot a glance to my friend Amelia. She looks back at me. I look across from me, and there's a girl hiding under the desk. She closes her eyes, clasps her hands, starts praying, and so did I. We were the last ones out of Evergreen High School on the day of the shooting once they gave the all clear. The tragic irony of this incident is that the entire world had a warning months in advance. Desmond took pride in his plans to commit this act of violence and posted that risk for the world to see on social media and for social media to unfortunately do as little as possible about within the time that they had. When I got to speak to the police later, they told me that his address arrived from the FBI's warrant the night after the shooting. but months after the first warrant. The most meaningful thing you can do for the victims of Evergreen High School who suffered because of social media shortcomings is promise to them with this bill that it won't happen again. Please understand that your vote for these expedited search warrants is crucial in preventing situations, and I'm sure you have heard the term systemic failure. and in any other occurrence like Evergreens. When you vote for these Colorado users to have the ability from not only the Judiciary Committee, but the platforms they use and their duty to have threats reported, handled by law enforcement on time, you guys are sharing the message that it's not okay for something to go unresolved online like Desmond Hawley for so long. Law enforcement can handle it. Social media can handle it. And even the small companies with under 100,000 users have said that 24 hours is reasonable. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Okay, we'll now hear from Jared Jost. You will have three minutes. oh you didn't turn the mic on okay there you go good evening chair Mabry and members of the house judiciary committee my name is Jarrett Jost and I'm a student at Evergreen High School in Evergreen Colorado I was not in the building on September 10th when we had an active shooter that injured two students and took his own life but hundreds of my classmates were what happened at Evergreen High School on September 10 2025 was developing years before the shooting occurred The warnings of Desmond Hawley potential harm have existed since 8th grade It was online it was public and it was open and real for months all while the social media companies made it trivial. In fact, the companies did not respond to inquiry after inquiry by law enforcement until they absolutely had to do so by law, which was after the shooting. Reducing mandatory response times to law enforcement inquiries of social media companies from 35 days to 24 hours is exactly what this bill is about. What makes our situation different from most, and what I think about when I think of our community in Evergreen, is that Evergreen did not just become another name on the long list of schools that had another active shooter, students shot, and kids traumatized by the violent actions. Our sheriff's department showed up for us. Our school district showed up for us. Our community could have moved on, but they didn't. There have been endless meetings and help that has turned this experience into something that could legitimately protect other schools and students when, not if, but when this happens again. I've attended most of those meetings and have been actively involved in pursuing change in our mountain community. HB 26-1255 was not drafted or presented to push any one individual's political agenda. The bill was born out of a community that refuses to accept that nothing can be done. If this bill was introduced and had passed at any point prior to September 10th, the shooting at Evergreen High School likely would have never occurred because the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and the FBI would have had information about the shooter before the attack instead of reacting to the tragedy after. I'm here today to ask you all to vote yes on HB 26-1255. A vote of yes would be showing the students at Evergreen High School that their trauma and suffering has resulted in needed change. A vote of yes would show every student in Colorado that they deserve to have additional safety protections in place to potentially prevent another shooting like ours from occurring. A vote of yes would show every community in Colorado that they have representatives under the dome that are willing to fight for them and fight for their future. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, we'll now hear from Stephanie Seavers. You will have three minutes. Stay in the organization you represent. You may begin. Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Evelyn Sievers. You've just heard from my mother, Stephanie Sievers. I'm a senior at Conifer High School. Sorry about that. I have both the names right next to each other on the list. We're here to talk about the same thing. I'm a senior at Conifer High School in the mountains where I've lived my entire life. I was born in 2008, nine years after the Columbine High School shooting. I was raised with lockdowns and hypotheticals, and the knowledge that my life could end on any Wednesday a weapon got into the wrong hands. You've heard the story of the tragedy on September 10th countless times this evening. I go to the neighboring high school. I was late, coming back from lunch. How quickly I could walk up the stairs was my biggest concern. To my surprise, I was ushered into the school by the security guards who were talking in hushed voices. I was escorted to class and told to stay there. Students were muttering, rumors were flying, they'd seen the police, we'd spent minutes in suspense, we didn't know what was happening or why. Five minutes in, someone got a text, and the word we'd learned to dread began to circulate. Shooting. The rumors spiraled out of control across the school. Five dead, ten dead, multiple shooters. Panic spread like wildfire through the hallways. I went into shock. People kept grabbing me, asking if my mom was okay, if I'd heard from her. I got my phone out in a daze to call my mother to see if she was alive still, and it occurred to me that if she was hiding under a desk, I could be the reason a shooter heard her phone ring. I couldn't call her. I called my father, no answer. I called my sister, no answer. For 15 minutes that felt like an eternity I had to live with the fact that I might not ever see my mother again The consequences of that day were far and long There were students crying in the hallways mourning people they didn know if they lost When we had a lockdown last month students were being ushered to the nurse in hysterics. I was raised in the age of social media, of knowing that being anonymous can make you feel invincible, of knowing that threats are serious and that they destroy lives. I was raised in the age of knowing that there is some monetary value considered comparable to my life and the lives of my peers. But people at Evergreen showed on September 10th the willingness to sacrifice everything, including their lives, to protect students like me. So what dollar amount to you weighs more than my life and the lives of my peers? The language of the bill has been largely debated this evening by professionals in fields I don't pretend to know the nuances of. What I do know is that had my mother stood frozen deciding whether or not to take action, I may have lost her. If a tragedy is preventable, how could inaction ever be considered the right course of action? It's my understanding that after committee approval, bills go through a thorough revision process on the floor. If we take no step forward, what's to prevent the same unimaginable circumstance from cycling to the next small community? You've heard repetitively of the events of September 10th, but this isn't limited to Evergreen. I acknowledge the points of the opposition, and I ask you to acknowledge the overwhelming representation of a community forever changed. Thank you. Thank you. Committee members, do we have questions for our witnesses? Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing your stories. Jenna Coffin. Simone Petty. Ava Sabinski. We have Dan Ayton. Okay, okay, I'll wait for another panel. Great. Okay, Jenna Coffin, you will have three minutes. State in the organization you represent. You may begin. Good evening. chair Madbury and members of the House Judiciary Committee. My name is Shanna Coffin and I'm a junior at Evergreen High School located in Evergreen, Colorado. I am here today to testify for the bill HB 26-1255 and I hope that you will vote yes. On September 10th, the Evergreen community was shaken. We had an active shooter in our building. Many of us ran for our lives from a building that should have been a safe place. Many people hid and were horrified about the what-ifs. An event that none of us could have seen coming, except, sadly, we did. Later, we found out about the search warrants that the FBI requested regarding Desmond Hawley's social media activity. He had been stirring up trouble for years before the shooting occurred. Unfortunately, the social media companies didn't respond in time, and an unthinkable event occurred. Two innocent, amazing students were shot, and teachers and students were and are still traumatized over this event. The time is now for this bill to be passed and it would have been and if it would have been passed before September 10th the shooting in Evergreen most likely wouldn't have happened. I am here today to fight for not only my eight-year-old sister who I pray will never have to go through the things that I have but I am here for my community and all the students in schools. Let this bill not only keep students safe but everyone and safe. Your support would reflect a sense of relief for the students, teachers, and families in Evergreen to know that their pain, anxiety, and suffering meant something. Let that something be changed Thank you so much for your time Thank you Okay we will now hear from Simone Petty You will have three minutes You may begin Thank you Chair and Committee Hello and good evening My name is Simon Petty I am a senior that was present inside the building during the event that occurred at Evergreen High School on September 10th I believe I can speak on everyone's behalf when I say that none of us were expecting on a random Wednesday afternoon that our life would be changed forever. We were scheduled a lockdown drill a week prior to this event. However, things were changed and the drill was canceled. It was around noon when I was eating lunch with a friend of mine. Everything seemed normal. That is when the first round filled the hallways. We didn't react to it at first because no one believes that it could happen to them. By the second round, my friend had run over to the door and slammed it shut. Both him and I ran into the office, and before I knew it, we were both ushered into a room, along with other staff and students, where I squeezed myself into the tiniest corner I could manage. My body felt frozen, but my mind was racing. What was I supposed to do? I remember covering my mouth and nose with my cold hands to prevent myself from breathing too loudly. At one point, the hallways outside our room filled with yelling. that is when the handle of the locked room rattled with a male voice and I quote must be a bathroom before walking away about 45 minutes to an hour later an officer broke in and led us outside where the first thing I did was called my mother Desmond Holly the name of the perpetrator at our school had access to many social media sites it is confirmed that he had posted a video which is now deleted on TikTok of a tactile helmet and a gas mask with an audio of the background of a mosque shooting. Along with multiple accounts and subscriptions to gore sites, he had posted comments of things such as, you have the gear, time to make a move, man. He had been hinting at his motive of his for many months prior to the 10th. He had support groups on social media platforms and was also able to express his admiration for extremist groups and personnel, like the shooters of the Columbine. He was able to comment hints and give out information that was evidently looked over due to the poor security and failed reports of these platforms. With a tighter security, we can prevent future individuals from being influenced. However, when investigations is taking place, officers need access into these accounts to gather information that may be needed. We need this protection in our lives, not just for us now, but for future generations. I ask for a yes vote for this bill, 12 to 55. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll now hear from Ava Sabinski. You will have three minutes. It's Sabinski. Sabinski. It's mine. No, no, it's not mine. Sorry, I have a typo on my list. Okay, yeah, no, I fixed it, but it's Sabinski. Okay, Sabinski. Thank you. Okay, you have three minutes. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you, Representative Tammy Story and Senator Lisa Cutter for the opportunity to testify here today in support of House Bill 26-1255, social media duty to report and search warrants. My name is Ava Serbinsky. I'm a resident of Evergreen, Colorado, a proud alumni of Evergreen High School, class of 2023, and an older sister to a current freshman at EHS. I work in the community daily as a nanny, and I'm here today to testify on behalf of my younger sister, who is unable to testify at this time due to the trauma she endured on September 10, 2025. To protect her privacy, I will also be keeping her identity anonymous. Until she's ready, she has given me permission. to be her voice, to be here and to help advocate for change, change that can help prevent other families and communities from experiencing the kind of pain our family and community faced. My baby sister was only 14 years old and just 16 school days into her freshman year, she was in a new building and completely unfamiliar with the emergency exits. In the midst of the chaos, a classmate carried her to the local recreation center where she sheltered until I arrived. My sister had her first panic attack after the shooter found her in the hallway and administered several rounds of bullets before she was able to run to safety. My sister had never even heard the sound of a gunshot, which only added more confusion to this situation. I arrived to the area within five minutes after receiving some of the most alarming text messages of my life, messages from my sister saying that she had to run for her life While caring for the infant that I currently nanny for, I helped safely shelter several students from our neighborhood and nearby homes before later reuniting with my sister at the local rec center. I have never hugged her as tightly as I did that day, and I didn't even want to let her go. In the months since that day, my family has carried a huge burden of trauma, heartache, and ongoing concern for our safety. As her older sister, I have also witnessed her incredible strength and resilience. Despite the anxiety and fear she faces, she continues to show determination each and every day, choosing to move forward and not letting this trauma define her or limit her future. A future all children deserve, and a future that can only be protected by adults willing to fight for change. I am asking for this bill to be passed not only for my sister and for the children that I currently care for, but for the children and communities, for all children and communities, so that no one else has to ever experience such a traumatic event. I respectfully urge you to take action in protecting students and schools by supporting House Bill 26-1255. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Committee members, questions for our panel witnesses? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your stories. Thank you. Okay. Dan Ayton, Mitch Parati, Kevin Boast, and DA Michael Doherty. DA Doherty should be online. Okay, we'll start with Dan Ayton. You will have three minutes. State in the organization you represent. You may begin. Good evening, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Dan Ayton. I'm a commander with 39 years of experience with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, and I'm here to express strong support for House Bill 26-1255 because this bill directly strengthens the safety of our communities, including our schools. Everyday law enforcement faces a growing challenge, threatening and criminal behavior, which takes place on social media platforms. Whether it is a credible threat against a school or any person in our communities, these cases often hinge on one thing timely access to information Currently social media companies are allowed up to 35 days to respond to a search warrant but as we've seen with the Evergreen High School shooting, that deadline was way too long. When platforms delay, ignore, or inconsistently respond to lawful warrants, the consequences fall in our communities, and too often on our children. This bill ensures that when law enforcement is trying to identify the source of a school threat or stop someone from planning violence, they aren't left waiting weeks for basic information in situations like these. Hours matter. Sometimes it's the difference between prevention and tragedy. By strengthening compliance expectations and creating a clear framework for accountability, House Bill 26-1255 helps ensure that social media companies treat these warrants with the urgency they deserve. This isn't about expanding surveillance or giving government new powers. The warrants already exist. Legal processes already exist. What's missing is a timely cooperation from the platforms that hold the data. Right now, some platforms respond quickly, others don't, and some provide incomplete information. That patchwork approach puts Colorado families at risk. House Bill 26-1255 establishes a clear expectation that applies to everyone, ensuring that public safety isn't dependent on which platform a threat happens to appear on. And let's be honest, our communities can't afford delays. When a threat posted online and social media platforms take action to suspend or take other administrative measures against a user for violating community standards or their own policies, they must notify law enforcement. There's no requirement, there's no mandate that they do any research for us or any searching on behalf of law enforcement, only that they notify us when they take administrative action on a post. At the heart, House Bill 26-1255 is about giving law enforcement agencies the tools they need to respond quickly and effectively to real threats. It's about making sure that when danger emerges online, Colorado isn't left waiting for a response that should have come within five hours. I'm sorry, that should have come within hours. I urge the committee to support House Bill 26-1255 and help ensure that the safety of our children and our communities is never compromised by unnecessary delays. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we'll now hear from Mitch Parati. We'll have three minutes. State and the organization you represent. You may begin. Good evening to the committee, and thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd just like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I'm Mitch Purity's Strategic Services Division, Division Chief, with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I speak in strong support of this proposed legislation. It's during my 35 tenure as a law enforcement officer that my agency has responded to several shooting incidents that either took injured or took the lives of many in our communities. Following each one of these incidents, the communities are often left with the burdens of having to ask the question or try to answer the question of how could this be prevented. Since the shooting of Columbine in 1999 to the Evergreen High School shooting in 2025 technology has changed the way we communicate both positively and negatively Social media platforms have transformed us as a society Often our reach has grown, our speech has become more public. Even years later we still fight to disrupt the voices that follow up with harm to people and our communities. Social media platforms need to do more to assist in disrupting these malicious acts. This bill provides law enforcement with the opportunity to respond to speech that reflects an intention to harm others. It's a call to action for the purpose of disrupting and interrupting acts that would take and destroy lives. While these acts are often directed towards our most vulnerable community members like our children, it's also sometimes directed towards our elected officials in this day more than ever. As public safety professionals, we support House Bill 1255 because it enhances our ability to identify, assess, and disrupt imminent threats before they can result in harm. The bill establishes critical communication and reporting requirements for social media platform operators, creating faster and more reliable pathways for law enforcement to intervene when individuals express their intentions to harm themselves or others. Social media platforms have the unique opportunity to provide a voice to anyone with an account. Most of these voices and expressions are not criminal in nature, however, some of the voices desire and express their desire to imminently harm people. When the messaging is of imminent harm and the established community stand and it violates established community standards, that tend to align with social norms, prompting that prompts them to delete their own posts or remove them. This bill just really asks for the platforms to do the right thing, make timely notifications to law enforcement, and then ask them to be timely in the response for information when a warrant is presented. Timely reporting is the information that supports clear intervention and helps prevent dangerous situations from escalating. Additionally, it calls on social media platforms, to demonstrate a responsible commitment to the safe spaces rather than just saying it. Thank you. Okay, we'll now hear from Kevin Bost. You will have three minutes, state in the organization you represent, and you may begin. Your mic is not turned on. Okay, there you go. My apologies. Good evening, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Kevin Bost, and I currently serve as the division chief of our Criminal Investigations Division at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I've been in law enforcement for over 21 years, and the majority of my career has been dedicated to investigations. Throughout my own career, I've remained committed to ensuring justice for victims while doing everything within our power to prevent harm before it occurs. I'm here today in strong support of House Bill 26-1255. In law enforcement, time is not just important. it is often the difference between prevention and tragedy. Everyday law enforcement encounters cases involving threats of violence, exploitation, and harm that are communicated through social media platforms. These platforms have become a central part of how individuals plan, how they communicate, and sometimes how they carry out dangerous acts. The challenge we face is not a lack of effort or commitment. It is a delay. Currently investigators are often forced into a reactive position Responding after harm has already occurred largely due to delays in obtaining critical information from social media platforms as it can take weeks to receive information tied to search warrants, even when there are clear indicators of imminent danger. House Bill 26-1255 changes that. By requiring social media companies to acknowledge warrants within hours and comply within a defined time frame, this bill ensures law enforcement has timely access to the information we need to act quickly. Even more importantly is the bill establishes a duty for platforms to report credible threats, posts that indicate imminent harm, criminal intent, or attempts to recruit others into criminal activity directly to law enforcement within 24 hours. From an investigative standpoint, this is a game changer. We know that many serious crimes, such as targeted violence, exploitation, leave digital footprints long before they occur. This bill allows law enforcement to intervene during that window of opportunity. It gives us the ability to identify suspects sooner, assess risk factors, and ultimately potentially prevent victimization instead of simply responding to it. I have personally seen cases where critical information existed online prior to an incident, one of which you have heard largely