Colorado House 2026 Legislative Day 106

Good morning, members. Please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Representatives Bacon. Barone. Basinecker. Bottoms. Bradfield. Bradley. Brooks. Brown.

Caldwell. Camacho. Representative Camacho.

Carter. Clifford. Representative Clifford. DeGraff. Duran.

English. Representative English. Espinoza, Fure, Flanelle, Froelich, Garcia, Garcia-Sander, Gilchrist, Goldstein, Gonzalez, Hamrick, Hartsook, Jackson. Johnson. Joseph.

Kelty. Leader. Representative Leader.

Lindsey.

Luck. Lukens. Mabry. Marshall. Martinez. Morrow. McCormick. Wynn. Pascal. Phillips. Richardson. Ricks.

Routenel. Representative Routenel.

Yeah, you see there's like six more.

Raiden. Sirota.

It's like my arms hurt.

Slaw. Smith. Soper. Stuart K. Stuart R. Story.

Sukla. Taggart. Tatone.

Valdez A. Velasco. Weinberg. Wilford.

Winter. Woodrow. Representative Woodrow.

Woog. Zokai. And Madam Speaker.

Wow.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Members, I know that I've been getting a lot of flack the last couple days, but I promise it's going to get better. It will get better. What did Harry Potter say when he filled up his car? Expensive petroleum.

Thank you.

Oh.

Thank you.

Members, you have heard the motion that the journal be approved as corrected by the Chief Clerk. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. The motion is adopted. All right. Members, announcements and introductions. Representative Titone.

So approved. Representative Mabry.

Thank you Any other announcements or introductions Members we have some business to attend to Mr Schiebel reports of committees of reference

Madam Majority Leader. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move the following bills be made special orders on April 29th, 2026 at 922 AM. House Bill 1140, House Bill 1080, House Bill 1345, House Bill 1414, House Bill 1147. House Bill 1282. House Bill 1033. Senate Bill 158. Senate Bill 159. Senate Bill 150. Senate Bill 143. Senate Bill 51. House Bill 1420. Senate Bill 10... 101. House Bill 1417. Senate Bill 132. House Bill 1015 and House Bill 1077.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you Yes I'm not going to knock this over. The committee will come to order. With your unanimous consent, the bills will be read by title. unless there is a request for reading a bill at length. Committee reports are printed in your bill folders. Floor amendments will be shown on the screen on iLegislate and in today's folder on your box account. Bills will be laid over upon motion of the Majority Leader, and the code rule is relaxed. Members, we are to business. Can you please take your conversations to the side? Madam Majority Leader.

Seeing no objection, HB 261140 and 1080 will be laid over until May 14. Madam Majority Leader.

1414 will be laid over until after House Bill 1282. Mr. Schiebel, please read the title of the House Bill 1140. I'm sorry. 1345.

Madam Speaker. Good morning, Madam Chair. It is an honor to serve with you. It is an honor to serve with you. I move House Bill 1345.

Madam Speaker, to the bill. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Members, I am honored and pleased to bring before you today House Bill 1345. This is a bill that has a long tale and story and history. In the fall of 2024, the Commission on Higher Education convened a working group to talk about a review, an evaluation, an assessment of our current higher ed funding formula. The current formula that exists for our state, how we fund our institutions of higher education, was created in 2020 in partnership with all of our amazing universities and colleges. Over the course of the last year, a working group came together, including representatives from all those institutions and members of the General Assembly, and we worked together to refine the tool we have in place to fund our institutions. I want to emphasize that the recommendations that came forward, there were 12 of them, have been adopted in House Bill 1345. I want to lift up two specific points that I think are very important for the students of our state. First, that more than 50% of our students in our institutions are there on a part-time basis. We wanted to make sure that our institutions recognize that part-time students are a part of their success story, and so we have now included a metric A results-informed metric around the number of part-time students who are retained year-to-year at these institutions. We've also now included a way to recognize transfers between institutions, that that is also part of the success of a post-secondary education. So what you will see in this bill is a... I'm sorry, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Chair. You will find in House Bill 1345 that we have retooled our formula from three steps to three levers. We continue to provide most of the funding to our institutions through lever one, which is through a results-informed metric, allowing every institution to grow their revenue as they grow in their improvement year over year based on their own performance, not in comparison to others. You will also see a strengthening of the data source that we are using, a shift to using CERDs instead of iPads for our data system in our calculations. And I want to extend a tremendous thank you to all of those from the working group, the institutions that have been providing input to us, and I look forward to your support of House Bill 1345.

Is there any further discussion on House Bill 1345? Seeing none, the question before us is its passage. All those in favor, please say aye. All those in favor, please say aye. All those opposed, please say no. House Bill 1345 is passed.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Bill 1147 and the House and Human Services and the Appropriations Committee report. To Appropriations Committee Report.

In Appropriations, we added some money. The end.

Representative Brown. Thank you, Madam Speaker. Chair. Sorry. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. In Health and Human Services, we added a strike below that took care of some of the department's issues and significantly reduced the fiscal note, and we'd ask for an aye vote.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to present House Bill 1147 today. This bill is a bill that deals with host homes. Host homes are private residences which individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities live with a caregiver, often referred to as a provider. The provider opens their homes to deliver individualized care and daily support, which may include assistance with meals, hygiene, transportation, medication management, and other essential needs. The model is really a cornerstone of independent living for adults with IDD, and it is designed to promote autonomy, dignity, and meaningful community integration. What this bill seeks to do is to make sure that we have laws and regulations that are sufficient to help ensure that adults with IDD consistently have access to host homes that are free from abuse, neglect, fraud, rights violations, and they include other meaningful accountability measures. The bill advances three primary objectives. One, to increase transparency for consumers. Two, to improve the complaint system. And three, to streamline the oversight processes so that limited resources can focus on preventing abuse and ensuring safety. We would ask for an aye vote on this bill that is about essentially, is essential to protecting folks with intellectual and developmental disabilities in our communities.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Majority Leader. I wanted to just share from one of my constituents and really my interest in this space comes from a meeting that I had in Larimer County going back in September meeting with a number of folks who utilize host homes inside of our community and why my interest in this bill and why I so grateful for Rep Brown Rep Brown work on this bill and including me in these efforts and I just going to read this letter from this individual because I think unfortunately otherwise these stories don get told and they get lost in sort of the committee reports never to be heard from again. But this letter does illustrate, I think, the concerns that so many have had in this space, recognizing that there are a number of really, really good host home providers in the state of Colorado. And the letter just reads like this. Rep. Baisenekar, thank you so much for attending the meeting on 926 and really listening to the concerns of the members. You asked me to follow up with you about concerns related to my daughter's host home situation. Please know that finding a host home is a very difficult process. It takes special people to be host home providers. I am well aware that my daughter can be difficult to deal with. She has lived in her current home for three years. Her host home provider has very specific rules for me, and I think I have been in my daughter's room maybe 10 to 12 times since she has lived there. I have not been in her room for over a year. Her room is downstairs and it is very small and unfortunately she has large furniture. I don't want to buy her new furniture and ever suddenly move to a new place. She does have her own bathroom, which is good. She eats breakfast in her room every morning as this is easier for the host home provider. She goes to a day program five days a week, which she loves. When she went on vacation, some of her items were removed from her room and she feels very violated. She has a list of things she is missing and has been very angry about it. She has addressed this with her agency case manager and her behaviorist, but nothing has been resolved. I replaced what I could, but there is a necklace and some special papers that I cannot replace. Host home providers are sometimes even more challenging. As she said at her first host home provider, a dog bit both of us on different times drawing blood. The first host home provider left my daughter home alone over a weekend and had a neighbor check on her. During COVID, her host home provider would not let my daughter out of her house, and my daughter lost a job because she could not return to work when they called her back. When my daughter finally got to visit me on Saturdays and she went home from work, she had to take off her glasses, her shoes, her phone, and immediately go upstairs and take a shower and put the clothes she wore to my house in a plastic bag. One host home provider was so out of control, the agency removed my daughter from the home for her own safety. Unfortunately, even though there are laws in place, there is not enough resources to enforce them, and most people don't want to rock the boat and possibly lose a placement. It is a very difficult situation, and I think that is the crux of the matter, is that when you raise your hand in one of these situations and say there's a problem, the risk is solely on you. You risk losing that placement, and ultimately that doesn't benefit anybody. I think we need to find ways to lift up the host home providers that are doing what we expect of them and the admirable work that needs to be done in this space and also find a measure of transparency and accountability whereby folks can know that if a situation isn't right, they can say something. And that's what this bill does. So I would ask for a yes vote. Thank you.

Mr. Schiebel, please read the title to House Bill 1282. House Bill 1282 by Representatives Phillips and Goldstein, also Senator Molka, concerning the elimination of duplicative regulation of school district child care centers.

To the Appropriations Committee report Inappropriations Oh I move L013 Okay To the Appropriations Committee report Inappropriations oh I move L013 Okay To the Appropriations Committee report

Okay. Is there any further discussion on the Appropriations Committee report? Seeing none, the question before is its passage. All those in favor, please say aye. All those opposed, please say no. The committee report is passed. To the Education Committee Report, Representative Phillips.

Okay, we will get that displayed. Okay, the amendment is displayed. Representative Phillips.

Is there any discussion on L13? Seeing none, the question before is its passage. All those in favor, please say aye. All those opposed, please say no. L13 is passed. to the committee report representative phillips oh to the committee report yes are you do you have any more discussion on the education committee report nothing on the committee report okay seeing no further discussion the question before us is the passage of the education committee report all those in favor please say aye all those opposed please say no the committee report is pass to the bill. Representative Phillips. Thank you, Madam Chair. The bill is about,

Thank you Madam Chair it's an honor to serve with you. It's an honor to serve with you. It was an honor to be on this bill because I was on this bill before I ever knew I would be in this chamber this session as the president of the Board of Education for Adams 12. This was born out of Adams 12 because we realized that our kids could our preschoolers could have chocolate milk at lunch but not after school so that's what started this journey and after this bill they still won't be able to have chocolate milk after school but there will be other cost-saving measures that will be in place okay seeing no further discussion

title to House bill 1414. House bill 1414 by representatives McCluskey and Camacho also Senators Roberts and Kipp concerning the provision of medical records in the custody of certain health care entities. Madam Speaker. Madam Chair

committee report. Members in committee we

Is there any further discussion?

Thank you. Can you just restate it, that you move it?

Thank you. It is displayed. Representative Camacho.

Is there any further discussion? Seeing none. On the amendment. Seeing none, the question before us is the passage of L3. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, please say no. L3 is passed. To the Finance Committee report. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, the question before is its passage. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed, please say no. The Finance Committee report is passed. To the bill, Representative Camacho.

Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Chair. Members I am honored to be here with Representative Camacho presenting a bill that really does something meaningful for individuals facing traumatic medical events in their lives It places a reasonable cap on costs when an attorney requests medical records on behalf of an individual and sets clear expectations and timelines for delivery. This bill ensures that Coloradans won't pay excessive amounts of money when their attorney or attorney's representative needs to request medical records on their behalf. I am proud of this bill, and I want to extend my gratitude to the many voices that we worked with to ensure that this was a fair compromise on the current and sometimes extraordinary cost burdens that are placed on patients. My thanks to the trial attorneys, hospitals, COPIC, and others, the medical record companies, who came to the table and helped us find a path forward that best serves the people of this state. I urge an aye vote on House Bill 1414. Representative Johnson.

Madam Speaker. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for the question, Representative. I do want to, again, thank our hospitals. They came together to represent hospitals that currently provide records with their own staff and then hospitals that contract out with other companies to help provide medical records. There was certainly recognition that for some patients, and particularly patients who have had a long history of health concerns, these records can be voluminous. The one thing that our bill continues to do is follow statute on the costs that a hospital or other provider can charge, or what a third-party vendor may charge, with a reasonable cap at $400 once the records reach 665 pages. We also recognize in the bill there may be some extraordinary circumstances, and in those cases, the cap is waived. I hope that answers the questions.

Madam Speaker. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Camacho.

Representative Camacho.

Yes. Thank you for the intriguing dialogue. I think I recognize Representative Garcia.

Thank you, Rep. It is displayed.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Representative Camacho.

Representative Garcia.

I really appreciate that you actually laid out in the bill so that our colleagues could understand where this amendment would be placed. I think you are absolutely correct in my intentions to bringing this amendment forward, because the real intention for this is to make sure that it is the attorneys who are already charged, as you mentioned earlier, $0.85, $0.84, $0.83 per page, that they are capped at $400. and then everyone else who is not the attorneys is subject to the defaults uh thing ask for an aye vote

a great way to clarify on everything, and I'd urge a yes on this amendment. Representative Barron. Thank you, Madam Chair. I do also urge you to ask this amendment, you know, for the simple reason that you know who has an attorney? The Colorado Rockies has an attorney, and they're going to do good this

Whip. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Bill 1033 until after Senate Bill 143.

Senate Bill 158 by Senators Weissman and Ball, also Representatives Carter and Espinosa,

Representative Espinosa.

Yes. I move Senate Bill 26-158.

Yes. Senate Bill 158 takes a program which recognizes that individuals who commit crimes,

Representative Carter.

What I want to know is this is actually a right sizing of this bill. All it's doing is it does not take the parole board out of the equation. There are still a host of individual indicators that have to be completed by the individual. and at this point the youngest person or the smallest amount of time of an individual who's been incarcerated that has actually started the program is at least 20 years so these are individuals who are either in their 50s are pretty close to it they still have to go through a strenuous amount of protocols in order to actually complete this training up to and including I believe driver I believe they have driver training as well because these individuals are so young when they were going in, they may not have life skills. And that is before they get to the parole board. Parole board then does this extensive investigation into them once they complete the J cap parole board then does another review and then it is sent to the governor. All this is doing and my understanding at this point, it's only 12 people that are actually pending. All this bill does is if the governor does not decide within those 60 days. If the governor does not decide in those 60 days, then it is up to the parole board. And if the parole board is, if the governor denies them, the parole board cannot overrule it. So all it is is right-sizing something that just has left these individuals in limbo. And I ask for a yes vote.

Senate Bill 159 by Senators Weissman and Gonzalez, also representatives Mabrian Martinez, concerning measures for managing the capacity of the Department of Corrections.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move Senate Bill 159.

Representative Mabry.

So, members, I just want to highlight a few things. My co-prime really summed up what we're doing here well. But at the end of the day, this is a public safety bill. The population that we're talking about is a population that is going to be released from the Department of Corrections. And if we are committed to public safety, we should be doing everything in our power to make sure that the population that is being released is less likely to recidivate. Our colleague from Arapaho County brought this out in questioning. He talked about the revolving door, the chain of recidivism that cycles people through our system over and over again, and the enormous human and financial cost that poses on our state. That cycle is not inevitable, and we can invest in evidence-based policies to break it. This is an evidence-based policy that does a modest amount. It does a modest amount to strengthen our commitment to making sure that people who are incarcerated and who are going to be released receive treatment, education, skill building, and the genuine opportunity to change. Earn time is not a giveaway. It is directly tied to the inmates' demonstrated ability to change. You do not earn it by waiting. You earn it by doing the work, by staying out of trouble and completing the programs that the research says will make you less likely to come back. I know that almost everybody in this room believes deeply in redemption. I believe that people are more than the worst thing they've ever done, and I believe in the capacity of human beings to grow, to change. And this bill is about recognizing that when people do the hard work of addressing the conditions that brought them into the system, we should acknowledge it. So all we're doing here is raising the amount of earn time that you can get in one instance from 12 days to 14 days per month. And then we are raising another cap from 120 days to 150 days. And then we're creating a working group that has input from law enforcement, district attorneys, public defenders, victim rights groups, groups that are advocating for formerly incarcerated people to look at this and to develop a capacity management plan And so when year after year after year we come here and we put more money in the Department of Corrections when the evidence shows that that doesn't make us more safe, I am proud to carry this bill and I hope that folks join us in voting yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and it's an honor to serve with you.

