House State, Civic, Military, & Veterans Affairs [Apr 20, 2026]

Representatives Bottoms?

Bradley?

Carter?

Espinoza?

Fray?

Froelich?

Luck?

Quinn?

Ricks?

Clifford?

Madam Chair?

Thank you, Madam Chair. So every year, the House Minority Office or House Minority Caucus has the ability to come up with ideas for four resolutions that the minority puts forward. And this year, one of the ideas was to honor Colorado's 150th anniversary. And there were some other ideas as well that the minority caucus came up with, like honoring rodeo as a summer sport and raising awareness about onto-huntavirus. Anyways, and the, and so it was decided that we would try to incorporate as many of those ideas as possible into this larger resolution. I'm curious how many of you guys smiled while reading this resolution? Okay, there were some. That's awesome. And you likely noticed that it's all done in alliteration and that every paragraph highlights a different letter. And basically the reason that was selected, that we did it that way, was because 150 years of one state's history is a lot of material to go through. to try to condense that history into something as succinct as a resolution is nearly impossible because there are so many different things that can be highlighted and how do you do that with some coherence and so the coherence that we found was in the alphabet and so every paragraph honors a different subset of colorado history a different community or a different aspect of our story as as Coloradans. I will note that I have asked for some amendments, actually just hopefully encompasses in one amendment, to be made to add a little bit more alliteration under the P's and to add an example of small shops under the S's. I bring that up now because I think this is, from my view, and I believe my co-prime shares this view, this is everybody's resolution. So to the degree we can highlight everyone's district while still sticking within the alliteration, I think we open to that and to any amendments that may further honor different parts of our story So I glad that it brought a smile on your face as you read it And if you have any specific questions about the stories encompassed within it please feel free to ask.

I do hope if you have questions, they are in alliteration form. Members, any questions? Representative Ricks.

Representative Locke.

Representative Ricks, did you want to ask a question?

Okay.

AML Bacon. So I think, you know, we'd be happy to, you know, talk with you and how we fit that in. I think the reference to hospitality wasn necessarily the industry but more about you know characteristics that people are welcoming So when you look at that language xenial hospitality extraordinary kindness it wasn necessarily specifically about that industry But I think the point is well taken. And where we can make the adjustments, we will.

I thank you, sponsors, for bringing this bill. I love the playfulness of it, but still highlighting the greatness of the state. I had a couple of meetings or conversations regarding what I wanted in. And obviously I don't want to bring an amendment, but I would like to have those changes addressed.

Thank you. AML Bacon. I will say in the spirit of Representative Carter's amendment, we would love to acknowledge all of the wonderful institutions across our state without necessarily feeling like we're only going to celebrate one. So if you all, you know, I think what is really great about that conversation is that throughout this resolution, you know, we added as many call outs as possible sticking with the theme. And so if you all support this amendment, we hope that you support the spirit of it. But likewise, if you have any particular insights that can fit within a stanza to recognize something special to you without making this resolution 90 pages, we'd be happy to do that. Thank you very much.

Representative Espinoza.

Vice Chair Clifford.

Awesome. All right. I'm not singing out of their hands, so we'll move into witness testimony. We have one individual signed up if you all just want to stay where you are. I will go ahead and call Ms. Jodi Nickerson, and I believe she's testifying remotely. And at this time, if there's anybody else that would like to provide testimony, please come forward at this time. I don't...

Thank you. who signed up to provide testimony sometime to be able to join. Okay. But at this time, we haven't been able to connect with them. I've already made a call for anybody else who may... Hey, folks. Thank you. I've already made a call for other folks that want to provide testimony, so at this time the witness phase is now closed. Amendments. Do you want to put on your microphone?

I believe it will be amendment L-0-0-1.

Okay. Then let's go ahead and what we'll do is just lay this bill over until after we've heard House Resolution 1006. Does that work? Okay. All right. So we're going to lay over House Resolution 1007 until after House Resolution 1006. Come on down, Representative Wug.

Welcome to State Affairs, Representative Wug. I don't think we've seen you yet this session. who would like to begin with Vice Chair Clifford.

Representative Wook.

Members, any questions? Representative Ricks.

Vice Chair Clifford.