today, this evening. But delay in obtaining that information limited our ability to act in time. Legislation like this helps us close that gap. This is not about overreach. It is about responsiveness. Law enforcement operates under strict legal standards and judicial oversight, and this bill respects those principles with recognizing the realities of modern investigations. It provides a balanced approach that protects individuals' rights while equipping us with the tools necessary to act when it matters most. Make no mistake, law enforcement must still seek a warrant to obtain this digital information, and this bill does not attempt to sidestep these requirements. If a judge does not find the probable cause for the warrant, the information is not obtained. And lastly, for a victim-centered perspective, prevention is the most powerful form of justice that we can provide. Every crime that is stopped before it happens means a victim who will never have to endure said trauma, a family that will never be impacted, and a community that will remain whole. For these reasons, I respectfully urge you to support House Bill 26-1255. Thank you for your time and your commitment to public safety as a victim across our communities. Thank you. Okay, DA Doherty, you will have three minutes. State in the organization you represent. You may begin. DA Doherty, can you hear us? It looks like you froze. Okay. okay you hear me now yeah yeah i you might want to turn your camera off uh just so that the audio comes through more clear we know what you sound like about that mr chair all right go ahead thank you pushing ahead with this though they've been working carefully on the language and i know that work will continue. And the sponsors have put a lot of time, effort, and attention into making sure the language is limited, focused, and also constitutional. I also want to acknowledge the Evergreen High School students and the families that demonstrated real courage and strength in Testimoniality. before the legislature as well as living through everything they've had to live through for the past several months. Last year, as you may recall, I strongly supported Senate Bill 86, which would have put more responsibility on social media companies when it comes to guns being dealt to kids, drugs being dealt to kids, and sexually exploitative material being transferred over the Internet and over social media apps in particular because we see so much of our drug distribution, gun dealing, and child sexual exploitation and human trafficking happening through social media apps. That bill passed with strong bipartisan support. Ultimately, unfortunately, it was vetoed by the governor. And in his veto letter, Governor Polis highlighted that he would support a bill brought forward, strengthen and limit the turnaround times to social media companies. Senate Bill 11 has been introduced this year. And I and other district attorneys support Senate Bill 11. I do believe we need to do more. And that's why I'm with you tonight on House Bill 1255. We have to do more to engage social media companies and not putting profits over people and not putting technology technological freedom over threats that are being made over social media apps. This doesn't change any of the legal requirements for law enforcement or district attorneys. It doesn't lower the threshold or the protections that are in place for individuals who are the targets of these investigations. Rather, it calls social media companies to account to make sure they're doing everything they can to allow law enforcement to address imminent, specific threats. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'll stop there. And if you have any questions, happy to take them. Thank you, D.A. Doherty. Okay, committee members, questions for this panel of witnesses? Okay. Seeing none. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you for waiting around. I know some people were here for quite a long time. Okay. Chris Kohler. Courtney Hill. Ashley Richards. Okay, let's start with Chris Kohler. You will have three minutes state in the organization you represent. You may begin. The button to turn on the mic is right by where the mic plugs in. Yep. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the committee. My name is Chris Kohler. I'm here tonight on behalf of myself, my brothers, Eric, Aaron, and Zach, my sister, Paige, who are all watching online tonight. But most importantly, I'm here on behalf of my nephew, Matthew Silverstone. Matthew is the kind of kid every family is proud of, thoughtful, responsible, and someone teachers trust to step up when something needs to be done. On September 10th at Evergreen High School, Matthew did just that. In the middle of a shooting, he helped direct other students to safety, likely saving lives. And then he was shot. Twice. Once in the chest, once in the head. Matthew survived, but his life has been permanently changed. He undergone multiple surgeries including three to the brain with several more to come at least two more expected to fight infection in his brain He spent six weeks in the ICU, spent two months in inpatient rehabilitation, and continues daily outpatient therapy today. He will never hear out of his left ear. He cannot eat. he receives all of his nutrition through a tube. Just earlier this evening, he was discharged from the hospital after his third bout of aspirational pneumonia. Six months later, he and all of us still face a long road to recovery. Much of the first days after the shooting are still a blur for our family, But there is one moment I will never forget. We were gathered in a hot, cramped room just off the hospital waiting area when representatives from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department told us something that changed everything. The FBI had received a credible lead about a potential mass shooting as early as July 5th. more than two months before Matthew was shot. In that moment, our grief turned to anger because we realized something might have been done to prevent this tragedy. That's when we began learning about the barriers investigators faced when trying to obtain critical information from online platforms. Current laws allow social media and other online companies to delay responding to search warrants for days, weeks, sometimes longer, regardless of the circumstance. When it comes to protecting students, that is simply too long. House Bill 26-1255 takes an important step towards ensuring that when law enforcement is investigating credible, imminent threats, online platforms respond quickly enough to matter. Matthew did everything right that day. He protected others. But protecting students shouldn't depend on the heroism of a teenager in a hallway. Now the question is whether we will do everything we can to protect the next student. I urge you all to support House Bill 26-1255. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Okay, we'll now hear from Courtney Hill. You will have three-minute state in the organization you represent. You may begin. Good evening, Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Courtney Hill, and I'm the current victim services supervisor at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. I'm going to read to you a letter from one of our victim's families. To the members of the Colorado House Judiciary Committee and all who hold the power to act, I am the parent of a survivor, a 14-year-old child who walked into Evergreen High School on September 10, 2025, and didn't come home until October. I am writing in support of the intent of House Bill 26-1255, the social media duty to report and search warrant bill. I am writing because 67 days is not an abstraction to me. It is a number I carry in my body On July 5 2025 a threat was reported to the FBI A viable warning posted on social media for anyone to see that someone intended to cause harm Law enforcement was notified the threat was deemed credible. 67 days passed. 