All right. Give us just a moment. Okay.

about the amendment. Thank you, Madam Chair. So to describe what the amendment does is the bill

Further discussion on the amendment? Representative Kelty.

And I'm up here in support of this amendment by my good colleague.

further discussion on the amendment

thank you Madam Chair

Further discussion on the amendment? All right, Representative Mabry.

All right, seeing none, the question before us is Representative Fennell. No? Okay. All right, the question before us is passage of Amendment L010 to Senate Bill 159. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. The no's have it. The amendment fails. To the bill, Representative Linnell.

This is not a public safety bill.

Representative Hartzell.

Representative Bottoms.

Representative Kelty.

All right, give us a moment. That is displayed. Tell us about the amendment.

Representative Espinoza. Representative Espinoza.

Representative Kelty.

Further discussion on the amendment? Seeing none, the question before us is passage of L011 to Senate Bill 159. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, no. The no's have it. The amendment fails. Back to the bill. Is there any further discussion on the bill? Seeing none, the question before us is passage of Senate Bill 159. All those in favor say aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. Senate Bill 159 passes.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to move Senate Bill 150 to tomorrow.

Madam Majority Leader. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to move Senate Bill 143 to after House Bill 1015.

House Bill 1033 by Representatives Gonzales and Duran concerning expanding the scope of the Colorado Cottage Foods Act.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Bill 1033 and the Agriculture and Appropriation Report.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Hold on Pause just a moment What was that Mr Schiebel Oh we have to do the appropriations first Yeah Okay All right to the appropriations report first Okay I move the appropriations report And I move L17 to the appropriations committee report.

All right, to the report. You're doing L17? To the amendment. Pardon me. To the amendment to the report. Representative Gonzales.

Any further discussion on the amendment? All right, seeing none, the question before us is passage of L017 to the appropriations report. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. L017 is passed to the report. To the next report. Or I'm sorry, back to the appropriations report, Representative Gonzalez.

All right. Is there any further discussion on the appropriations report? Seeing none, the question forces passage of the appropriations report. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. The report passes. to the next report. Representative Gonzalez.

All right, give us just a moment. All right, Representative Gonzalez to the amendment.

question be question before is this passage of l018 to the committee report all those in favor say aye aye all those opposed no the ayes have it the committee report passes or the amendment to the The committee report passes to the committee report. All right. Seeing no further discussion, the question before us is passage of the committee report, the Agriculture, Water, and Natural Resources Committee report. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed, no. The ayes have it. The committee report passes to the next report. To the bill. To the bill.

Thank you Madam Chair and I want to also extend my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my co-prime. This has been months of stakeholder negotiations going back to last summer and so not only working with the governor's office but public health and the restaurants and other stakeholders especially our cottage foods vendors. This is something that's very important to the people of Colorado. This has also generated a lot of national attention in the news like in the Washington Post, national public radio and other outlets who have you know wanted to get to know more about what the tamale act does like my co-prime said this is more than just the tamale act this is people who want to sell sandwiches and hot dogs and burgers anything that requires temperature control currently in the country there's about 11 or 12 states that have a program similar to the cottage food act so working with a negotiation the stakeholder you know we were able to raise the revenue cap from ten thousand dollars to 150 000 we're able to allow people to sell one item of up up to five flavors. So, you know, not necessarily limiting it to one particular item to make sure that we mitigate some of the public health concerns. We also put in some guardrails to make sure that public health is able to inspect if needed or also maybe can get finding authority to local public health and giving discretion to local control to put in additional guardrails if they want to do so. You know we don't want to mandate push unfunded mandates to our local public health people and push into workload when we know right now times are tough and we have to cut in other places especially CDPHE. So I appreciate the work that we have done with CDPHE and I just I think we all know people in our communities who sell this type of product, you know, in neighborhoods, outside of stores, in venues, outside of games. And I know people whose family, whose parents sold burritos and other stuff just to pay for their college, for their child's college education or to make some side money. At a time when cars become increasingly unaffordable, people want to hustle. We see that outside of stores. And when I drive by them across my district, we see people who sell stuff, not just foods, but other items, just to make some side money, you know, and I think working with the stakeholders, this has been an important process long overdue that we put Colorado on the map for food freedom. Again, we put in some guardrails to emphasize our importance of public health and give these public health discretion over what they want to do in their specific areas. We know this is already happening and we know there's people who intentionally make these products in their homes and they do so in the same kitchens that they cook for themselves and their families. So the notion that they're going to make people sick, I think is just frankly just ingenuous. I do understand that people have concerns for public health and again I just want to emphasize that there is no 100% mitigating the risk of potential outbreaks because we see these outbreaks in restaurants we see these outbreaks in stores when there's recalls or potential food poisoning cases and these places still go through inspections so again we can have inspections all day long but it's not a full guarantee that nothing's going to happen because it's something's bound to happen I can say with certainty right now studies show that there is no specific foodborne illness outbreak tied to cottage foods in other states. Now mind you, 11 and 12 states have a policy similar and there's no recorded case that ties to cottage food vendors. These people will not intentionally make people sick because they want their customers to come back. They want to make sure that they've built a reputation. And again, this policy is meant to be a stepping stone. So people who want to be able to get into a truck or to get into a restaurant are able to do so and build the capital that they need to get into these restaurants. We have seen in recent years, especially in recent months lately, restaurants time and time all over our districts across Colorado are closing. We cannot set these people up for failure. We simply cannot. We want people to be part of the American dream. We want people to be business owners. We want people to go through the process. This is meant to be a stepping stone so people can get into that restaurant, to get into that truck, so they can build a business for themselves and their families and employ and pay taxes and go through their licensing and everything. that goes along with running a restaurant in a truck. We should make it feasible, not harder, for people who want to test their product and build innovation and build a customer base. Because we see that across Colorado where people have the entrepreneurial spirit. And we shouldn't block that. We should encourage that and celebrate that. And expanding the College Food Act is a way to do so to help our community and people who want to be able to be part of that process to be a business owner. And so there's a lot of people that I know back home who do this. And right now it's illegal and should not be illegal. We have people that some places enforce it, others do not. But we should be given the opportunity for people who want to be part of the entrepreneurial spirit, be part of the process to be able to do so. And this is just a way for us to allow that to make it happen To be realistic for the people who want to provide for their families in a time when Colorado is becoming increasingly unaffordable this is a way for people to make some side money And across cultures and across party lines this supersedes us, this transcends that. And this policy is a step in the right direction. I'm proud of the work that we have done with all of state-coldering because this policy is one of my biggest pieces of legislation this year that I worked so hard on with the majority leader and we've gotten the bill in a good spot. Again, negotiations, while not everybody got everything they wanted, everybody got something. And that's just how the process is. When we want to govern, we have to give and take. And so we put in guardrails to make sure that we protect public health. I cannot stress that enough. And so with that, members, we ask for an aye vote.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I rise in support of this bill and appreciated the sponsors' stories from their experience. I did just want to come down here and share one story for why I am in support. There's a family in Olathe. They immigrated to Colorado from Mexico, first generation. Well, I don't even know if they're Americans yet, but they came up here, and they worked in the fields. They had three kids, and the wife worked really hard to try to earn money to send the kids to college. and I remember she had her little wagon and she was selling tamales and she would go up and down Delta's main street also in Olathe and one day I was buying a cowboy hat in Delta and all of a sudden the local food inspector comes running in and he said did you see that Mexican lady selling tamales with her wagon we both looked at each other and we looked at the counter because

Thank you, Madam Chair, and I like that roll of the R's. That was amazing. I want to start off with thanking the sponsors. Of course, I'm up here in full support of this bill. This bill was presented last year. Unfortunately, it didn't make it very far. I want to thank the sponsors. There couldn't have been better sponsors to do this. I really do appreciate it. and the idea came from an organization. I cannot name them, but I want to thank them as well. They came forward with this idea. I heard about this idea, and I'm full support of it. The reason for is that, of course, just like the good calling that spoke before me, saying these reasons that this opens opportunities for people that have that opportunity to make an extra buck and test the waters, like one of the bill sponsors said. If they decide to move forward with their test, They can open up a food truck, open up a restaurant, but this is something that you see every day in work areas where people come and sell their goods. And they're really amazing. And, of course, there are some that are not that great, but you know that, and you just don't buy it again. But at the same time, this opens up a good opportunity for these people to earn an extra dollar, to be able to pay for their kids' sports, pay for whatever they need around the house. So I fully support this bill, and I look forward to telling the people in my district, District 48, that, you know what, you can now legally sell your tamales at my shop, at my work area. and I thank again this bill for bringing this forward and look forward to seeing the bill being signed by the governor. Thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair. I also rise in support of this bill heard it in committee. I think it's a great bill and it's near and dear to my heart because in my local community and especially in south and southern and southeastern Colorado this is something. It is a tradition. It is heritage. It's the way kid fundraise to go on sports trips or kids have the ability to fundraise for school projects. I think it's huge. So much good food. I mean, I like to eat. And I think some of the best food on the face of the planet comes out of those coolers, whether it's burritos or tortas or tamales. And it's something that I grew up with. I mean, the construction workers every day look forward to when the burrito lady shows up. That's the highlight of their day. And I appreciate you doing this because it does open up a pathway for people. And I was able to hear the people in committee talk about this and the ability that it's going to give them to lay the groundwork to start a business and make those important decisions that they want to to move forward and grow with their products and grow with their reach to people and bring them good quality food and I think people really don't realize how meticulous people are and the care that they take because most of the people that you buy these foods from I mean if you ever go into their kitchens they're spotless and they're the grandma and the auntie that cook for their families and they take so much care in it and they put their heart into it and let's be honest i mean you can go to taco bell and order a burrito that's great but it's not made with love and that the difference most of this food and nobody talked about that before the biggest ingredient in all of this food is the love and the care that people put into this because whether they cooking for their giant family or they cooking for their giant extended family which is the community they put a little bit of that in there that love and that pride of putting out a good product and reminding people of home. I don't know how many times, because as life changes and we move forward in time, we lose a lot of these traditions that we have in our families. We see it. We know it's happening. and I think that this is a throwback for a lot of people to say, my grandma used to make tamales like this, or this reminds me of my auntie's burrito with chicharrones in it. So I really appreciate you bringing this. I don't think people realize the importance of this, especially for rural Colorado and what it does for our communities and the kids in those communities and how it funds some of our small business owners. So I'll be a proud yes on this. Thank you for bringing this bill.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to make an explanation. I'm going to be a no on this bill today, and it's not for any of the reasons everybody's been talking about. I think that the cottage food industry could benefit from this. It's about the source of money where this is going to be funded from. This is going to be funded through a program for the Medicaid Administration Cash Fund, and then there's another part that's funded through the Assisted Living Residents Cash Fund and I think that that's just an appropriate place for getting the funding for this. And one other thing is having continuous appropriation on this gives me a little bit of pause on it. So it's nothing to do with the intent of what the bill is supposed to do. It's about where the money is coming from that gives me a little anticipation. So I will be a no vote on this bill today. But no disrespect to the intent of the bill.

Mr. Schiebel, can you read the title of Senate Bill 051? Senate Bill 51 by Senators Ball and Liston, also Representatives Paschal and Ricks, concerning age attestation for users of computing devices.

Thank you, Madam Chair. It is a pleasure to serve with you. Ditto.

All right.

I also move Amendment L008 to the committee report and ask that it be displayed.

Speak to your amendment, Representative Paschal. Okay. So this amendment does a few things to clean up. First section is about clarifying the language of what the application programming interface needs to do make available to the programmers Then the next section is we had some references within a previous amendment incorrect. So this corrects those amendments. Next part is just clarifying exactly whose application store we're referring to. And then last but not least is an update to the exclusion for open source software. we are making sure that it includes the GNU public license as well as Linux software licenses. Is there any further discussion on the amendment?

Representative Brooks

Okay, thank you, Madam Chair So in committee, we moved a handful of amendments The first amendment was a strike below So it was some big changes and what we did, we heard after the bill had gone through the Senate, we heard a lot of outreach from the community and really appreciate all the outreach that we got and all the feedback that we got. And we did some meetings with stakeholders and what we came up with first was that I think the bill was not clear enough as to who exactly this bill applies to, so we added some clarifying language there. And what that is is it applies to vendors that have a device, a general-purpose computing device with an operating system and an application store, and there's an account that connects that operating system and that application store. So that's the ecosystem that is included on this. It does not include your Roomba. It does not include your Raspberry Pi devices. and yes, I got emails on that. The other thing that we did was we clarified which applications this applies to, and it applies to all applications that do any processing of user information. So that could be as simple as it's a login and a password. So for instance, the calculator app on your phone, that does not apply. And then lastly, we did exclusions for open source. We had a lot of outreach from the Linux community, and we did not have intent that that would apply to them. It is an operating system that is distributed widely by many different sources. There's really no chain of ownership, and it's really not the target community. So we excluded things like Linux and GNU software, those sorts of things. Then also in, we also ran an amendment that fixed a reference that was incorrect. And lastly, we ran an amendment for the Motion Picture Association. Streaming software has a slightly different account structure. And so we made sure to include their, acknowledge their account structure. There's a primary owner, then it's a family account. There's subaccounts in there. sub that also have parental controls on it So we clarified that in this case the parental controls on those child accounts would supersede this And that's everything on the committee report. I urge an aye vote on the committee report.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, sponsors. I do think the bill comes from a very good place. I mean, we are all interested in protecting kids from what lurks out on the Internet. And especially like the fact that we recognize that parents have a piece in protecting their kids when they're out there. and I know we haven't gone to the main bill itself so a lot hasn't been described but there was a lot of good discussion in committee for and against a lot of ideas that were kind of pushing back one way or the other against each other but one thing that did strike me is while we're in the realm of giving parents a tool to help protect their kids I am concerned that this implementation may leave some to believe that they've fully protected their kids from the dangers that lurk out there on the internet. So I have an amendment. I think it's pretty modest. But I move L-009 to Senate Bill 51 and ask that it be displayed. We're on the committee report. Oh, to the committee report, I move this amendment. All right. Give us a moment to look at it.

I'd like to direct your attention to lines 8, 9, and 10. That's really the operative piece of this amendment that simply requires that on the screen that pops up where a parent may choose to attest to their child's age bracket, that there be a line informing them that choosing to provide an age attestation does not fully protect your child from being exposed to risks related to Internet access. I just want to be very clear that though this bill might move things one step in a good direction, it doesn't provide full protection or allow parents to mistakenly believe, but by doing this they can now let their kiddo loose to explore all the nooks and crannies that are out there. So I would ask for an aye vote on this. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm up here in support of this amendment. When you're putting out warnings or something that someone feels that they're going to be completely protected from and then later on they realize they were not, I see a value add to this amendment because at least we're letting parents know, hey, we're attempting to try to protect, but in no reality is it going to fully protect you or your child from any harm that could happen. we don't want to put out there false protections or false expectations and at least this lets the parent know that they too still need to be involved with their child on whatever device that they're on and whatever application it is so this is actually a pretty doggone good amendment and I would really encourage an aye vote because we need to make sure the expectations are realistic and that we making sure that parents of these kiddos understand that they still need to be involved that it's not foremost all protective, that they need to also be there for their kid and ensure that their own child's safety is at hand and protected and viewed.