Any other questions? Okay. Thank you both. We have three individuals signed up for testimony. You're welcome to stay there. Two of them are remote. One is in person. The two individuals remotely are Jeannie Rush and Nancy Rumfelt, and the individual in person is Adriana Kuva. So if you're with us, please join us at the front. If there's anybody else that wishes to provide testimony, please come forward at this time.

You can give us, you can, you can get started.

Oh, I can.

And I think this is great. Shocking. I know. Right on time. Thank you so much for your testimony. Let's go to Ms. Remfeld. You are muted and we're unfortunately not able to hear your testimony. There you go.

Thank you very much. Let's move in person to Ms. Adriana Kuva. I'm going to have you press the little gray button. Yep, there you go.

Thank you very much for your testimony. Welcome, Sheriff Brown.

you so much members any questions for this panel. Representative Bradley. Thank you.

Mr. I'm sorry, Sheriff Brown.

Okay. Thank you all so much for your time and your testimony. With that, the witness phase is now closed. Bill sponsors, do you have any amendments? Okay. Committee, any amendments? The amendment phase is now closed. Bill wrap up. Vice Chair Clifford.

Representative Wook.

Thank you very much. Vice Chair Clifford, do you want to move your bill?

Oh. To the full House.

Second.

Members, any closing comments? Representative Carter.

Representative Bradley.

Representative Ricks and then Bottoms

Representative Bottoms.

All right. I'm not seeing any other comments. So with that, Ms. King, please poll the committee.

Yes, for today.

Carter. Respectfully, yes.

Hooray. Yes.

Luck. Without qualifier, yes.

Ricks. Absolutely, yes.

Madam Chair. Yes, that passes on a vote of 11 to 0. Thank you very much. Okay. Representative Luck, before I call up House Resolution 1007, are you ready? Okay. All right, we'll move back into House Resolution 1007. We are in the amendment phase. We'll give the sponsor just a minute to get all set up.

Representative Luck, do you want to move your amendment and then tell us about it?

SECOND. SECONDED BY REPRESENTATIVE WIN.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR, AND THANK YOU, REP WIN, FOR THAT SECOND. SO I AM GOING TO ALLOW MY CO-PRIME TO EXPLAIN THE FIRST PART, ACTUALLY.

SORRY, BECAUSE I WILL EXPLAIN THE LAST PART. I'M JUST KIDDING. The first part, we wanted to acknowledge the uniqueness of the Colorado Constitution in that it was written to our colleagues' points, both of our colleagues' points in regards to another nod. It made me think about supporting those who immigrated to what is now the state of Colorado. The Colorado Constitution was written in three languages, English, Spanish, and German. And so we wanted to note that because it is a unique characteristic, and we think it's pretty cool, and so we wanted to add that in here.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to my co-prime for that addition. The second part is striking language in that same section that is not alliterative, in including new language that basically speaks to the same thing that is literate So instead of saying values that acknowledge the inherent worth of all people it would read values promoting the preciousness of people no matter their personality And then the third section there is actually as relates to the conversation that we had from the representative from Adams in Arapahoe County, or I don't know which county he lives in exactly, I'm sorry. but in any case he wanted to make sure that his district got a shout out as well and so we put in such as those in Stanley Market behind small shops in the S paragraph I am okay with it and I'm hopeful that everyone else will also be okay with it moving forward

our interest and perhaps to take any opportunities to celebrate the things that we find great in the state. Okay, any questions? Go ahead, Representative Bottoms.

We?

All right. Is there any objection to adopting the amendment? Okay. Seeing objection, Ms. King, please poll the committee.

Yes.

Yes.

Espinosa.

Furey?

Krolick? Luck?

Quinn?

Ricks?

Clifford?

Madam Chair?

Amendment L001 passes on a vote of 10 to 1.

bill wrap-up representative lock thank you madam chair I think it's delightful that we have the honor of serving in the 150th year of Colorado and to try and commemorate that history as best as we can in the state house as well as throughout the state of Colorado I think is an honor and a privilege I thank you guys for hearing this resolution, for taking delight in our story, for being willing to contribute your pieces to the story, and for helping me to better understand the rivalries that we need to overcome in this state, hence the conversation we just had for those listening in. But in any case, I do hope that you guys will support it today, and if you have time and margin TO GIVE THOUGHT TO WHERE YOU CAN ADD IN OTHER PIECES. WITH ALLITERATION, WE ARE ALL EARS.