67 nights I said goodnight and 67 days I said good morning to my son without knowing what was coming. On September 10th, 2025, the same person in that July 5th report walked into my child's school with a weapon and rounds of ammunition. My son was critically wounded. Another survivor's life was shattered alongside his. Hundreds of lives, students, teachers, families, a community were fractured in nine minutes that should have never been allowed to happen. No accountability, no sense of urgency, no care for human life. I say this not in anger, though anger is appropriate here. I say it because the failure was systemic, and systemic failures demand systemic solutions. This is what this bill represents. The research is very clear. According to a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Pediatric Healthcare, 76% of school shooters have posted some form of concerning or disturbing content on social media prior to their attacks. These were not whispers in the dark. They were public declarations visible on platforms used by millions, often ignored. And research by the National Threat Assessment Center found that in 100% of school shootings cases studied, perpetrators displaying warning indicators before the attack, 100%. The Parkland shooter posted on social media he was going to be a professional school shooter. Less than six months before, he killed 17 people. This is the gap that this bill closes. This bill does not ask the impossible. It asks that when a social media platform receives a flagged report of specific imminent threat of harm, it must act within 24 hours. It removes the bureaucratic fog that allowed the threat against our community to sit for 67 days. I have watched my child fight fiercely to reclaim his life since September. I have watched him carry wounds, visible and invisible, that no child should carry. I have sat with the knowledge that what happened to him was not unforeseeable, was not inevitable. It was preventable. The information existed. The warning was given. What was missing was a legal obligation to act on it in any sense of urgency. This bill helps to create that obligation. It says when you see an imminent threat, you cannot look away. You can't wait until the last hour or in this situation an hour too late to respond to act or on a warrant. You must act, and you must act now to save lives. To the legislators considering this bill, I'm not asking you to feel what I feel because you can't. You haven't lived it. I'm asking you to act on what you know. You know that the threats are surfacing online first increasingly and consistently before they become tragedies. You have the power to build a bridge between warnings and the law enforcement agencies that can respond to them. You have the power to close that 67-day gap that costs my son, my family, and our community so much. Please take action, not for me, not even for my son. Do it for the child sitting in the classroom right now, whose would-be attacker is posting something that someone will read and report, and that, with this law, will finally reach the people who can stop it in a timely manner. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your service to the state. And thank you, Advance, for doing what those 67 days prove we desperately needed someone to do sooner. Thank you. Okay now we'll hear from Ashley Richards you will have three minutes stay in the organization you represent you may begin good evening chair members of the committee my name is Ashley Richards and I serve as a victim advocate for the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office I am the assigned victim advocate to one of the victims who were critic who was critically injured that day I here today in strong support of the bill because of what it represents not just in policy but in protection prevention and the lives it has the potential to save Every day I work with individuals and families whose lives have been permanently altered by violence I sit with them in the moments immediately following trauma when everything feels uncertain, overwhelming, and broken. And in those moments, one question comes up again and again. Could this have been prevented? This bill gives us a stronger chance to answer that question with a yes. Recently, our community experienced a devastating school shooting that impacted countless students, families, and first responders. In the aftermath, as we supported victims and their loved ones, it became clear that there were warning signs, indicators of escalating behavior and risks that if addressed through stronger tools and intervention may have prevented the violence from ever occurring. The legislation strengthens our ability to identify those risks earlier and respond in a meaningful way. It empowers law enforcement, the courts, and community partners with tools that are not reactive but proactive. That distinction does matter because once violence occurs, the damage cannot be undone. As victim advocates, we do everything that we can to help people rebuild, but prevention is always the goal. This bill is not just about systems. It It is about people. It is about protecting students sitting in classrooms, families at home, and communities going about their daily lives. It is about ensuring that victims are not created in the first place. For those of us who stand beside victims every day, we know the cost of inaction. We see the long-term trauma, the grief, the ripple effect that extends far beyond a single incident. Passing this bill is not an opportunity to reduce that harm, but to intervene sooner, to recognize risk, and take action before lives are forever changed. I urge you to support this legislation, not only for safety of our communities, but for every victim whose story reminds us why prevention matters. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Committee members, do we have questions for this panel of witnesses? Thank you. Thank you for your time and your testimony. Is there anyone else in the room who wishes to testify on House Bill 1255 who has not yet gotten the chance? Do we have anyone online? No. Okay. Seeing none, the witness testimony phase is closed. amendments. Rep. Story. Rep. Story, do you have amendment packets? Thank you. Thank you. I move L1. Okay, that's proper motion, seconded by AML Bacon. Rep Story, if you please would describe L1 to us. Thank you, Mr. Chair. L001 is focused on ensuring that posts that are focused on reproductive health care do not get caught up in this process. Are there any questions? Any objection to L1? Okay, noting objection from Rep Soper. Ms. Shipley, please call the roll. Representatives Bacon. Yes. Clifford. Yes. Espinoza. Yes. Linnell. No. Garcia. Yes. LT. No. Law. No. Soper. No. Okay. Yes. Carter. Aye. Mr. Chair. Yes. Okay, on a vote of 7 to 4, L1 is adopted. Vice Chair Carter. I move L2. Is there a second? Okay, L2 has been moved, seconded by Rep. Clifford. Rep. Story, please describe L2. Thank you, Mr. Chair. L-002 changes the section, section two of the bill that is focused on the duty to report. The language was not exactly what we intended in the introduced bill. And during conversations over time, we arrived at this amendment in order to better ensure that social media companies are not in a place where they are having to determine, engage what the content is on a post. and take on that liability of determining the post. So this amendment says that if a social media company identifies a post that has either been identified to them through a complaint online or they notice themselves, but a post that violates their own, the social media company's own policies and rules and causes the social media company to take adverse action against the user, that in those cases, that is when they have a duty to report to local law enforcement. So it's not just them still doing any kind of analysis, and they're not doing it on behalf of anyone else. They are doing it because internally they have identified a problem or problems with a post that violates their own internal rules and regulations And in those cases where it is serious enough they take the social media company takes an adverse action against the user It could be that they remove the post It could be that they suspend the user. It could be they close down the site. It could be any of those things. Whatever it is, the adverse action is what triggers the social media company to then report the post to local law enforcement. Okay. Committee members, questions on L2? Rep. Soper.