Representative Paschal. I want to thank Rep. Richardson for bringing this amendment, and I do think it's a valid concern. I think this protection that we're bringing, which we haven't even talked about yet, is not Fort Knox, and parents need to understand that. But I'm going to ask for a no on this today, and I'll tell you why. because we are in this bill following a California law, and while we've made changes to language to help explain it a little bit better and whatnot, I don't want to change the functionality because coders, software companies, they will follow a California law. They're not going to do something just for Colorado. But I think it's a valid concern, and I commit to continuing to work on this bill in the future. This bill doesn't go into effect until 28, and I do have some other things that I maybe might want to add in the future and want to work with this rep from California to sync the bills together. And I think putting some kind of an explanation, I would want to craft this a little bit more because it doesn't say exactly what you're protected from and what you're not. It's just a sort of warning Will Robinson kind of thing. And I don't want to freak people out. But this is worth considering for future releases of the bill.

To the committee report, Representative Brooks. Chair, thank you. Thank you. I feel validated. That's good. I don't like my colleague feels validated. Although I'm going to argue with my colleague. I don't know that this comes from a good place. I don't know that I consider California a good place. That's just personal opinion. Just personal opinion. I would like to move another doggone good amendment. Since we're on the doggone good amendment kick, I move another doggone good amendment. This one actually, official title is 010, which I move to Senate Bill 051 and ask it

I move this to the committee report.

All right, Representative Brooks.

Thank you so much, Chair. And just to make sure that procedurally we're all buttoned up, I am moving 010 to Senate Bill 051 to the committee report of Senate Bill 051 which is properly displayed And I like to bring your attention to page two of the committee report from Business Affairs and Labor This also, I mean, honestly, it really is a doggone good amendment because it simply goes straight to free use software and the public library. This is something that my colleague, I know, brought up in committee, and I would imagine that she'll probably come up and speak to this because this was something that she had brought up. And it was very reasonable. On page 2, lines 27 and 28, striking an application from a free, publicly available code repository. So something that is free and publicly available need not to have the attestation attached to it. And I do understand that at this point you're talking about a Senate bill that went through some significant strike below amendments in committee, which would indicate a robust stakeholdering process, which I respect and appreciate. However, I do believe that there's always an opportunity to be able to improve policy, even after robust stakeholdering has taken place. So I would ask for an aye vote on this, which makes a very simple exclusion for free software.

Representative Kelty. Look at that, another doggone good amendment. I am up here in support of this amendment you know when we were in committee we talked about different areas where this should and should not exist and allowing it to be exempt from areas that are either free software or even free areas like libraries and centers where individuals of various ages utilize these computers operating systems for free. You never know what age they are. And by putting it directly onto the operating system, that basically null invoies it for just about anybody that's going to log into them. So I stand up here in support of this amendment.

Rick? We believe that. Can you do a brief recess? We're kind of just We think that this already is in our bill or the amendments that were passed, and we're just validating.

Representative Paschal. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am going to request a note vote on this. It does cross off something that I think we want in the bill, and I am pretty sure this is in the bill someplace else, because we specifically excluded this.

Paschal to the committee report.

think we have any further discussion on the committee report. I would ask for an aye vote.

Representative Ricks. Thank you, Madam Chair. Members, this bill is a very important bill for protection of Colorado's children. The problem we're trying to solve here is under Colorado Pre-existing Privacy Act, companies already have legal obligations to protect minors, but there is no clear standardized way for them to actually know who is a minor. Right now, companies can claim they have no way of knowing for sure that a user is a minor, so they are free to collect and sell data on all users in defiance of the Colorado Privacy Act, strict protections for children. This bill creates a simple, consistent process for age information to flow from devices to apps, creating a legally binding method to keep these companies from collecting and selling children's data. It is an age attestation bill, not an age verification bill, and that's important to note. Modeled after the California's AB 1043, this bill requires users to enter their birth date or age or age bracket when setting up their device. It's straightforward when you set up a new phone or computer. The operating system asks for the user's date of birth. That's it, one step. At the moment, you're already setting up your device. The age attestation input happens upon device setup, and it's not something that can be changed in settings by a user without a hard factory reset. That birthday is immediately converted into a broad age bracket under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, or 18 and older. The raw birthday date is never shared with anyone. When an app is downloaded, it can request the age bracket from the operating system. Not your name, not your location, not your birthday, just a category. And from that moment, app developers are legally on the hook to use that information to comply with the applicable law. Unlike legislation that has been passed in Utah, Texas, which has faced serious legal challenges and been enjoined by the courts, this bill does not require invasive photo identification, no facial recognition, no uploading of a government ID or sensitive documents of any kind. Additionally, there are no content controls in the bill. It is still entirely up to the app developer to determine who can and cannot access their apps This simply puts in place an H attestation system for these apps to utilize as they see fit This is deliberately narrow It's meant to give parents a tool that doesn't require constant intrusion on the privacy of everyone else who uses the Internet. And so this is something that we feel good about. We think we've threaded the needle very well here. We're not trying to go overboard. We're not trying to get personal information, but we think there is a way of trying to help protect kids. And there are penalties in this bill. Companies that violate this bill will face civil penalties up to $2,500 per minor affected for negligent violations and up to $7,500 per minor for intentional ones. These penalties are assessed and recovered by the AG's office. and if you knowingly ignore a child's age signal, there are real consequences. This bill will go into effect July 1, 2028. For devices in use before that date, operating system providers have until January 1, 2029,

Thank you, Madam Chair. As I said earlier, I'm grateful to the community of developers, especially the open source community and individual citizens that engaged with us and shared their concerns. And as I said, we heard your concerns. We updated the bill to be very clear. It's a very specific ecosystem that this addresses. It's a general purpose computing device that has an operating system and an application store embedded, and the user creates an account that links the two. And typically, the way that works already, you are already giving them like a credit card, so you can purchase things from the app store. So I think the birth date is not much more information there and is minimal in terms of invading privacy. The bill is, as we said, attestation. So that means the parent, the account holder, is going to set up the account, and it's on the parent to set up the accounts for their children. And they can determine, they put in their age or their birth date, however the vendor chooses to implement, and it's up to the parent to decide. They could decide they want their kids to be viewed as an adult. They could decide they want to put their correct age category up to them. So I think this creates a good balance between privacy and parental control and putting the responsibility on the parent. And just to go back to the age attestation versus age verification, two very different things. There are competing bills out there in the universe right now. There is a large tech company that is currently spending millions of dollars across the country. pushing for age verification bills. Such bills require each user to upload personally identifiable information, like the picture of their face, government ID, perhaps keeping a log of their behavior and trying to guess how old that person is. And in that case, the goal of that bill is to put all the liability on the App Store and not on the apps. Our bill balances the liability between either the App Store or the operating system, depending on how the vendor implements it, between that and the application itself and the parents to set up the accounts correctly So I think it a good balance of shared responsibility We have created here what I think is a system that allows us to protect children data and their privacy while still allowing Coloradans protection from overly invasive age verification systems. This bill achieves that balance without putting too much burden on developers and completely exempting those in the open source and freeware ecosystem where I don't think too many children hang out. I urge an aye vote on the bill.

Thank you, ma'am, Chair. And being in this field for as long as I have, almost 30-some years, I see a lot of issues here. And I understand where the sponsors, their hearts truly are in the right place. But I also look at this from being in the industry. And so first and foremost, code and the language there within is protected by the First Amendment. I mean, if anything, this bill is a direct violation of those who are creating the code, creating the software. It's in direct violation of their First Amendment right, first and foremost. Diving, you know, into the First Amendment, it protects so many things, so many more things than people even realize. And this is one of them. And if we truly are stewards of the Constitution, that should be the very first thing that we bring up and something that we have to understand and try to protect. There may be another way to do this, but I just know the way this bill is written, it will be a First Amendment right violation, and it will be contested. Will that put the state into more litigation? Probably. Probably. And that's something that we should try to avoid, and this doesn't do that. by forcing the design and the communication within it in a specific way is considered compelled speech. Again, First Amendment violation. I'm not sure that it's really enforceable, especially when you're dealing with these apps and companies outside of the country, which many of these apps come from. They're outside the country. It's just not enforceable there. There's that challenge. There's many challenges. It doesn't address the shared devices that I saw in the bill at all. I went through the bill, like on libraries or campuses or, you know, private schools or anywhere where there's multiple users of varying ages. If it's done within the operating system, it's done within the operating system. So you're now choosing, you're putting it towards a child, but not for everybody who's going to be able to use it, including adults. So I didn't see that in there. There was no uninstallable option or a toggle between ages or variation like that to be able to, you know, if I'm an adult, I should be able to do what I want to do. And if you're putting these on there for kids, then, again, that's completely defeating the purpose of, especially when people have to use the free devices, either at public centers or libraries and things like that. let's see it increases the data collection so for commercial data collection I really have a big problem with that I don think that we should be making more lists but not only does it make a list it makes a list of minors Now what you saying is you making and telling these applications, hey, you've got these thousands of little kids of minors and you don't know who is on the other side of that application. It could be a predator. Now they're getting an even more well-defined list of minors to be able to go after. I mean, we don't know who's on the other side, especially if they are outside the country, and you're providing basically a list of all these kiddos for them to target even more, which I have a problem with that. I believe that larger companies are fine with this because that gives them even more of a target, more of data collection for them to be able to target our kids in whatever way that they want. Again, we don't know who's behind all that. And how it works with other open source softwares, operating systems like Ubuntu and Fedora and Debian and Haiku and FreeDOS and on and on and on. I don't believe this bill is going to provide the protections that it is intended to do, which I know that that is what the bill sponsors would like to have happen. In the age of hackers, being smarter than the average bearer anymore, it may provide them even more information to hack into and steal and do what they want with that information. It can open up holes within the software for them to be able to get into. I mean, you're changing things. Not only is it a First Amendment, put that over here, but now you're putting in areas of a software, an application that can actually cause more security issues. And as we know, many people don't even update their operating systems with the latest and greatest security features, with security downloads or things to help protect, you know, not just their kiddos but their devices with. They don't do it. So now you're opening up even more holes for that to happen to and for hackers to have their way with. you know and it was talked about you know in committee trying to find my notes here it was talked about in committee that it was brought up that even the co-developers that were there they said it was fantastical they said that in the reality of operating systems of today this isn't going to work it's not going to make things better it's actually possibly going to make things actually even worse to be able to comply with this It is a big deal. It is a big deal to the little guys. Maybe not for the big guys, but for the little guys to be able to comply, it's also a problem. We heard that in committee. The lack of cybersecurity were heard. And again, to be able to compel them to take their code, again, which is protected by the First Amendment. There's too many challenges with the way the bill is written right now. I don't believe we should be taking anything from California matter of fact maybe we should be teaching California a thing or two I'm not sure that I would ever want anything from them they have shown time and time again that they are not exactly a state to model after and I'm asking for a no vote on this bill today and maybe we can work on it further to maybe square away the many, many, many challenges that are with this bill so I am asking for a no vote

Thank you, Madam Chair. So the first thing I'd like to say is I'm a any censorship of the internet. It's the last Wild Wild West thing that we have. And I believe that it's up to the parents. I don't need the state to raise my kids, and I don't believe in it takes a village to raise your children. To be honest, I don't like everybody that lives in the village, and I don't agree with all their ideas. So I want to be the one that raises my children. And this is what I did with my two children is when my daughter was, my youngest daughter was two years old, she decided, well, I don't think TV is good for our daughter. So she took away our TV and we had that TV gone for eight years. And what was interesting about that is I didn't get to watch TV for eight years either. But the first thing that my daughter, when she finally got old enough to want something for Christmas, was she had never seen a cartoon on TV, so she asked for an umbrella. That's what she wanted for Christmas, because she didn't see all the cartoons selling all the toys. And then the next year, what she asked for, she had seen it somewhere, she wanted one of them big exercise balls. The other thing is we decided we didn't want them to drink any pop. So I actually don't drink pop now because-

Yeah. Why do we keep trying to... All we're doing is putting the state at a disadvantage. Every time we try to put a rule on the Internet, we're given another state at an advantage, and we do not need the state. Let our parents be accountable. We need good parents. They are good parents. Let them control the Internet for their kids, what they look and they don't look at. And I'm a no vote on this.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I guess coming from school world again, tell a kid they can't do something, and they will figure out how to get that done. so you know this is not going to be a big secret lots of kids are going to say oh my parents said that I can't do this I can't have an account they'll figure it out kids are kids that's what we are wired to do we are wired to problem solve and figure that out kids do tell a 13 year old they can't have a TikTok account they'll figure it out I got a really interesting email that I think probably everybody did and I think it summarizes a lot of the really important points about this bill. This is somebody who works in the industry. They're a senior software engineer with professional experience in systems engineering, including work on projects for NASA. This person also developed an enterprise Linux distribution. She wrote, not only as a concerned citizen, but as someone with direct technical expertise in the operating systems and software infrastructure that this bill seeks to regulate. Consider a restaurant in Colorado that places an iPad at its entrance for customers to type in their name and party size for a reservation. No biggie, right? We all do that. Under this bill, the restaurant arguably controls the operating system software on that device, making it an operating system provider. Required to collect age information, add account setup. But there is no account setup. A customer typing their name for a dinner reservation is not creating an account. account Meanwhile the developer of the reservation app faces separate liability The app must request an age signal every time it launched The penalty for noncompliance is up to per affected minor This is not a far hypothetical It follows directly from the bill's own definitions. Any Colorado business using a tablet, a kiosk, or a computing device in a customer-facing role is potentially swept into this regulatory framework. This example reflects a broader structural problem. The bill never defines operating system, the foundational term on which every obligation depends, and defines operating system provider so broadly that it captures everyone from Apple and Google down to individual open source volunteers, graduate students building research projects, and small businesses that happen to own an iPad. The bill does not identify specific conduct that triggers liability. Instead, it casts an undefined regulatory net over the entire software supply chain and relies on the threat of massive per-minor penalties to compel compliance with obligations that no regulated party can clearly determine. This person writes, I share the goal of protecting children online. SB 26051, however, is not the way to achieve it. Again, we put a lot of regulations on businesses and families, and here's a regulation trying to solve a problem Australia implemented a similar bill and there's lots of articles out there kids are still finding ways to get around the rules so we can try and I'm in the business of kids we can try to bubble proof our world and protect our kids from things on the internet but I don't think this is going to do it tell a kid that they can't have an account on one of the major social media platforms, and they are going to figure out a way to do that. And in the meantime, we are going to penalize innocents. Please vote no on this bill.