Thank you very much, Representative Luck. Do you want to move the bill?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Second. Seconded by Representative Ferre.

committee representatives Bottoms yes Bradley yes Carter respectfully yes Espinosa yes Bray yes Krolich Luck yes Quinn yes Ricks yes Clifford yes Madam Chair yes House Resolution 1007 as amended passes unanimously.

Representative Barone. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you members of the State Affairs Committee. This is the second time I come forward to you guys this session, and you're about to hear the best resolution this session. Pause for laughter. Okay, we got one laugh. We call ourselves representatives, but what do we represent? Do we represent the thousands of voters who in 1992 voted to rein in government spending, or do we represent our own agenda? Let talk about the Taxpayers Bill of Rights Some like to minimize the measure by calling it simply TABOR In 1992 Colorado voters approved a ballot measure which amended Article 10 of the Colorado Constitution that restricts revenues for all parts of government, including state, local, and schools. Under the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights, the state of local governments can't raise tax rates without voter approval and can't spend revenues collected under existing rates without voter approving it. If revenues grow faster than the rate of inflation and population growth, revenues in excess of the taxpayer's bill of rights limit, commonly referred to as TABOR surplus, must be referred to the taxpayers unless voters approve a revenue change as an offset in a referendum. The state has returned more than $2 billion to taxpayers, and that's exactly what voters approved. The allowance for spending to grow at the rate of inflation plus population growth means that inflation-adjusted per capita spending did not generally decrease. Included was a provision that spending growth could be interrupted due to an economic recession, in which case inflation adjusted per capita spending decreased, and the taxpayers' Bill of Rights did not allow inflation adjusted per capita spending to return to its pre-recession level. This became known as the ratchet down, and it occurred in the 2001-02 and 2002-03 fiscal years. The ratchet down was favorable to those who believed government was consuming too big of a portion of Colorado's gross product. Coloradans approved Referendum C in November of 2005, a ballot measure that relaxed many of taxpayers' Bill of Rights restrictions. This measure allowed the state to retain and spend money from existing revenue sources above the limit each year, beginning in fiscal year 05-06. For five years through 05-10, beginning in fiscal year 10-11, the state was allowed to spend revenue above the limit up to a limited amount known as the referendum C cap. The referendum C cap grows from the prior year's limit instead of the prior year's spending by inflation plus population growth. Essentially, referendum C eliminated the ratchet-down effect. Any retained referendum C revenue is required by the statute to be spent on health care, education, firefighter, and police retirement plans. The strategic transportation projects in 2009, the state would have faced a significant budget shortfall had referendum C not passed. Therefore, in many instances, the referendum C money that has been spent is not new money to programs. Instead, it maintained the programs and kept them from requiring cuts. So here's where we are. We are the General Assembly, have become so used to finding slippery ways to raid the fund that we look at as a right. It isn't that the taxpayers have told us repeatedly that they want to maintain the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights. Initiative 1, the original 1992 ballot measure, has indeed been challenged. Colorado voters have decided on 38 statewide ballot measures that were designed to increase revenue for the state which required voter approval under a taxpayer bill of Rights Of the 38 measures 12 which is 31 were approved and 26 68 were defeated We are supposed to represent the citizens, and we affirm that we must do so. That is why I ask for your support. And I'm going to add a little bit to what the Taxpayers Bill of Rights means to me in my district. In my district, many people do know, I'd say about half the population of my district know of the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights. The other half that I talk to are surprised that we have the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights. They don't even know about it. When I explain to them what it actually does, zero of them say this is a bad idea. Every single one of them says this is great. Now I understand why I see all these ballot initiatives every November. for me to approve this tax increase either on the municipal level, school board level, or the state level. They love it. So this is just a resolution to reaffirm our support for the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, which was voted in in 92 and has been proven that it's been very popular, about 70% of the population of Colorado. I ask for your support. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, members of the committee. Happy Monday. Marvelous Monday. I just want to touch briefly on this resolution because this is very – it means a lot to me. I know some of you have your own feelings, and I respect that. I think the beauty of this country is that we may agree to disagree, and I think we – at the end of the day, we understand that, and at the end of the day, we're human beings. This specific resolution for me goes back to when I first started taking APGov when I was in high school. I came across the term Tabor and I said okay what is Tabor and so learning about the Colorado Constitution and I did my own research and videos and all that good stuff and when I found out what Tabor was I became fascinated the fact that we're the only state to have it now you can argue well it's so bad that other states don't have it well other people have tried other people in other states have tried. The courts have stopped them. The legislature has stopped them. And so citizens agree with the idea and the concept of it. And it all comes down to principle. What does the taxpayers' bill of rights mean? And to me, it's all about principle. And that principle is consent of the governed. Because while you can argue people just like the refund checks, it goes far beyond that. People like consent. Do you consent as voters to tax increases? Do you consent of the government keeping your refunds? Do you consent these initiatives that the legislature, we have to present to the people to approve? And while we talk about democracy, that is democracy at work, including the voters, the citizens that we serve, that the same people that elected us agree with Tabor. And we have polling, and I'm happy to share that with all of you. The recent polling from the Colorado Polling Institute, 63% of unaffiliateds approve of Tabor. 48% of Democrats approve of Tabor. 74% of Republicans approve of Tabor. And total unfavorable across all lines, 22% of people in this state do not view Tabor favorably. Meaning that we have about 78 who either don know or they actually like it I would like to just say that that number for approval for favorability could be much higher if again people understood what it does Now, I know we have our disagreements on this, but you all know where I stand. And you know that that's the hill that I will die on is the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights. Again, it has a high approval rating. polls have shown time and time again no less than 60% of the people of Colorado approve of Tabor we took an oath to protect and defend the US and Colorado constitution, all of us did and in our state constitution is Tabor we have to respect the will of the voters because time and time again they have shown very clearly don't mess with Tabor and leave it alone it's more than just a refund now all we have to do is just ask the voters that's all we have to do if we want more money if we want to raise taxes just ask the voters it's i believe it's not that hard i mean i think all of us can agree if we want to raise taxes we should let the voters decide now that's just a lot of us and on uh who believe the same way would agree that being said when we talk about respecting the will of the voters, we cannot pick and choose what we will honor and what we will not. Because we have seen that with some of the policies when voters approve of something, whether it's a cash fund or excess revenue, whatever it is. And we at the legislature has pulled money from these ballot initiatives that the voters specifically approved of to go towards whatever they're voting on. And we move money that, again, circumvents the will of the voters. I will also say that all of you are intelligent and smart. You're elected. Some people have used it to circumvent Tabor using fees, tax reclassifications, and slowly but surely trying to chip away at Tabor. Because we all know Tabor specifically has a lot of things in it. But we're seeing that people, and I'm not specifically saying you, I'm just saying people in this body have specifically gone after parts of Taper individually until eventually we won't have anything left. Now, I know people want to repeal it, people who don't like to ask the voters, but I will also remind this body that when it comes to noble initiatives like children are most vulnerable, voters understand they're not greedy. I point to LL and MM this November. Healthy school meals for all. When voters see this is going to go towards kids who need food in schools, are the most vulnerable, the most needy. Voters understand that. They are not greedy when it comes to providing for the most vulnerable, whether senior citizens or children or whatever ethnic or specific community you want to talk about. voters understand that we're not we're not greedy we're not we just want our dollars to be used well so we have to be consistent in everything in our policies we can't just pick and choose what we will honor from the voters and what we will not we can't and it's okay to admit that you may not agree with some of the outcomes with voting elections, but we have to respect Because time and time again, the voters have clearly stated, leave Tabor alone. And I will also say that the reason why I'm elected today and why I'm in this seat, and all of you know who my predecessor was, Tabor was a central issue. It was. Because when people talk about repealing Tabor or dismantling Tabor, voters voters will hold them accountable now we all have our base we do but this goes far beyond our base I have a saying you can read your room but you have to read the room and the room Tabor is viewed favorably people love Tabor the more people understand it and learn from it and learn of it the better that they see it I believe that I do this transcends party lines it really does so with that I would just like to say I I support Tabor I love Tabor and this just resolution just to reform our commitment to our oath that we took whatever your feeling is I respect the will of the voters even on ballot initiatives that I don't agree I do because that's what the people want. So I think we should all be consistent because the message is clear, is that Colorado supports TABOR. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I've got a few. I appreciate what you said about people's understanding of TABOR. I find that when I talk to people about how TAPR works that they don't have as favorable of a view about it. Can you explain how TAPR works?