Well, so yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Representative Soper, for the question. Yes, because we have been working closely with Boulder DA Doherty, but not strictly, not with the collective district attorneys. We were not doing this. We've had numerous conversations with lots of stakeholders over time, and this was actually came out of a conversation post with the governor's office where the team was conversing after the conversation and it just organically came to be in terms of suggestion and we kind of ran with it and talked about it and talked with other stakeholders about it and ultimately had it drafted. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

What I do know is in the conversations we've had with some of the advocates, I'm not sure if you recall when this issue was brought up last year in different context of the bill. The issue that the advocates had, I think the crux of this is around the adverse action and what it is that they're already determining as a matter of their own policy, whereas last year we asked platforms to report what they thought were crimes, if you remember that. And so I'm not entirely sure. I think the conversation, again, that we've had was around this piece of they are already taking an action in regards to their own policies. But in regards to the boundaries fully on the First Amendment, I'm not entirely sure. but I do know in the advocacy space, the issue last year was having a platform, one, try to determine on its own what a crime was, let alone reporting it.

Rep. Story.

Other questions?

well because that's the first law enforcement that's right outside the doors of the company headquarters the palo alto police department could potentially have hundreds of thousands of of these reports sitting there and my guess is they would not get to any of them in any reasonable time just because most law enforcement that i know is usually pretty busy and they're pretty strapped for time how would you see that scenario playing out that story thank you mr. chair and thank you representative sober we can speculate all we want about how many search warrants might be sitting on somebody's desk at any point in time but that's all speculation I think the point The point in this is, is to, in our efforts to ensure that we are not violating Fourth Amendment rights or First Amendment rights, this adjustment in the policy makes sense for Colorado. And so if in Colorado, local law enforcement, or if a post is reported to local law enforcement in Colorado, then this is the process that would be followed. If a company reports, a social media company reports to anywhere else in the country, like, we have no control over what happens with that, right? We have no control over that. So in Colorado, though, if local law enforcement is determined by the social media company to be here anywhere in the state, then this process would play out here. And we have no way of knowing how much or how many times that might happen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm going to just follow up a little bit with what Soper's line of question is, and I know, Representative Story, you're not an attorney, but my concern with the amendment as it's written is in the second half, notwithstanding your explanation, it says that they must report the adverse action to the local law enforcement agency, including the content. I don't know what the local law enforcement agency is in the context of having stricken the other parts of the bill that you have. So I'd like if you could give me some clarification on that.