Thank you, Chair. My opposition to the bill comes from the research of doing another bill, 1037 on protecting your Fourth Amendment privacy. And one of the things that we've learned as you go in there is that if you enter it into the computer, it's basically for sale. That data is now for sale. Not just to the police, but it is for sale to anybody who wants to purchase it. Now, I can't think of anybody who would want to purchase data specifically for learning the ages of somebody on that server, or being able to purchase the data of everybody and learning what the birthdays are. So there's a problem with if you're just entering in there and there's no actual verification, then lying is absolutely an option. And then that creates the penalty phase. And the penalty phase would then go into saying, well, if you're going to penalize this, then the next step is to make it mandatory and then make it mandatory with, like, age actual verification. So this is – I wouldn't see this as a end-all, be-all because, one, it won't work. because if you just if you leave it at that So I think this would be the next step in achieving what is actually wanted to do is to actually have to have some verification Maybe the sponsor will speak to that. But even with that, ultimately with that verification, that verification, unless there's something in the bill that says that will not become third party data, which I don't know how you would do because everything is third party data in one way, shape or form. and even if it's not third-party data that's on the actual platform that is sold by, and maybe there's a ban, then there's the black market data. For instance, when we looked at the Fourth Amendment is not for sale act, you also have the data that comes off the black market, the HIPAA data that law enforcement would otherwise not be allowed to have. It's available on the black market. this type of data, even if it was banned, would be available on the black market. So who would go to the black market to find out the ages of all the users of this software? I can't think of, I mean, I can think of some, you know, there's probably some good reasons, but there are a lot of bad reasons that people would go and purchase the data and subscribe to the data for any data that comes across the Internet that shows that somebody's birthday is between this date and this date. And if the individual that entered that data lied, well, then that puts them at risk for penalties. So I think it's a great intention. I mean, it really is. It really is because it's really clearly intended to protect the kids from harm. Now, we could really protect the kids from harm by taking these pornographic books out of their school libraries that you can read on ratedbooks.org.

I am. I am. We're talking about protecting kids, and we're protecting them from online harm, and the online harm could come from someplace like their school library or the public library where you can access, where kids can access no-kidding grooming porn. And now we're trying to protect them from the Internet when we put in the public space really about all the porn they could ever want. So I'm going to be a no on this bill just because the data that is going into these platforms becomes third-party data, that is sold as third-party data. That is everywhere, and everybody can buy it, and there are some really, really dark purposes for people to buy it, and I don't think we should be making that available.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I would like to address some of the issues that were brought up. First of all, I want to make sure anyone that doesn't know is that I am a software engineer. I have a bachelor's and a master's in computer science. My master's was in operating systems. That's what I spent my time doing in industry. So, yeah, I actually do know how operating systems work. I also wanted to address the comment about different kinds of open source operating systems like different variants of Linux like Ubuntu et cetera they all excluded We don call out specific names We call out open source licenses I also wanted to address the model of how this, what they call in the bill, an age signal, how this information tracks back and forth between the operating system or application store and the application. It does not get sent every single time. The application is started. The reason for that is we don't want phishing to happen, to have an application try to guess how old the kid is. So it gets sent only on initial launch of the application. And then depending upon how the system is implemented by the vendor, there are ways to, as the users say, I would like to update my age signal. I would like to get a new signal because now I know I just went into a new age bracket. and I want to be able to access additional stuff. That is initiated by the user. So there is not a continuous stream of age signal that is happening that an app can use to phish and try to guess how old the kid is. And that, again, is to protect the data. Also want to address the comment about shared spaces like libraries. The people working in the library can set up the system as they wish. So if it's a shared general space, they want to set it up as an adult. They can do that and leave it there. In that state, people could also log in through their own logins, and then it would set based on their state. So it is certainly workable in shared spaces. If it's a kid's area, maybe you want to set it to the age that you're expecting kids on that device to be. Those are all options. regarding the argument about an iPad at a restaurant. A restaurant is not the vendor of an operating system. That is not correct. The vendor is providing a tool, or the restaurant is providing a tool to their customers. So they can set up the iPad as they wish. They would set it up once. When they set up the iPad, they could set it for adult or whatever they want to set it to. And they would have the apps on that iPad. that apply to the users. It's not a general open internet space. You have, say, their one application you use to order or whatever they use. So it really doesn't apply there. They are not accountable. They are not a vendor of an operating system. Let's see. In terms of updates to software, if you have old software on your computer at home and you are from the old school where 1.0 always meant a lot of bugs, so you don't update, That's your choice. You don't have to update. The application that you download will send a signal to the operating system. It won't get anything back, and it can go upon its merry way. So that's your choice. Don't install the new operating system. What else? Oh, and just want to be clear that this bill is not claiming to be an end-all to be-all. it is claiming to be a tool that parents can use as they choose to use. It's a tool for parents. It doesn't take responsibility off the parent. It doesn't take responsibility off the app or the app store. They all have a share in the responsibility. They all can make choices. Oh, and the First Amendment argument about software. It is true that there has been cases that have said that code is a First Amendment right, like what You put in your code, and I think the one landmark case had to do with encryption code that was in. Somebody had it up on GitHub so the world could see their code, and they were free to do that. That's fine if you want to post your code somewhere and let anybody look at it, and, you know, you are free to do that. But once your code is functioning software that is a consumer product, it is subject to consumer protection laws, and it is not compelled speech. It is consumer protection. I think that's everything. And I urge an aye vote. And if anybody has questions, one of the issues I think with this bill has been that we did a strike below. And a lot of people who are writing or previously sending emails, they're talking about the old bill. We have clarified a lot in the strike below. So as I'm getting emails, like that, I'm saying, hey, this is the bill now. Take a look at it and make sure you're operating on the same bill that we are passing. So if anybody has any questions about how this works, please feel free to ask me. I will

House Bill 1420 by Representatives Paschal and Richardson, also Senators Colker and Pelton R, concerning changes to the approval process for light mitigating technology that is required to be installed at certain wind power to energy generation facilities.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move HB 26-14-20.

So what this bill does, back in 2022, we passed a bill that requires wind-generating energy turbines to have, right now they have lighting on them so that airplanes don't crash into them. In 2022, we passed a law to say, hey, you need to have airplane detection lighting systems, which is kind of like a smart lighting system that only comes on when airplanes come into the space, flashes, when they leave, it goes off. So the idea being to reduce light pollution and to not intrude on the sleep patterns of people that live there. So great bill. the issue that has come up in the field is that there can be delays in getting the appropriate federal permits and there has also been delays in supply chain issues in obtaining these specific kind of lights so all this bill does is allow a locality to give an extension for the project for two years in order to get their permits cleared and get their product in hand at the locality government's discretion.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I've never spoken from this mic before. Not very different. For those of you that have had the joy of driving around the eastern plains at night, you may have seen what we sometimes less than affectionately refer to as red light districts If you coming in from Burlington heading to Denver about 50 miles out from Lyman you start seeing the lights of Rush Creek Wind Farm and others. They do perform an important safety function, though, because aircraft and wind turbines, when they collide, end up being a very bad thing. So having the red lights for safety made a lot of sense. being able to turn them off when there's no aircraft around makes even more sense and that's what was done in 2022 um and as my co-prime had mentioned we've since found that there are other authorizations other than just the ffa faa that are required fcc also is involved so as you said this bill kind of sets the clock when all federal permits have been received but it also empowers local governments to grant extensions and track progress. So you retain a little bit of local community communication with the developers of the wind farms. It's just an important but very simple fix that makes sure that what was passed in 22 is practical and can be implemented. So I would ask for a yes vote on this.

Senate Bill 101 by Senators Pelton, B. and Roberts, also Representatives Richardson and Likens, concerning measures to assist local governments in complying with landfill methane emission reduction regulations adopted by the Air Quality Control Commission.

I move Senate Bill 26101. I don't move her committee report because it came through with no amendments unanimously. So move to the bill.

Thank you, Madam Chair and colleagues. This bill responds to something that we do a little bit too frequently in this building, and that's providing unfunded mandates on local governments. Regulation 31 went into effect in February of this year. It addresses excess methane production and air quality around landfills, a necessary set of rules that took about two years to put in place. But when you hit certain triggers, local landfills can be required to spend a couple hundred thousand a year in monitoring up to millions if they actually have to capture methane. And a lot of our landfills are in small counties that really don't have the money to implement right away. Now, that implementation can be delayed for a few years, but there's still engineering work that has to be done. And what we don't want to see is tipping fees raising to the point where people don't dispose of their refuse properly and just leave it wherever they find a place to dump it. So this bill opens up the Community Action Fund and mineral funds as a source of grant funding for those folks that run landfills to address the problem. It's matching grants. The money isn't there to cover everything, but it allows some prioritization. So it's a good bill. I would recommend you vote yes, but I know my co-prime has more to say.

Thank you Madam Chair Senate Bill 101 is in regards to publicly owned landfills which are primarily owned by counties and they are expecting significant capital expenditures to comply with Regulation 31 which was adopted by the Air Quality Control Commission earlier this year in an effort to limit methane emissions. This bill ensures compliance with Regulation 31 is an eligible use of various state grants and that public landfills will be prioritized over private and awarding grants. These are both very important ways that the state can assist local governments to comply with new regulations. We ask for your yes vote on Senate Bill 101.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So I said in on the transportation, local government, and housing, very good bill. We need help. They created these rules for our landfills. where it's going to cost $2 to $5 million, our rural landfills. I have a lot of landfills in my district. They can't afford these fees, so these grants will help. But what's interesting, and I talked about this last night, it's an FYI, where I live in the Four Corners, there is more methane leaking through the ground because it's fractured ground. It's a huge gas field in the four corners, and they say that there's more methane leaking natural than there is from all of the landfills combined in the state of Colorado. And there is a solution. If you would let them drill the natural gas, burn it for energy and for power production, then you would have less methane leaking out. and then you would get severance taxes off of that that you could use the severance taxes to help pay the local county commissioners to be in compliance with Rule 31 on their landfills. So I would suggest a yes vote.

House Bill 1417 by Representatives Soper and Bacon, also Senators Roberts and Rich, concerning the disability-related accommodation requirement of a testing entity.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Bill 1417 and the House Education Committee report.

Can I do it? Please. Members.

Representative Bacon. Thank you. Or ML Bacon.

Members, and I know no one's here. Did you know that there are things called conceptual amendments? And then after we do them, they get written in the record. That was for Rep. Johnson. I know she's not here. So here is the committee report on how we did a conceptual amendment because there was a typo in the statutory reference. And that's it. We encourage an aye vote. It was hilarious in education. Any objection?

Members, sometimes you have to run a bill that's a we really, really, really mean it type bill. And if you've served any number of years in this body, chances are you've probably done one or two or maybe more of those types of bills. This is one of those bills. So back in 2024, Representative Bacon and I teamed up to bring the Americans with Disabilities Act into Colorado's anti-discrimination statute for the purpose of testing accommodations for professional exams and high-stakes exams. These are the exams after you leave the educational setting. So, for example, you go to law school, you have to take the bar exam. You go to medical school, you have to take the medical boards. You study securities, you have to take the securities exam, on and on. There's hundreds of these exams. And what was happening was accommodations may have been granted for an individual in elementary school, middle school, high school, even in college. But then all of a sudden, once it came to the professional exam, they weren't being recognized. So we had people having to go to other states, take the same professional exam with an accommodation, and then come back into Colorado. We worked together to change the law. And unfortunately, last month, a Denver District Court judge ruled that our law, that we passed unanimously back in 24, didn't apply to the medical board based on a very technical reading of the law. So now we're wanting to make it explicitly clear that, yes, the boards that we meant to have included are included. And that's the bill.

Thank you. And what my co-prime is not sharing about is the underlying theme and reason that we passed the bill a couple of years ago and now need this amendment, I'm sorry, this bill to update the statute. But if any of you have ever had a sibling, a child, or a loved one with, say, dyslexia or a learning disability, well, when they're in school, when they're in kindergarten through high school, they are supported. But the truth of the matter is your learning disability doesn't go away because you've graduated from high school. You still have it when you're 25 or 35 or 45. And what we learned is while students are protected and supported from when they're their littlest learner all the way up to high school, imagine that they go through college and they go through medical school or law school and have to take an exam. Go ahead. Pause. Squeeze. well they too need that same support and our laws were failing and that's why we passed this bill and that's why we're passing it we're asking you to pass it again to be very very clear to the courts that we expect these types of accommodations to exist in the same ways they would have if they were in high school and so with that members we urge an aye vote

I do want to ask more specifically as relates to the question of our current laws. Because under CATA, I would think that these accommodations would be enforceable because these are public accommodations, right, that need to be able to provide accommodation on grounds of disability. And so why is what we presently have insufficient for the purposes of this question?

Thank you. Madam Chair, thank you, Representative Luck. That's an excellent question. So when it comes to the NBME, and that's the national, I can't remember, it's the medical boards. I'm sure I could find where this is actually to find out, but the NBME is not based in Colorado. They will do the medical board exam typically at a law school or at the stock show. that gets the classification as the place of public accommodation. So, you know, they're wheelchair acceptable. They have ADA bathrooms. I mean, those are all fine. The court said that in providing then the actual accommodation piece, because the statute links the two together, if you don't own and control the public place of accommodation And then you're also the testing entity because the way we had drafted the law back in 24, they were together. And that was – I don't think we really thought about how that would play out between the two sections. But almost never do you have a testing entity own and control the facility in which they're doing the test at. And so you'll have someone who provides the test, who does the accommodations, but then you may have volunteers that are the proctors or someone who's paid a nominal amount as a contractor and then you've rented the location. So you actually have about three different entities that can be involved in an examination. And so the court basically was saying that if one is not subject because they're not all part of the same entity, then none of them are. And so we're just making it very clear that yes, they're all included together.

Thank you Madam Chair That case, obviously I haven't read it but your description of it is very concerning and to what degree is that going to impact on other spaces as well other services, other interactions where you have an outside entity contracting with a hotel for instance and is not providing necessary services in a particular space And should that question, if that's the interpretation the court has made related to CATA, should that question not be answered in CATA so as to provide clarity for all in the disability community regardless of those other contractual arrangements that are at play?

Thank you, Madam Chair. And Representative Luck, I may ask you to kind of clarify your question a little bit. I think I might understand it. so while it applies to this section of law applies to testing accommodations cotta as a whole still has places of public accommodation to where those would have the physical things would be required so if you're hosting an exam like at a hotel that that would still have to be included this says that if all those entities are separated out like i i write the exam, I work with you to proctor the exam, and then we work, for example, with Representative Bacon who owns the physical location for the examinees to come and take the exam, that because we have separated this out, the court is saying that the way the law is currently written it doesn apply because it would all have to be one entity And we saying that it doesn matter if you separated out it the testing entity themselves that we wanting to catch up here And that while you may be a contractor, we don't necessarily care about you as the proctor. We care about the person who's making the determination in terms of whether an accommodation is granted or not granted.

accommodation. Now in education, we have IDEA and we have the Rehabilitation Act, Section 504. CATA doesn't necessarily cover those things. So it's one thing to say to a restaurant to have a ramp. It's another to talk about accommodation for whom, who has to apply it, and for what purposes. And so while people may have ADA actions against an entity, and you know, that's federal, so regardless of where the entity is for accommodation. In the state law, we needed to do two things. We needed to ground that the people of Colorado have standing for an accommodation when it comes to things like tests, even if the proctor or the provider of that entity is not a state entity or based in the state. So we wanted to build the bill around the person taking the test and that that is standing for this law. And then we also wanted to introduce the concepts of this type of accommodation beyond physical space, which is where CATA typically lives. For all those other things, people typically go to the United States Department of Ed or to the DOJ because the federal laws are more comprehensive on this issue. And so that's why it was important to bring these components, which are ADA-like, into our statute. Now, the court, you know, had a few issues with the language on state entity, and the national boards, right, are not, you know, they're not based in Colorado, but we wanted to be clear, and you can see the way that we wrote it, is that any entity anywhere that is delivering these services to people in Colorado, this must apply.

Senate Bill 132 by Senators Roberts and Carson, also Representatives Joseph and Soper, concerning requirement that a law enforcement officer offer a voluntary preliminary screening test for alcohol to a driver.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move SB 132 and the Appropriations Committee report.

Yes, Madam Chair. In the Appropriations Committee, we appropriated money to the Recreation Cash Fund based on conversation with, I believe, DNR, and we ask for a yes vote on this particular amendment.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, members, this bill is called Magnus' Law. It's named after Magnus White. He was a member of the United States bicycle team out of Boulder, Colorado. And he was training one day very close to his home, and he was hit and killed by a motorist. I do want to say his father is right outside the chamber. A horrible, horrible event happened. Things got worse. because law enforcement didn't ask for a breath test, even though they had the discretion to do so. They didn't inquire about the intoxication of the driver, and evidence was lost and got stale. The result was the inability to prosecute for what should have been charged. What Magnus' law, or Senate Bill 132, does, is it requires that any time an accident has occurred in which a life is taken or serious bodily harm is done, that law enforcement must offer a breath test, the ability to collect evidence. This is optional, but it is the early stages of being able to have that initial evidence be taken. We also lay out the framework for what has to be included in the officer's report as well from those early stages of the investigation. Because right now in Colorado, we have a horrible problem. Road traffic accidents that involve death or serious bodily injury, especially with vulnerable road users like cyclists, are increasing. And as a state, we have a duty to do whatever it takes to crack down on that. And I know some also in this chamber, including my colleague from Mesa County, I worry about you. And we should send a very clear message to all Coloradans to be mindful. Cut down on distractions. If you even have one drink, don't get behind a wheel. Call a friend. And this is the first step to being able to say, we want to crack down and get that evidence, because if someone does take a life or do serious bodily harm, that this could lead to the appropriate charges.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move L007 to SB132.

Thank you, Madam Chair. In our judiciary, there were some concerns that were brought up around the requirement for officers to document on body-worn cameras in the event they don't have a working breath test. We consulted with the Attorney General Office for independent guidance They informed us that with this mandate an officer forgetting to talk to themselves during an active crash could lead to charges of official misconduct regardless if there was a valid reason to not administer the preliminary breath test Additionally, if the body cam provision stayed in, it would require more language to clarify how it fits in the body cam statute, if it is evidenced, and how it is stored. The goal of the provision is to document the reason the preliminary screening test was not administered, and this can still occur in the written incident report. and separately we've been asked to add language clarifying extenuating circumstances. So we are adding circumstances beyond the officer's reasonable control. For this reason, we are offering this amendment to remove the body cam provision and clarify extenuating circumstances. And I just wanted to note, you know, the work that we do here is in collaboration with all of our colleagues and I just want to thank Representative Clifford for his contribution to this particular amendment, and we ask for a yes vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a very important bill to my district, so please allow me a minute to talk a little bit about the bill, and I just want to thank Representative Soper for sponsoring this particular bill with me and Senator Roberts and Senator Carson. This has been a real labor of love, even though we came about this bill because of a tragedy. I rise in support of Senate Bill 26-132 Magnus' Law. This bill addresses a narrow but important gap in how we investigate the most serious traffic collisions in Colorado, those involving death or suspected serious bodily injury. In those moments when a crash has just occurred and lives have been lost or irreparably changed, One of the most time-sensitive questions is whether impairment played a role. Yet today, whether a preliminary brief screening test is offered at the scene can depend on discretion, timing, or confusion among responding agencies. And when that step is missed, critical evidence may be lost forever. This bill changes that by requiring law enforcement officers to offer a voluntary preliminary screening test to a driver involved in such a collision when certain conditions are met. Members, it is an offer requirement, not a mandate to take a test. The driver may refuse and that refusal carries no penalty, no license consequences, and it is not admissible in court. The officer must also provide a clear plain language advisement so the driver understands their rights, that test is voluntary, that it may inform further investigation or arrest decision, and that neither taking nor refusing the test can be used against them in court. This is about consistency and preserving evidence at the most critical moment. A preliminary screening test takes only moments, but when it is not, offered, investigators may lose key information and be forced into longer, more complex, and sometimes inconclusive inquiries. This legislation is named to honor Magnus White, a 17-year-old cyclist whose life was tragically taken while training on a Colorado roadway. In the aftermath of the crash, investigators were faced with the consequences of missing early impairment data. that data may have been crucial to understanding what happened. Magnus' law ensured that in the future, that opportunity is not left to chance. It establishes a clear, uniform expectation that in the most serious crashes, this voluntary test will be offered every time. This bill strengthens clarity, consistency, and fairness in our investigation processes while fully preserving our constitutional rights as Coloradans and Americans. I ask for your support in this bill, Senate Bill 26-132.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. So I asked Carlos or Rep Brown to come up here with me because he's going to be reading a testimony that I heard in judiciary. I will say that I am in absolute favor of this bill. I think that it is something that we definitely need. I was under the impression that most people, when they got into an accident, that they were already given a breathalyzer. But it turns out that the only person who is tested for alcohol is the person who dies, which is oftentimes the victim. And we heard a lot of stories and a lot of people's experiences in judiciary, which were very moving, including Magnus's. And I wanted to share one that really had me. I mean, I will be honest, like I started crying because it was really emotional. My friend Kyle, who owns a range, he saw that there was an accident nearby his range. and it took place on September 15th of 2024 on Highway 34 just west of County Road 1. He saw that there was a horrible accident, multiple cars, and I've seen the pictures. You could barely make out that it was a car. He pulled out a little girl who was in the back seat, and then there was another man who was her father, and he died while my friend Kyle was holding his hand. That day, both of her parents, her name's Angel, both of her parents passed away. Their names were Floyd and Sandra O'Doad. And I wanted my colleague here to read her testimony because I think that it is really moving. And I just want you guys to explain what some of these victims go through, especially not knowing if there was alcohol involved or what exactly caused that car accident, especially when you lose immediate family members, I think that it's the least that we could do so that they have a little bit of closure.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Rep. Lanell, for allowing me to come here. And members, don't get me wrong, I'm up here also in support of this bill, and I volunteer to read this testimony for my colleague here because I fully support this bill as well My name is Angel O and I am representing myself On September 15 2024 my parents car was hit and struck by an 18-year-old driver with me standing in the back seat, riding in the back seat, I'm sorry. I don't remember much from that night, only that I woke up in the hospital asking for my parents. It was what I assumed to be hours later that a trooper came into my room and informed me that both died. I spent months recovering from the injuries, which included a broken hip, bruised tailbone, and fractured bones in my back. But none of these injuries could compare to the mental recovery I suffered from great loss, self-guilt, grief, and an image of my parents lying in a casket that I will forever, that will be forever burned into my memory. My first question to my family when they explained what had happened that night was, well, he was drunk. Or, well, was he drunk? Was he high? Only to be told that the answer was unknown because officers neglected to test him that night claiming that they had no probable cause. I thought to myself, no probable cause? My parents were dead as a result from a reckless decision that someone else had made. In my mind, that is more than probable cause. Because how does someone

Thank you, Madam Speaker. and I had another case that I was going to read, but Alexa's mom sent in a letter she'd like you all to hear, so I agreed to do that for her. My name is Callie Bartel, and I am the mother of Alexa Bartel, my beautiful, vibrant 20-year-old daughter who should still be here today. Alexa was an amazing young woman. She was kind, full of life, and deeply loved by her family and friends. She had a future, dreams, and so much ahead of her. That was all taken away in an instant. I am here today in opposition to this bill. While I understand the intent to clarify or refine statutory language, this proposal creates a framework that ties the severity of a charge not to the nature of the conduct, but to the number of victims. In doing so it risks devaluing individual lives and limiting the ability to hold offenders fully accountable for extremely dangerous behavior What happened to Alexa was not a youthful mistake It was the result of repeated dangerous choices that escalated over time. The people responsible didn't act in the moment. They did this again and again, knowing it could severely hurt someone. In my daughter's case, the individuals responsible engaged in repeated acts over the course of weeks. They threw large rocks in moving vehicles, targeting the driver's side, fully aware of the grave risk their actions posed. By the time Alexa was killed, they had already hit other vehicles, injured drivers, and they kept going. Multiple people were impacted. Vehicles were severely damaged, individuals were injured, and several incidents came dangerously close to resulting in additional fatalities. The fact that only one person died was not due to a lack of risk or intent, it was due to chance. After Alexa's car was struck and she crashed, they did not call for help. They went back, cheered, and took photos. This wasn't an accident. It was a pattern of behavior that showed a complete disregard for human life. A jury heard all the facts in this case. They considered and rejected the argument that this was a youthful mistake and instead found this conduct demonstrated extreme indifference to human life. Laws like extreme indifference exist for cases like this, where the conduct is not impulsive but deliberate and repeatedly dangerous. Under this bill, conduct of that nature could be reclassified solely because the outcome did not include multiple deaths or specific categories of victims. That approach shifts the focus away from the defendant's actions and mental state, which are central to the concept of extreme indifference. This bill would restrict the discretion and impose rigid thresholds that do not account for the full context of a crime. Removing this law sends the wrong message about accountability and what our system values. I need to say this clearly. Alexa's life mattered. She was my daughter. She was loved beyond words. Losing her has left a hole in my life that will never be filled. Please do not pass a law that diminishes the value of her life or any single life by suggesting that one loss is not enough. This isn't just about Alexa. It's about protecting other families from experiencing this kind of loss. I don't want anyone else to have to stand where I am today. Please don't take away the tools that recognize the seriousness of what happened to my daughter. Thank you for your time and consideration. And in my specific industry and what I do for a living, I've seen families stand over that hole. I've seen mothers and fathers weep. I've seen them have to be dragged from a cemetery. I've seen them go back and fight with the gatekeepers to spend the night sleeping on that hole. I'm talking from experience. Until you see the hurt and the pain, you just can't understand. because all anybody sees is the headlines. I deal with folks like this when it really matters, and that when they trying to respectfully put their loved ones to rest And I know I can convey today to you what I seen but it not pretty And it's sad. And it makes me sick. I couldn't imagine if this happened to my daughter. I couldn't imagine. And actions have consequences. They have consequences. And I don't want to live in a society where we don't hold people accountable. This was somebody's daughter. I mean, she'll never get a chance, another chance to do anything. and I don't see why somebody that put her in that hole should get that chance. It's not right. I never tell you how to vote, and I never will. But I ask you to vote against this bill. You're going to hear a lot of stories today. These are a lot of families of a lot of victims that are living through hell right now, and they wake up every day. Alexa's not coming home. Alexa's mom will never see her again. She'll never get to hug her again. She'll never get to smell her hair again or kiss her. It's never going to happen. And I don't see how just saying it was some kids making a stupid mistake or any other excuse we can think of should take that away from Alex's mom. Justice matters. I couldn't imagine somebody getting away with something this heinous or getting another chance and having to go to sleep every night knowing that that person is free on the streets again. For those of you that have kids, I just ask you to think about that. What would you do if this was your kid? I know what I would do. So please, vote your conscience. Understand everybody in here is going to have a different vote. But Alexis mattered and Alexis' mom mattered. And so do the families of the rest of the victims that are impacted by crimes like this. And they shouldn't go unpunished. I urge a no vote.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Ma Kang. Members, I urge a no vote on 1281. And I want to begin with Ma Kang, a 42-year-old woman, an immigrant community member. She sought to better her community and rid of the violence she knew plagued her neighbors. She sought to better her community and rid of the violence she knew plagued her neighbors. Ma was a refugee sought safety from Mindamar. only to find her death at the hands of killers who had a complete indifference for the value of human life. When they unloaded bullets into her neighborhood, she was outside unloading a vehicle with her family nearby. And then a car drove by, and gang members opened fire. This was a gang-related drive-by shooting, with multiple shooters firing from a moving vehicle into a residential area. And Ma Kang lost her life in her son's arms after she was shot in the head. A family and a community was shocked with this senseless act of violence that took a completely innocent bystander's life. These killers didn't know her. They didn't target Ma Kang. They didn't care who they hit. They struck buildings, cars, Ma Kang, and turned a neighborhood into a shooting range. This is extreme indifference murder. Drive-by shootings into neighborhoods with people out and about are the definition of extreme indifference. These shooters don't care who or how many they kill. Prosecutors didn't have the evidence to support murder after deliberation, so they charged what was appropriate under the law, murder with extreme indifference. H.B. 1281, if H.B. 1281 were law, Ma King's murder would have faced parole eligibility because according to the words on this bill's page, she was just one person. In reality, Ma King was not just one person. Her killer's conduct is not just second degree murder. This was no accident. This was choosing to unleash lethal force into a community and deserves life in prison. If someone shoots indiscriminately into a neighborhood, intentionally causing chaos and fear, unleashing lethal force and kills an innocent 42-year-old woman, if we call that a lesser form of murder, what are we telling Colorado communities about their safety? What are we telling them about how much we value their lives? Vote no on 1281.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to ask you to vote no on House Bill 1281. I'm going to be with my story of Angel Ruiz. Angel Ruiz was 18 years old. He was at a birthday party in a hotel room with friends. Despite being behind closed doors, he was murdered. His murderer came to the party to cause a disturbance. Several members inside forced him out into the hallway and told him to leave. Instead of leaving, the murderer made an affirmative decision. He pulled out a gun and he fired multiple rounds through a closed hotel room door. Hotel hallway is pretty narrow. The multiple rounds were ten rounds that the police found. point-blank range. Inside that room the murderer knew that multiple people were gathered because he had just been pushed out Four were struck by gunfire but only one was killed Angel Reyes Now under the arbitrary fact patterns carved out in this bill, 1281, you qualify for a life sentence. but ask yourself, what if one of the other two victims shot had only been grazed? What if they had been behind the murdered victim and not shot at all? Would the killer's actions be any less dangerous? Any less deserving to be removed from society? Remember, this is through a closed door at point-blank range. This was not a split-second mistake. It was not recklessness. It was not chance. This was a confrontation, and the murderer had been asked to leave. But that person chose to escalate it. He could have walked away, but he did not. Instead, he fired blindly through a closed door, 10 rounds, into a confined space where multiple people were at a birthday party. Like I said, 10 shell casings, 10 rounds fired. Prosecutor said, quote, a miracle that more people were not killed. This was not an accident. There was a disregard for every life in that room, and the outcome was pure luck. The case was charged as first-degree murder with extreme indifference, along with multiple counts of attempted murder. This wasn't just about targeting one person. It was about endangering everyone. Chief District Attorney, Deputy District Attorney Gary Dawson said, Angel Riz died in that hotel room not knowing the name of the person who fired through the door or even seeing the face of his killer, but the jury did. Under 1281, we're told this isn't enough. Members, if you're firing 10 rounds at point blank range through a closed hotel door, that is extreme indifference. As the deputy district attorney said, it was pure luck that no one else was killed but only one. But one is enough. enough. I reject that someone can be kicked out of a party, turn around, raise their weapons and fire 10 rounds, killing a teenager. That's not enough to justify life without parole. It doesn't matter and it shouldn't matter that the other victims were not killed It was extreme indifference It was reckless behavior It was murderous behavior There needs to be consequences in society for this kind of behavior There needs to be justice and truth for the victims. That's what extreme indifference is for. I urge a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Members, I heard this bill in judiciary, so I wanted to speak to the elements of the bill so we can all make informed decisions today. In Judiciary Committee, we often see increases in penalties and charges and elements of crimes as individual sentencing changes without regard to how that might interact with the rest of our criminal code. And it is important for us in this body to take a holistic look at how these crimes stack against each other. It's exactly why we had a group that used to do that work with different perspectives represented, but now we no longer have that commission, so we are tasked with doing this ourselves. And I think that it is important to note that this bill is doing that work. And I want to take a moment to thank everybody who did work on this bill, because it took a deep analysis of national and Colorado case law and an analysis of 50 states' criminal statute for each crime and a review of statewide filings and affidavits for these crimes in Colorado over a period of two years. And so that's what this bill is about. It's about bringing fairness, but most importantly, it's about proportionality to how Colorado treats the most serious offenses. We are one of the most punitive states when it comes to extreme indifference crimes, but what we lack is a structure that consistently accounts for how and why a death occurred. And I want to be very clear. When there is a loss of human life, we have to have consequences. Nobody here supporting this bill is going to say otherwise. But those consequences also do need to be different when we are talking about somebody who plotted and made a deliberate choice versus somebody who was reckless and did not have a specific intent to kill another person. And our current laws are all supposed to recognize that difference. It is the cornerstone of criminal law. and mens rea is one of the first things that we learn in criminal law and so I I think that that is the perspective we are trying to bring with this bill and the unfortunate truth is that in Colorado that is not how things are actually being sentenced we heard many stories of this in committee we heard one story of a passenger who was in a vehicle being charged with a longer sentence than the individual in the vehicle who actually shot the firearm and killed another individual. In current law, a single death caused by extreme indifference can be treated the same as conduct that puts many lives at risk. And I just want to pause and say, I understand that for victims and for the families impacted by this, that you're going to want probably the most harshest sentence. You've asked us to think of our own children, and there is a reason we don let victims write sentences because if it was my children I certainly would not be taking a holistic look at our criminal code and how these charges stack against each other But that is the role that we have here today and that is what we are tasked with My philosophy personally is that anybody can be rehabilitated, anybody can grow and learn from their mistakes and become a better person, and that our criminal justice system that focuses on punitive measures rather than rehabilitation has not made us more safe. And what we should do is recognize that services, ending poverty, addressing wealth inequality, providing stable housing, that those things have shown to lead to crime going down. And I hope that we can continue to focus efforts there because that is really what's most important here, is that we prevent these things from ever happening in the first place. And so while we keep pushing forward that work, I do want to still urge a yes vote on this bill because it draws clear lines between different levels of culpability. So here is what is in this bill. It ensures that first-degree murder under an extreme indifference theory is reserved for the most aggravated situations. Those are situations where you have multiple victims, vulnerable victims like children, or deaths involving first responders in the line of duty. And then it takes a look at where you have a single tragic death under those same circumstances, and it still treats that very seriously. It is placed under second-degree murder, but there is also enhanced sentencing added into this bill for crimes of violence that reflect the gravity of that conduct. And it also addresses a gap that many families in Colorado have been asking for and know all too well that I have not heard as part of our discussion, so I do want to flag that, which is deaths caused by reckless and repeated dangerous driving. The bill creates aggravated vehicular homicide cases where there are clear, dangerous, aggravating factors like repeated DUI convictions, fleeing law enforcement, or driving at extreme speeds. And it creates a clear offense of negligent vehicular homicide, making sure that when someone's criminal negligence behind the wheel takes a life, there is a consistent and appropriate level of accountability. The families of loved ones in those situations deserve a system that recognizes the harm caused by these actions. And I want to thank the sponsors for responding to their calls for that. The changes that are in this bill are extremely important for consistency with national standards. We heard over and over again how the standards we have in Colorado law really do not match what you see in any other states. And it causes confusion in how these cases are charged. And so we owe it to families. We owe it to victims to get the justice system right. And I think that this is an important step in the right direction. And ask for your yes vote.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. My fourth year in this building, I literally could not have imagined how we could get more ludicrous. Four years of listening to these ideas of hypocrisy. I had a story I was going to read, but listening over and over to how you can justify at all that this bill is worth anything good for your constituents has let me go rogue. Look, I have no problem with second chances. But at what cost? You are blanketing, again, a crime that has serious impact to other people. you're blanketing a sentence