Rep. Espinosa. But, Rep. Story, you said that we weren't requiring the social media companies to identify the location of where the individuals resided because that would be obtained through the second search warrant.

So how are they supposed to do that?

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Representative Espinoza. I see that as I'm reading this just with your question, so perhaps we need to revisit some of this, and I'm totally willing to continue to look at language and happy to hear what kind of language you think maybe needs to be changed.

AML Bacon I'm sorry on that note I think I you know we understand what you're trying to do or I'll speak for myself I'm sorry I understand what you're trying to do I'm looking at a few notes on the first amendment issue as I'm dealing with this in another space and I think there might be some room for some analysis here just to be sure we aren't crossing lines part of the information that was shared with me, there is a nuance that's particular here. I'm just trying to remember what it is by way of compelling of speech versus compelling of handing over kind of like information, and there seems to be a line in case law. And so I'm wondering if we might be able to just further examine this. I do believe you had some stakeholders who may have worked on this with you. One of, I do know there is a civil rights first amendment expert stakeholder out there that I am also working with in this area. So I'm wondering if we might be able to revisit this amendment. We're just curious about your thoughts about continued feedback.

Anyways, Rep Story.

And then a question I have. You alluded in your opening testimony that this amendment made some stakeholders suggest they feel better about the bill. Can you repeat who those were?

Any objection to L2? Okay noting objection to L2 Ms. Shipley please call the roll.

Mr. Chair. Yes. Okay. On a vote of 6 to 5, L2 is adopted. Rep Story, do you have further amendments?

Committee members, do we have amendments? Okay. Seeing no amendments, the amendments phase is closed. Rep. story, wrap up.

Okay, Vice Chair Carter, a proper amendment is to the Committee of the Whole.

All right, that's proper motion, seconded by Rep. Clifford. Okay, committee members, closing comments.

Further closing comments?

Rep Clever.

Amel Bacon.