Representative Weinberg, please do not be accusatory in your statements. Thank you.

Representative, you have one minute remaining.

Assistant Majority Leader Bacon.

AML Bacon, you have 50 seconds.

AML Bacon, your time has expired.

Representative Gonzalez.

Representative Wook.

Representative Marshall.

Representative Taggart.

with a sentence of life without parole in addition to other charges that amounted to 48 years in prison that run consecutively with the first degree murder. Under House Bill 1281, because only one person died where no qualifying aggravator applies, this act now with 1281 would become second-degree murder. we are told this crime is less and the individual is less culpable because he wasn't targeted members for me with my simple logic this is backwards Someone who fires into a house without caring who or how many people they hit and or kill is even more dangerous than when it's targeted to one individual. It certainly is not less dangerous. So I ask you, if someone can leave a party in this case, get a gun, come back, fire into a house full of people, kill one, and with this bill, we are told that's not serious enough to be first-degree murder. I'm not sure then what is first degree murder when you plan something to that degree. Thank you. Representative Bradfield.

Representative Richardson.

Representative Kelty

Representative Flannell. Representative Flannell.

Representative Brooks.

from my home. I could not understand how that had happened. I still have a hard time understanding how somebody could drive across, move from the right lane all the way into the left lane, go through oncoming traffic across Perry Street down into a gas station and slam into somebody. But yet that is indeed what happened. There was a woman with a seven-year-old child standing just feet away from where the murderer struck. They ran thankfully in fear to escape harm. There was no breaking no maneuvers to try to avoid the situation, his choice to drive with such indifference were so deliberate that he actually knocked the fuel pump off the moorings that Lieutenant Colonel Matt Anderson was using slammed into him with such force that pinned him between the gas pump and his own vehicle and then knocked that gas pump feet away He tried to escape punishment that day by telling police that he was just a passenger in the truck, but thanks to good detective work, they learned he was the only occupant and driver. Nothing spontaneous about this whatsoever. It was a series of decisions, and that's critical because this was not the first time. This is a man who had been caught before. This is a man that had been warned before. This is somebody that had been punished before. Still, he chose yet again to drink and drive. It's not negligence, not recklessness. It's repeated knowing disregard for human life. He knew if he drank and drove again, his conduct would practically be certain to cause this outcome at that gas station. children were sitting in a car. A father was standing outside fueling the vehicle. This man drove a truck at speed above the speed limit, clearing all that traffic through a median right into Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, killing him in front of his family. There was no remorse shown whatsoever. No accountability shown whatsoever. He made no acknowledgement of what he had done. The judge in the case noted he had not shown one ounce of empathy. Council Rock Police had done a fantastic job with the body cam in being able to capture that extreme indifference that day. This gentleman was more concerned about where his glasses were. And in fact, when he was told that there were children inside the vehicle, his response, hey, what happened to my truck? He knowingly created a deadly risk to everyone, did it anyway, and here is where it's a little bit different from an accusation, a prosecutorial misconduct, a hammer to try to get somebody to plea bargain. Jury agreed. The jury of his peers agreed. He was charged first-degree murder, extreme indifference. Jury agreed, convicted. Under this bill, please keep in mind that because only one person died and was not under 12 years old, Lieutenant Colonel Anderson was not a first responder, and yet, yes, his three-year-old son did sustain a skull fracture and a brain bleed. No one else had serious bodily injury, so the bill's aggravators would simply not apply. it would become second-degree murder. Lesser somehow, then, certainly is not made less for the family. Again, it's a man who repeatedly chose to drink and drive, repeatedly risked human life, and eventually killed somebody. Not a mistake. Mistake happens one time. It was a pattern. So I ask you, if a man can drink, drive, risk lives again and again, cross multiple lanes of traffic at speed, kill a father in front of his children, and we were told that that's not deliberate enough, then what does deliberate mean? I think I've said it this well before, that my wife is a victim's advocate for the Kessarock Police Department. There are details that are not in here. There are details I will not share. She had a chance to see the vehicle herself. As a victim's advocate, it was stored away for evidence. The details that she has shared with me are horrific about what she saw, the vehicle that was driven by Matt Anderson and that pinned him against that fuel pump. Lieutenant Colonel Anderson's friend appeared in committee to convey how much the loss meant to him and how much the penalty did indeed fit the crime. I urge you not to endorse a policy that would say to a family in a similar circumstance, heinous circumstance, that this is not as bad as what this bill would have you believe that this bill would say we need to support a lesser punishment, a lesser crime? Rep Brooks, my apologies. You have 20 seconds remaining.

Conduct is the same. The risk is the same. This murderer in this case just got lucky by only killing Lieutenant Colonel Matt Anderson. Let us not reward luck in the face of such harm and blatant indifference to human life. I ask you to please vote no on 1281.

Representative Garcia-Sander. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Colorado's 23 district attorneys unanimously oppose HB 26-1281. First-degree murder by extreme indifference is a heinous crime deserving the highest punishment under the law and a more serious risk to the health and safety of Colorado communities than any other type of murder. accountability for murder is a policy choice HB 26-1281 treats murder committed by extreme indifference as a lesser crime than murder after deliberation I oppose that policy choice I want to share with you the story about Henry Sandoval a Weld County resident who was only 36 when he was murdered Henry Sandoval Henry Sandoval was inside a friend's apartment one night playing games safe, so they thought, behind a closed door Henry was shot through that door and killed by a woman he did not know His murderer went to the apartment, armed with a firearm, and knocked on the door. She believed the people who lived there had stolen her car days earlier. When the door opened, those inside the apartment saw the gun and slammed it shut. In that moment, the murderer fired through the door, killing Henry Sandoval and his friend, also unknown to the murderer, was injured. This was not spontaneous. The perpetrator armed herself, traveled to the apartment, confronted the occupants, and fired into a closed space without care. That is planning an escalation. She meant to do it to create that grave risk of harm to anyone behind that door And the defendant admitted it In messages sent shortly after she admitted she shot the victim through the door This was a case of revenge, not against Mr. Sandoval, but against another. But no matter, the defendant didn't care who was at the other end of her rage, and so Mr. Sandoval paid the price. This was charged as first-degree murder, extreme indifference. Not after deliberation, because firing blindly through a door means that you don't care who you hit. Under HB 1281, one person died. One person was injured, but not enough for the aggravator threshold. The victim was not under 12, and the victim was not a first responder. This would become second-degree murder. Proponents argue that this type of conduct isn't targeted at a specific person. Remember, shooting through a door is worse because you're targeting anyone behind it. In this case, at least four people were behind that door. They later described to police that Henry Sandoval had tried to protect them after they shut the door to stop the armed woman, and he paid the price for protecting the other innocent unarmed people inside. so I ask you if someone can arm themselves go to a home, fire through a closed door, kill one person and we're told that it's not deliberate enough to deserve the highest level of accountability then what kind of conduct are we talking about anymore is it the conduct or is it the outcome I submit that it's the conduct this bill draws a line not around the harm a murderer sets out to do not who the murderer is but rather who his victims turn out to be and how lucky he is demonstrating through his conduct his complete disregard for human life. Make no mistake, we have heard much about what is on a killer's mind in an effort to justify treating the same conduct differently but the bill does not distinguish between what's on the killer's mind it distinguishes between the worthiness of victims. He loved, and he loved very hard, one of Henry's sisters said. He was taken from his four children and from a huge family that loved him with all their hearts. We will miss him every day. Weld County District Court Judge Timothy Kearns imposed the maximum life sentence in the Colorado Department of Corrections without the possibility of parole. Henry's mother said I got justice here today but I'll never have my son here ever again would she say the same if 1281 passes and that we cannot condone vote no on 1281

thank you Speaker Pro Tem I have a story that I may get to also But I wanted to kind of highlight some things. One is that this bill is, this type of bill, not just this one, but this type of bill, is what continues to reinforce to the people of Colorado that this room can't be trusted. Those are very strong numbers that are happening right now, and I'm sure all of you have read them. that the confidence in this room is dropping quickly in the community called Colorado I also want to shine some light on some things. Arguments sound really good and colorful when they're spoke here, but when the light of truth is shined upon them, they begin to look different. so the reason that our side two different people today and one person yesterday brought up the event where they were dropping the large rocks onto the car and it decapitated somebody the reason that we brought those stories to light and explained what the people were doing and how they were doing them is because this was the argument that was used by the sponsor on the floor in seconds and also has been talked about in committee. So the argument is that that event is why we need this bill. The event that decapitated somebody and then they took pictures. That is why we need this bill. This is why our side came up and gave all the details of the story. Because we wanted you to know that if you're going to use that event, This is why it's completely flawed, and this is why you actually should vote against the bill, not for it. There may have been some other events that could have been used in the argument, but you used one of the strong ones that actually gives all of the credibility to our side, not to the for of this bill. And so then the system majority leader came down and explained how that all of these people that were involved in that event, receive the maximum. And that was the argument why this bill should be voted for. The problem is this bill would have caused the opposite to happen. You cannot, that's called circular argument, and it's very responsible in this context to say, well, those people, again, let's preface it. The argument is why we need this bill is because of those people. But those people got the maximum, which was with the inference that that was going to happen with this bill anyway, except that was the argument why we need this bill so they could have a lesser charge. That's the argument that was brought up here. So to then say they got the maximum charge and that's why we need this bill is saying because we would have expected that they would have got a lesser charge for decapitating a woman. They would have got a lesser charge if this bill passes, which brings you to the reason for the bill. We've had also debate up here that how dare you say that some people care and some people don't care. That's not my argument whether you care or not. what my argument is is you are going to vote your priorities feeling is irrelevant to me on this subject you're going to vote your priorities do you vote for the victim that got decapitated to see i've worked in this space as a pastor for a long time and i have had to sit down with people that their loved ones were killed, murdered, all kinds of things. And when the person that did it to them does not get a legitimate penalty under the law It compounds their issue for years and years and years Not only are they hurting because this person is gone, they also are hurting because the justice system harmed them. This bill will also add to that. The personal harm will be exasperated because of this bill. so to say that somehow somebody getting decapitated is a feeling one way or the other it's not what i'm arguing what i'm arguing is do you vote for the victim that got decapitated and their family or do you continue to vote for criminals because that's what we do in this room all layers of criminals we vote for them give them less time treat them better let's let's give them a little pat on their hand and let them go. Because why? We're more in favor of criminal activity than citizens of Colorado that have done nothing. They have not done anything to deserve this. But we continuously pass bills like this that give rights to criminals. And you wonder why the people of Colorado have no confidence in this building. because they are continuously being the victim at the hands of the legislature. This is egregious. This has got to stop. And it will because there comes a moment when the people rise up and say that's enough. And I believe it's this year.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, pro tem. There are parts of this bill I really like. I just want to put that on the record to both bill sponsors who I do respect quite a bit. I respect your work in this building. I've gotten to know you really well and fond of a lot of our conversations off the record. I know what it feels like to have a bill ripped apart. That was not my intent with some of the amendments yesterday. I've worked very hard on a lot of bills in this building and have watched them be ripped apart or killed by lobbyists or by members in this building, and it's truly hard. I think for me listening, and I've waited a little bit to talk, for me it's if we don't like the tactics that the DAs are using in two different districts, then I think and if you think that they're corrupt then I think we get new DAs I think we put it out to the people and say in two different districts they're using these as plea deals and you put it on social media and you fire away at these people but for me changing the law doesn't constitute that for me I feel like elections have consequences and you try to vote them out I'm honored to get to speak for someone else. Rigoberto Rigo Esparza. Mr. Esparza was 18 years old, a young father, a devoted son. He went to a party at a house with friends, and he never came home. The shooters in this case drove past the house that the party was at, circling the party multiple times, prepared, watching, and then they opened fire. Not one shot, not two, dozens, between 41 in 52 rounds at random into a crowd. Mr. Esparza was struck and died. He was 18. This is the textbook definition of first-degree murder, extreme indifference. But make no mistake, this is not a spontaneous or childish mistake by the killer. This was planned. They circled, coordinated, prepared weapons, executed an attack. They didn't target a specific individual. They shot 41-1 to 52 rounds at everyone. Whoever was at that house lived or died by chance, but there was not evidence that would allow prosecutors to charge murder after deliberation because there was an act of extreme indifference, not a singled out act of a person intent to kill another specific individual. He was just a happy kid, a loving father to a son, Rigo, his aunt said, who spoke with us before the memorial of her nephew's life. He might have been at the wrong place at the wrong time, she added, not the first time that a surviving loved one of a victim of extreme indifference murder would make that statement. Mr. Esparza's mother said, no amount of punishment will bring my son back. Mr. Esparza's father died by suicide the day before his son's burial, a life extinguished, a family destroyed. But under this bill, this deliberate planned behavior would result in second-degree murder, a shot at parole. After all, only one died. young man so beloved his father could not go on without him. Members, firing 50 rounds into a party is not a lesser form of murder. It is mass violence and a more serious threat to public safety than targeting one individual after deliberation. And those who fire dozens of rounds into a crowd and kill a teenager should face the highest class of penalty. And let me paint a picture, Since we talk about the victims, I want to paint a picture of a mom. Miranda Fresquez lay on the ground outside the Montbello Airbnb for hours, waiting for her son's body to be taken away. police tape separated her from her 18 year old son lying lifeless in the driveway with the bullet that shot through his torso still lodged in his arm his mother begged the officers at the house to let her hold him one last time as they pleaded for her to go downtown with the other police officers but as long as her son was lying on the cold hard ground so would she fresca stayed in that spot all night when the coroner finally retrieved the body in the morning she chased after the van as it drove away. On the day before his burial, his father committed suicide. He couldn't handle the grief of losing his son, says his grandmother. Rego also left behind a child of his own. These are first degree sentences for family members. Sentence of suicide for his dad. Sentence to life without a father for his son. sentenced to life for his mother without her son and I will tell you if you want to spend a day with a mother who has buried her only daughter or a sister who has buried her only daughter then come spend a day with me. Figure out what it feels like to try to get up every morning and get dressed and put your shoes on and put a smile on your face and walk through the door and figure out how to do life every single day. figure out how to do life and go to birthday parties and celebrate proms and mother's days and father's days and celebrations and weddings and all the things that you want to do with a child that you no longer have now multiply that by the fact that someone viciously took that child away from you and you tell me that you get to decide whether it's first degree murder or second degree murder. Under current law, if someone shows extreme indifference to human life and kills one, that is first degree murder. That means the highest level of accountability our justice system can impose. This bill says no. If you only kill one person, we're going to treat you as something less. Something less Think about that We are standing here as elected officials debating whether taking one human life deserves the highest level of justice or a reduced charge And let's talk about what extreme indifference actually means. This is not an accident. This is not a mistake. This is about conduct so reckless, so dangerous that any reasonable person knows that it will likely kill someone. firing a gun into a crowd, driving a hundred miles through our neighborhoods, shooting into a home, acting with total disregard for whether someone lives or dies. And today this body is being asked to say if only one person dies, it's not the worst kind of murder. When death is reasonable, when death is a reasonable outcome, pretending it's anything less than the highest level of murder defies common sense and the result matters. A life was taken through conduct that showed total disregard. Tell me, tell that to the victim's family. We don't have to imagine what this looks like. We have seen it right here in Colorado. We have heard it today. We have seen shootings in our communities, Aurora, Denver, Colorado Springs, where reckless violent behavior turns deadly in an instant. We've seen DUI drivers with multiple prior offenses get behind the wheel and kill innocent people. We've seen criminals with long rap sheets escalate their behavior because the system keeps telling them there will always be another chance. And now we're adding to that message. Supporters of this bill will say it's about proportionality, but let me ask you, what is proportional about telling a grieving mother that her child's death does not meet the threshold for the most serious charge because no one else died. What is proportional about saying one's life is somehow less worthy of justice than multiple lives? Justice is not a sliding scale based on body count. And let's talk about the broader pattern here in Colorado. We have reduced penalties for theft, reduced consequences for drug crimes, bail policies that put repeat offenders back on the streets, and now we are redefining murder statutes. At what point do we stop and ask, who are we protecting? Because it's not the victims and it's not the families who have to live with the consequences of violent crime. Why is the answer always to reduce penalties? And let's be honest about deterrence. The people committing these crimes may not be reading statute books, but they absolutely understand consequences. When the system consistently lowers penalties, delays justice, and reduces accountability, it sends a message. you can push the line and the line will move. This is exactly what this bill does. It moves the line on murder. Now I've heard the argument that this will save the state money. Think about that. We are weighing budget savings against the value of human life. That is not justice. That is policy failure. If someone acts with complete disregard for human life, if they make a choice that results in someone's death, you expect your justice system to respond with the highest level of seriousness, not a downgrade, not a reclassification, not a technical adjustment. You expect accountability. This bill moves us in the wrong direction. It weakens the clarity of our laws, it reduces the severity of our consequences, and it sends a dangerous signal at a time when public safety should be all of our top priority.

Thank you so much. We should be strengthening our laws. We should be standing with victims. we should be making it absolutely clear that in Colorado human life is valued and protected. Instead this bill does the opposite So I ask this body do we do not redefine murder down Do not tell victims their loss is worth less Do not continue down a path that puts ideology instead of safety Vote no on this bill and tell Coloradans we care about one Thank you

Thank you, Speaker Pro Tem. This is some heavy stuff that we're talking about today, And I just want to start by honoring all of the victims and their families that have been brought up today. And I want to talk about another victim. I wasn't going to come up today because I'm a very private person. But I want to talk about Julian Lanier, who was my cousin, and he was murdered. and the things that no y'all don't have to stand up please don't you know this isn't easy for anybody and when you have people who are being reckless and making bad decisions and really not thinking about the consequences of their actions. There most certainly, certainly should be accountability because there are children, there are spouses, there are siblings, parents who are sentenced to deal with the loss of their loved one for the rest of their lives. And at the same time, I believe that, you know, people can be restored. And if you know anything about the Bible, you know that the Apostle Paul was a persecutor and a murderer of Christians. And you know how the Lord used him in his life. And I don't want to negate or diminish or downplay the severity of any of these things that we're talking about. But I also believe, number one, people should be held accountable for their actions. Victims should try and be restored to the best that they can. and you never know if something that happens could be the impetus of someone turning their life around. You never know. And so I will be in favor of this bill because I don't think it really serves anyone for someone to just like sit and like rot in cages. Like that's not helping anyone. It's not bringing anyone back. And that's where I am on this. Thank you.

Thank you, Speaker Pro Tem. I'll be a no today for Kelvin, Norman, and Greg Boss. Victims, not statistics. Victims traveling on Colorado roads going about their day when another driver turned anger into violence This was not a crash It was a chain of decisions that were deadly The road rage driver was tailgated aggressively pursuing vehicles cutting off and brake checking And then a forced loss of control a collision Two deaths. After the crash, the 34-year-old killer says he was pleased with his handiwork. He told a witness on the scene that the victim who died got what he deserved and what he had coming. The jury convicted him of murder with extreme indifference to the value of human life. He just wanted to take a life on the road. He weaponized a vehicle, created deadly risk to everyone on the road that would almost certainly cause death. But change one fact. If only one person had died, say Kelvin Norman, Kelvin was a professional soccer player inducted into the Colorado Soccer Hall of Fame in 2007 for his professional contribution as well as his work among youth soccer community in Colorado. He was remembered by Colorado Rapids Youth Soccer Club where he coached teenage boys. Same conduct, same decisions, same risk. Under this bill, Calvin's death would only be second-degree murder. Or if only Greg Boss had died. Greg was a United States Postal Service worker who was only 35 years old. He was survived and loved by his parents, brothers, and girlfriends. Was his life worth less because it was only one? Members, we should not write a law where the identical conduct, identical choices to create deadly risk to anyone on the road is judged differently based on how many people happen to die. If someone can turn a vehicle into a weapon, force a crash, kill a person, and whether it is first-degree murder depends only on how many people died. Are we judging conduct or counting bodies? I think it is important to recognize the efforts of the sponsors, but now it is time for the body to do its job. because if there is abuse in the system, then we must address that abuse in the application of the law, not by abandoning justice itself. We once understood proportionality clearly. The first articulation of life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, arises in the law protecting the vulnerable, including the expected mother and the child she carries. From the beginning, proportional justice was tied to the protection of innocent life. Leviticus makes it even clearer. Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and whoever takes the human life shall surely be put to death.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. So last night after committee, I was driving down Grant Street, headed back to a place that I have rented for the session. And I got the license plates that a lot of us do on our vehicles. And I come up to a stoplight and a guy in a Subaru of all the cars drives up, rolls down his window. and he says, are you a state congressman or a state senator? And I said, yeah, I'm a state congressman. And he says, well, I've lived here all my life and have you looked what it's like on Colfax Avenue right now? He says, I've lived here all my life and he says, I feel safe. I feel unsafe to be on that street. Is there anything that you guys can do? there in that building to make us feel more safe. And that's what this is all about. If you point a gun at somebody or a crowd and you shoot somebody, as Bered would say a long time ago, if you do the crime, you need to do the time. Gene Park was 22 years old, Metro College student, and he was at a bar at 2.30 in the morning. there was an altercation he was just watching the altercation one of the gentlemen that was in the in the altercation got in his pickup, drove home got a gun shot in the crowd and killed Gene Park that was an extreme indifference but he wasn't a firefighter he wasn a first responder he was not he was older than 12 years old and if this law goes into effect that would be second degree murder His family they South Korean they own a South Korean business here in Parker, and if you do the crime, you need to do the time. Vote no on 1281.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. What is just? What is just? That, I believe, is the question that the bill sponsors sought to answer when they began working on this policy. And it is the question that I believe all of us have to answer as we push the button today. What is just? Justice. defined as the giving to individuals their due. The individuals who commit the crime, the individuals who are impacted by the crime, society itself. What is just? There are real questions here, real issues. We shouldn't take this lightly and I don't believe anyone is. But we shouldn't. We shouldn't assume that there is a a clear answer in either direction in the sense that we shouldn't wrestle through this together. what should the punishment be in these particular circumstances? When we look at murder in the first degree as it currently stands, we find a few definitions or situations that qualify. In fact, it says, a person commits the crime of murder in the first degree if, A, after deliberation and with the intent to cause the death of a person other than himself, he causes the death of that person or of another person. B, was repealed. C, you can commit the crime of murder in the first degree if, by perjury or subordination of perjury, he procures the conviction and execution of any innocent person. Lying. Lying that results in the death penalty of someone qualifies for first-degree murder. D is what we're talking about here today, extreme indifference. E, he or she commits unlawful distribution dispensation or sale of a controlled substance to a person under the age of 18 years on school grounds and the death of such person is caused by the use of such controlled substances An F. The person knowingly causes the death of a child who has not yet attained 12 years of age and the person committing the offense is one in a position of trust with respect to the victim. Those are the things that we currently say qualify for life without parole. Under murder in the second degree, we find two main elements. One, the person knowingly causes the death of a person. And B, acting either alone or with one or more persons, he commits or attempts to commit felony arson, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, sexual assault, or the felony crime of escape. And in the course of or in furtherance of the crime that he is committing or attempting to commit or of immediate flight therefrom, the death of a person other than one of the participants is caused by the participant. in. We're being asked today to decide whether these categories should be shifted. And not in full, mind you. We're not being asked to eliminate extreme indifference entirely from first-degree murder. We're being asked to eliminate it only when it impacts on one individual. if a particular action causes harm to multiple individuals, the death of multiple or the death of one in the serious bodily injury of others, two or more others, or if the one individual fits in particular classes, we're being asked to say that that is first degree and second degree is when it's only one. That's the question before us. Is that just? Others have come down and said, it's not just to make these kinds of determinations of punishment based purely off of who gets harmed. We should judge the conduct. Justice comes by determining the conduct and applying the same standard to the conduct regardless of the amount of harm caused. Others believe we should judge the punishment based off of how much harm was caused, not purely off of the conduct. And that's where I see this boiling down. What should the standard be? Where does justice fall? Now, I find it interesting that one of the arguments we are hearing in support of this bill is as relates to the situation on the ground, i.e., what is happening in different judicial districts and how that is leading to greater injustices. again not arguing as I understand the argument that applying extreme indifference as a first or a felony one right as first degree murder is in and of itself inherently wrong but simply that it being used inappropriately to leverage defendants in order to get a plea for a lesser charge. I don't know that that is a just reason to make this particular change. I will note that the paper that I've been given says that there were 128 cases with a charge of extreme indifference, felony one, between July of 2022 and June of 2025. Of those 128 cases, 37 are still in process. They're still being adjudicated. 91 of the cases have been resolved. Of those 91, one of the cases was dismissed. 68 of the cases were plead to determinant sentences which I guess is where this argument comes from that in those 68 cases there must have been a wrong charge such that it was being inappropriately leveraged I don't have access to that, I don't know if that's actually the case or not and of the 22 cases that went to trial 6 of them were acquitted of extreme indifference and convicted of lesser charges. Eight were convicted of extreme indifference, but another eight were convicted of felony murder after deliberation. That means 22 of the extreme indifference cases that were filed, 16 of them resulted in a felony one conviction. Is that disproportionate? Does that show an issue in the system? Sometimes there is a temptation to change the rules because we don't like the outcome on the streets.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. But as another colleague said, if that's the case and there is this problem with the DAs and their charging practices, there are other mechanisms by which to address that problem. I wanted to make one other quick statement. When I was in law school, I wasn't a partier or a drinker. I put off steam by watching a television show that did a lot by way of referencing pop culture. and I would Netflix the different videos or movies that they referenced, and one of them was Clockwork Orange. And when I heard about some of the examples of this particular bill, that is the movie that I remembered. If you have never seen that movie, I do not recommend it. I did not get through it. It is banned in the U.K. for good reason, but extreme indifference, I agree with some of my colleagues, is even worse than intentionally going after an individual.