Thank you, Representative Story. Thank you so much to the Evergreen community who came out today representing only a fraction of your community, but I'm sure speaking as a whole for everyone who is living through this tragedy, because as you've noted, it's not going to go away anytime soon. And once you've lived through this, and I felt especially horrible for the teacher who's lived through this three times, you're never going to not live through this. So I thank you for coming and sharing your stories. I wanted to put that on the record. I do agree with my colleague, Representative Soper, about the problems with this bill, and I have a real struggle voting for a bill that to me has fundamental Fourth Amendment constitutional issues However given the discussion that we had with regard to this bill continuing to be worked on I will be voting it out of committee tonight. I don't know that I will vote for this on the floor when it gets there unless substantial changes are made to the bill. And so I just want to let people know if I am a no on the vote on the floor, it's because of those reasons, because I look at things from the legal perspective as a former judge and criminal law professor and all of the things that I carry in my background. So I want to make sure we have the most sound policy. I want to say also that I'm afraid this policy as it's currently drafted would not have solved the problem that we're facing because it was the FBI's lengthy time to go through the search warrant processes that they did that this bill does not address that was a problem for you not to get the answers you deserve. And so I'm really more concerned on how do we address that part of the problem rather than what we're trying to do here, which still has a lot of questions. I feel confident that Senate Bill 11 addresses a good part of this, so I do want to say that. We are asking in that context in a different way. The social media companies provide answers within 72 hours. It's drafted in a way that doesn't create other issues. And I just will note to you that that bill is on the way to the governor's desk and will be signed. to pass through the Senate today, and so it is on the way to the governor's desk. So no matter what happens with this bill, there will be some requirements from the state of Colorado on social media companies to timely respond to the subpoenas. So unlike what happened to the FBI in New York, at least in the state of Colorado, we will be getting those answers when our law enforcement makes the requests. So I just want you to know that's where we're at, that we've taken some actions and some steps. So no matter what happens specifically with this bill, we are in a place where we're going to be in a better place because of the actions of good representatives who are bringing these stories and the community who are bringing these stories forward. So thank you again for your being here. Thank you for everyone who's highlighted these issues and I appreciate your time. Rep Slough.

Rep Kelty, did you have your hand up earlier? It's not a requirement in the Judiciary Committee to make closing remarks. It seems like it is. Rep's okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I did just want to briefly take a moment to thank everybody

and I too want to thank everyone for being here the stories that you shared were absolutely touching in a sense that it made us understand what you went through no one should ever have to go through anything like that ever in their lives And being in the military you know I seen people come back from situations that were horrendous and I know that it affects your entire life forever. And I want to thank our law enforcement that came because I can tell your community means a lot to you and that you would do anything to keep them safe, and I appreciate that, and I appreciate every single one of you. but also if you can I would be remiss if I didn't mention though as it was mentioned before we did have a bill last week that came through and it was almost a darn I thought it was the same bill and there's a few little things but if that one goes through I'm sure it will make you happy as well it shuts down the time frame and just like this one does I mean it's very similar and it basically makes social media companies work with law enforcement when there's warrants, doggone it. So if either bill goes through, I think you'll be fine. It'll be holding them accountable to make sure that they work with law enforcement so stuff like this doesn't happen again. So I didn't want you to fear that if this one didn't make it, we'd be lost. You won't, because the other one went through House, it went through the Senate. From what I understand, it's on the governor's desk. So I don't know if these can be married. I know there was talk about having these two bills be together, but I don't know why they weren't worked together and put together. They've known about each other for a long time. But it is what it is, and if either bill goes through, I think you'll be fine. And God bless. Thank you. Okay. The first thing I want to say is it was really inspiring to see the entire evergreen community come out. Truly. We had people from every single job at the school. We had students. We had law enforcement, community members. Rep story, you do a tremendous job representing and championing your community, and we saw that here tonight. Some of the stories we heard tonight were absolutely heartbreaking. You can feel from the testimony tonight that that day in September is still deeply reverberating in your community. And I do appreciate folks coming out and sharing that with us as we consider making policy. I also want to note that in the early 2010s, The social media companies spent tens of millions of dollars on research to figure out what would keep us online because that's how they make money. They make money the more time we spend on their apps. And they hired clinical psychologists to figure this out, to look into what would keep us coming back. And what that research found was us feeling bad makes us come back. These algorithms on social media are designed to poison our brains so that we keep going back. And so it's important to keep that in mind when we're talking about adding burdens on these companies. These companies are literally making money, making our kids sad. That is their business model. And so putting a little extra burden on them, I have no problem with that. We actually need to do a lot more. I think we should regulate their algorithms. I mean, really, we should really regulate their algorithms and pass laws in that space. But I will just note that putting a burden on these companies is no problem for me. I also agree with Rep. Soper and Rep. Espinoza's constitutional analysis. That part of this bill still needs work. And even during testimony, after looking at the amendment and talking to stakeholders, I pulled Rep. Story out. And we talked in the hallway, and I said, hey, I still have concerns with this part of the bill. I will also note this amendment is an improvement from what was in the bill. What was in the bill was a user could flag something that then a social media company would have to report. And I do think that could have been really burdensome. I do think we need to make it more specific to make sure we passing a bill that is constitutional And I know that RepStory is going to work with the right stakeholders to get that done in the right way I also know we going to do this in the right way to complement the work that we've already done with the other bill. But thank you, everybody, for coming out, sharing your stories with us. It was really inspiring. I have not seen a community come out and force like this on a bill ever. And so thank you. And with that, Ms. Shipley, please call the roll.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes for tonight.

No.

Yes.

No.

No.

No.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Okay, on a vote of 7-4, that bill passes. You're on the way to the Committee of the Whole. And with that, the Judiciary Committee is adjourned. Thank you.