I rise to ask that we vote no on House Bill 1281. And I want to begin with a man leaving a bar, 28-year-old Joshua Lamont Robinson. It was 2 a.m. and a group of people left a sports bar and got in a car to leave. As they did so, they were shot. After arguing with bar patrons inside the bar, the perpetrator left and waited outside. As the group got into their car, the man waited and then fired nine shots into the vehicle. Nine shots in a parking lot with other people nearby. The shooter hit one man, Joshua Robertson, was shot and killed. this was not a reckless moment or momentary mistake. He had waited. This was an argument, disengagement, leaving the establishment, waiting as multiple people got into a vehicle to leave, and then choosing to fire a weapon, escalating a disagreement to gunfire. Nine separate trigger poles with nine separate decisions. As prosecutors said, it was reprehensible that a petty dispute ended with gunfire into a group of people. and it is a miracle more people were not killed. This was charged as first-degree murder, extreme indifference, not after deliberation, because firing repeatedly and indiscriminately into a group of people shows disregard for human life. Under HB 1281, only one person died. With no other qualifying aggravator, this would become second-degree murder. We are told this is less culpable. Firing nine rounds into a vehicle full of people is not less culpable. It is exactly what extreme indifference is meant to capture. However, with this bill, again, because only one was killed, it would change it to second-degree murder. So I ask you colleagues, if someone can fire nine shots, nine separate decisions, into a car, endanger everyone around them, and kill a man, and yet we are told that is not serious enough for first-degree murder, then what exactly is? We have heard countless times, actions have consequences, and this is true. A murder victim does not get another chance. A murder victim, and we've heard many of them, but these were just a few compared to the many, many, many across our state that this bill would affect that don't get another chance. that they don't get the chance to have a family, they don't get a chance to run a business, they don't get a chance to come home and pet their dog one more time. The family does not get one more chance to say goodbye, to give another grocery list, to plan another event, or celebrate another birthday. There is no other chance for the victims or their families. So let's make sure that while we've heard many stories, this is just a small representation of many more that this bill would affect, and the many victims who don't get another chance at life, and the many families who don't get another chance to hug their loved one or say goodbye. I would urge a no vote on House Bill 1281 for the many who don't get that other option.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker Pro Tem. Members at the outset, I want to acknowledge that we have heard some horrific stories, and I think every single person in the room cares deeply about those victims and their families. This bill is about life without the possibility of parole. This bill is about the difference between a person who wakes up in the morning and decides after making a plan that they will end someone life and a person who makes a reckless choice in a moment without forethought without targeting and without deliberate or specific intent to kill. Both of these things cause devastating harm and both, of course, merit severe consequences, but they are not the same. And the law has never looked at them the same. The guilty mind, the mens rea, is the cornerstone of criminal law in this country, and it exists precisely to make this distinction. This is one of the first lessons you get in criminal law in law school. I also want to be clear that this bill does not end long sentences in Colorado. It preserves the most serious consequences for the most serious crimes, And I heard wild claims in opposition to this bill that it is soft on those who conduct mass shootings. That is just not true. Those who commit first-degree murder will not be impacted. This bill corrects an imbalance in the law, one that treats a single-victim and multi-victim extreme indifference conduct identically. The bill still preserves tools for prosecutors when they need to make sure that they're stacking sentences and multi-victim crimes. And dangerous conduct is still very severely punished, even if we pass this law. This bill does not say that people who commit extreme indifference to homicide walk free or walk away lightly. Under this bill, a person convicted of extreme indifference can still receive a 48-year sentence in the Department of Corrections for second-degree murder. And again, they will face additional penalties for the additional crimes that they commit. When multiple victims are involved, sentences stack. Each victim, each crime of violence, each charge, each shepherd count consecutive. Depending on the circumstances, with multiple victims, 30 years on 30 years on 30 years on 30 years. We're talking about 120, 130-year sentences. I keep coming back to the stories that we heard in committee. We heard from a man named Kevin Lash, who told us the story of his son, who now is serving a sentence, life in prison without the possibility of parole. Three 19-year-old boys were acting like fools. No other way to say it. They had guns, and they shot them in the air outside of a house party. There was no target, no plan. They weren't trying to kill anybody. They were showing off. There was no premeditation, no deliberation, no specific intent of harm to a specific person. What they did was reckless and dangerous and someone was killed and serious consequences, of course, were appropriate, but life without the possibility of parole. The same sentence handed to someone who sat down, made a plan and murdered another human being according to their plan that they premeditated. Being applied automatically is not justice. there is a reason why we have this distinction of premeditation. This is what every episode of Law and Order is about. This bill would not exempt anyone from punishment. It is a restructuring of our criminal code In the rock case that we heard about today which of course is tragic and merited very severe punishment the defendant received life without parole on the extreme indifference murder count. But then the court added six consecutive 10-year sentences on top of that for other crimes that they committed. This bill does not eliminate extreme indifference mental state. It restructures it. And second degree murder is a class two felony. Under the bill's mandatory sentencing provision, a conviction under 18.3.103 subsection 1C requires a minimum sentence of three times the presumptive minimum. So that means at least 24 years, up to twice the presumptive maximum, meaning 48 years. So in this case, we're looking at 48 years plus 60 years. It's called something different, but that's 108 years in the case that we heard about at the start of this debate. Every separate victim and incident in a multi-tact case is still a separate felony count, stacking off consecutive terms, potentially carrying 10 or more years, and the aggregate sentence reaches or exceeds 100 years without ever invoking first-degree extreme indifference murder. I think it's also important for us to consider how we're treating victims of first-degree premeditated murder. Why are we saying that their crimes were the same as the ones where somebody died when an accident occurred. There is a reason why there is a distinction between premeditation under the law. And we're not talking about people serving a few years and coming home. We're talking about decades for one charge. And I want every member of this body to hold on to that because the suggestion that this bill opens up the prison doors is simply not accurate. But it's also important to recognize that people can and do change. We grow. We become different people than we were when we were 19 years old making the worst decisions of our lives. And I think back to Mr. Lash in committee talking about his son. We've seen it here in this building and in the Judiciary Committee time and time again where people who are committed and convicted of very serious crimes are now out in community leaving lives of restorative justice and improving their communities, trying to reduce crime where they live. I believe that a system that forecloses on the possibility of that growth that says no matter who you become, no matter what you do with the decades you serve, you will die in prison, is a system that has given up on redemption for people who never made a specific and deliberate intention to kill. And I want to be clear, I am not saying that people should not be punished. I am saying that in the United States, we have some of the longest prison sentences on earth, and we are not safer for it. This bill is about life in prison without the possibility of parole. We lead the world. We lead the world in incarceration, but we do not lead the world in safety. 83% of people on earth who are serving life in prison without the possibility of parole sentences are in the United States. 83%. And the evidence that mandatory life without parole in these cases produces better public safety outcomes than serious long determinate sentence does not exist It not there An eye for an eye has never been the foundation of the American criminal law We do not punish people simply to inflict equivalent suffering. We punish people to hold them accountable, to protect the public, to deter future harm, and when possible, when human beings make it possible through their own growth to rehabilitate and to restore, This bill does not abandon any of those goals, and I strongly urge a yes vote.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to close with what we've been told repeatedly. This is not like first-degree murder after deliberation. It is not worthy of highest punishment, except for when certain victims die, even though the conduct is the same. We are told these crimes are not planned, not targeted at anyone in particular, not intentional, and that therefore it should be punished less severely. Let's translate that. It means that firing into a crowd, shooting into occupied cars, setting fires to buildings with people inside, shot putting landscaping rocks from an adjacent lane into the front windshield of a young woman's head, sending her to her death, that all these things are somehow less serious because the victim was not specifically chosen. that reasoning leads to a troubling conclusion. If you pick your victim, that it is worse. But if you endanger everyone, that it is less. Respectfully, the bill has that backwards. Extreme indifference exists for a reason. Because when someone acts in a way that says, I don't care who dies, that is not lesser form of culpability. It is a broader one. it is a more dangerous one. Under this bill, the exact same conduct, the exact same time, indiscriminate violence, mass risk conduct can lead to two different messages. If you are one type of victim, if you are only one victim, the conduct somehow matters less. But that same conduct, if by pure chance, the right victim dies, or the right number of people, that somehow matters more. You've heard these cases. If someone can plan to kill, fire into a crowd, set fire to an apartment building, yet by sheer luck murder only one person, that it's lesser? I reject that. I suspect that many families found in the circumstances and surviving their loved one would reject that. His body should reject that. And vote no on 1281. And we talk about years and years and years and years. But my final statement is death is for eternity.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Members, I wanted to come down here and first begin by talking about second reading. As you know, debate was limited to two hours during second reading. Earlier in the afternoon, I had been attempting to pry using my Swiss Army pocket knife. The knife slipped, and I ended up cutting my wrist. I had to be taken to the urgent care where I received five stitches. In this time, the amendment that we had been talking about with the sponsors was not able to get on the bill. Because it's substantive, it would not be permissible to be run during third reading. We obviously work in a building that's based on trust, and our word is our worth. I can't support a bill that I voted no on in committee without having additional aggravating factors. But likewise, I also can't trust that something might happen in the Senate, knowing we have such few days left in the session. I'm probably the classic example of someone who is on the fence in this particular issue. As I just said, I will be a no today. We have heard about some horrific cases. The rock-throwing case is an example. I spoke at length with the DA last night from that case, Alexis King. Truly, truly extreme indifference. To be on a dark street, to target cars driving 80 miles an hour, and to throw them through windshields. Contrast that with a case from Utah, where kids are on top of a cliff and push a rock down to watch it roll, and it eventually hits a person and kills that person. Also, the way our laws are written, that could be extreme indifference. Or the case of two individuals who were on top of a hill hitting golf balls onto BLM land with a state highway down below. Just so happened one golf ball ricocheted, went through the windshield, killed the driver, and that could also be classified as extreme indifference. The problem with the way our extreme indifference law has been laid out is one where you have to look at the case history going back to 1977. which was, it was laid out as a specific intent crime. So the defendant had to specifically be engaging in the conduct that gave rise to the extreme risk or the grave risk. Then in 1977, the legislature, we changed the mental state from specific intent to knowingly. And we made it a general intent crime. In 1981, the Colorado Supreme Court struck down the extreme indifference statute, because if you look in the statute books, we have first-degree murder, and then we have second-degree murder, and the first line in the second-degree murder section says that you knowingly cause the death of another. Well, how do you distinguish the difference between two knowingly standards of causing the death of another? You don't. So the Supreme Court struck it down under the rational basis test within the United States Constitution. Later in 1981, the legislature came back, and we adopted a universal malice mental state, manifesting itself in extreme indifference towards the value of human life generally. So generally, the conduct that you're engaging in falls below into this reckless conduct. But of course, as all of us know, if you've had bills passed and they've become laws, you don't really know what the law means until you've had the courts interpret it. So the Colorado Supreme Court interpreted the 1981 change in 1992, in which the court talked about the extreme indifference as an aggravator or an extreme reckless conduct type offense. A year later, in 1993, they overruled that and explained that extreme indifference requires proof of malice that's not directed towards any one person, but that's malice directed generally towards the world at large. And that that was the distinguishing factor between deliberation after the fact or what some may call premeditated murder and extreme indifference which if you went to law school you may have heard that called depraved heart murder We had some recent examples in Anderson in 2019 Gladwell and Blue in 24 and 25 respectively The reason why the case history is important here is this is an area of law that I believe is ripe for reform. The swath that is caught up by extreme indifference is immense. from kids who are acting with gross negligence or recklessness all the way up to the rock-thrown case that we heard about that occurred in Jefferson County and everything in between.

Representative Carter. Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is an honor to serve with you. It is an honor to serve with you. I would like to start off by thanking the members of this chamber. You have sat through some of the worst things that have happened in our society. And I want to make sure you understand, I appreciate it. What we are trying to do is to right size a piece of our criminal justice system. And I am fine arguing and talking about the nuances of this bill with anyone. Specifically, I want to explain exactly what my bill does. Extreme indifference homicide is currently a class one felony that is punishable by mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It's the same class of felony as premeditated after deliberation homicide. However, extreme indifference is less than after debiliteration, but more than knowingly, which is second degree murder, a class two felony. What our bill is doing it classifies extreme indifference homicide as a class two felony but with a higher sentencing range than knowingly second degree murder that classification places a punishment where it belongs However the bill recognizes there are certain aggravators which we have gone over constantly, that raise that level of culpability and raise that classification to the sentencing range of a Class 1 felony. Vehicular homicide is currently a Class 3 felony if a person is impaired by drugs, alcohol, and a Class 4 felony if a person is driving recklessly. This bill creates a new mandatory crime of aggravated motor vehicle homicide. When clear and recognizable, aggravating factors exist, certain prior driving conditions, commissions of an offense while attempting to elude a peace officer while in flight from the commission of another felony offense, and driving at a high rate of speed. This crime is categorized as a crime of violence, which is a mandatory sentence to the Department of Corrections. Finally, careless driving resulting in death currently is a class one traffic misdemeanor. This bill creates a new crime of criminally negligent vehicular homicide. I want for you to understand what I just said. Because for some reason, we are not having a conversation about what's in my bill. And that's okay. I had to come to a spot in my head why I could understand why we are not talking about what's in my bill. So, I appreciate Representative Sofer talking about having sleepless nights. I appreciate having a co-sponsor that can work through this with me. so what I had to get to how would I feel let's start there how would I feel I assume you all love your children let's just say that's a given and just assume that I love mine so how would I feel how would I feel when I had that grief that anger and that pain or that lack of closure how would I feel I would be just as angry as everyone who has come to speak and not only would I be angry that anger would be justified It would be justified. So when I look into the victims' faces, I understand. I understand why they're angry. I'm not even mad if they're angry at me. But here's the problem. I love my children so much, how could I I love yours. So when I look into the faces of victims and feel their anger, I've got to look in the faces of my kids. And I have to beg. I have to beg for this chamber to treat them fairly. You will never get a medal. I've said it before for standing next to me. You will never get a medal for standing next to a defendant. But just because you won't doesn't mean it's not fair. So I want to make sure every hear me, every victim knows. I share your anger I share your grief and I'm okay with you hating me for the fact that I brought this but it doesn't mean we don't need to fix it my co-prime is going to give you the ins and outs and the particulars but I'm going to tell you one last thing I want to appreciate my good colleague from Arapahoe County. Because she brought up Act 9. Acts 9. Y'all don't know this. I am the son, I'm the grandson of a Southern Baptist, I'm the grandson of a Southern Baptist deacon. And There are two places in the Bible that bring up ass. Samson slew the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Saul was not from his ass. Saul was a murderer. Saul was on his way to kill people. Saul was a murderer. His words were, why are you persecuting my people? And he changed his name. If Saul can be redeemed, if Saul can be redeemed, how can you tell me nobody else can? I'm going to ask you to vote yes. I'm going to ask you to vote yes over my questionable, questionable, I'm just the criminal defense attorney. I can't be nothing else. But I need you to look past that and understand we need to right size this, so I'm going to ask you to vote yes.

Seeing no further discussion, the motion before us is the adoption of House Bill 1281 on third reading and final passage. Mr. Schiebel, please open the machine and members proceed to vote. Representative Leader, how do you vote?

Thank you, Representative. Representative Leader is a no. Representative Lindsey, how do you vote?

Representative Lindsey votes yes. Representative Slaw, how do you vote?

Representative Slaw is a no. English, Froelich Joseph Winter. Members, please vote. Members, please vote. Please close the machine. With 33 aye, 32 no, and zero excused, House Bill 1281 is adopted. Co-sponsors. Please close the machine.

2026. Seeing no objection, the balance of the calendar will be laid over until tomorrow. Any final announcements, members?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Representative. Members, we have some business, and then we will be adjourning. You are free to leave.

Madam Majority Leader. Madam Speaker, I move that the House stand in adjournment until Thursday, April 30th at 9 a.m.