Thank you, Madam Chair. So there's multiple components to that. So there's a formula for government growth. There is basically like the legislature, the government cannot raise taxes without voter approval. They can lower taxes without having to ask the voters. Now, anytime they want to keep the Tabor surplus, they have to ask the voters. And there's other mechanisms when it comes to property taxes and local levels. It's a very complex amendment, I would say. But overall, the moral, the bottom line is that it involves voter approval for any sort of tax increase or revenue classification for that. So voters ultimately like to decide and approve of that. and so that's how I explain TABOR, short and simple, you know, make it fast. So I don't know how you explain it to people. I'm happy to hear that, but that's my understanding, and there's other mechanisms too that I would say are very – when it comes to explaining stuff to people, I would say I like to keep it brief. But overall, that's a synopsis of how TABOR works.

Yes, but keep it focused.

So the biggest mechanisms, and I have my notes too, but I just, because I understand what you're saying. But I think for me, the mechanisms too, again, so for property taxes and, again, the formula for government growth spending, so population growth plus inflation can continue to grow. So we're not basically having a fixed government revenue generating. We have it growing with population growth and with inflation. That being said, the other mechanisms for properties for local level governments, county, whatever, they essentially have their own mechanisms to do their taxes or tax policy, but ultimately it comes down to the voters' approval. So I don't know if that answers your question, but I'm happy to get some more information as well.

I'm aware of the CPI, yes.

I would say ultimately I think CPI is kind of like the basic standard for kind of like the cost of living and overall like the price of everything, I would say. So Denver, Aurora, Lakewood, CPI is different from Well County. CPI is different from Grand Junction's CPI. So I think ultimately I think that's like a base standard for kind of like seeing how tax policy and the revenue would work.

So inflation, there's a lot of factors to that, I would say. So when the feds print money out of thin air, you have a lot of inflation. Recently in years, we have seen in Colorado have high inflation. I think during the Biden administration, it was like one of the highest inflation rates in the country. So I would say specifically inflation, I would say is tied to the federal level where we just print money out of thin air. We lose value for the dollar and that trickles down to the state.

To your point about inflation, those numbers that you just mentioned about 2% to 3%, were those the same numbers during the last four years of the Biden administration Because my understanding is that number was a lot higher during that So that to your point I think it fluctuates Normally yes inflation should stay around 2 to 3 Yes.

we in the legislature have done a lot of damage to affordability. So the inflation is a factor, but I think the policies that we continue to push here in this body have made it increasingly unaffordable. people my age people around my age they're when we can barely afford to put food on the table or we can't even get a house everything is expensive i mean if we can't even take care of ourselves what makes you think that we would be able to take care of children i want children a lot of my friends want children but right now the circumstances in this state that we push policies that drive up the cost of living it's a very complex issue but i understand what you're trying to say. I would say though, specifically, the policies that we push have made it increasingly unaffordable. One more.

I would say the last nine years, we've seen attacks on blaming this formula here at the legislature for a budget. but before that we ran a budget and no one was complaining about Tabor so I get what you're saying but people again the last nine years we have blamed this body has blamed Tabor before then Tabor was never a problem so I would respectfully disagree okay thank you

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, while I agree with fiscal responsibility and the fact that we should go back to the voters, I also know that TABOR has contributed to chronic underfunding of our public schools and our infrastructure. So talk about that.

Thank you, Madam Chair. No, I would disagree. It's chronic underfunding. I think the, what's that called, the rating of our excise tax year after year is taking money away from our public schools. Now, I would go back and probably one of your, all of your colleagues, I would ask, what would you do if we didn't have Tabor? Would all the fees go away? and then we would just automatically raise the taxes on people according to inflation, population decrease, CPI? No, that's the question I would ask. That's what really scares me. What would we do if we did not have TAPR in this state? We already have so many fees. Would they go away? Would we legislate those out? I hope we would, but I doubt it. And then we would just increase the taxes. So now the population is decreasing because people cannot afford to stay in the state. So they're leaving. I believe Tabor is one of the reasons why people actually stay here They would unfortunately they could just leave if Tabor is gone I respectfully disagree that Tabor is the reason education is underfunded

Thank you, Madam Chair. So since 2019, the budget has increased 50%, roughly around 50%. has our services for the essential programs and the necessities for the state gotten 50% better. When we grow other parts of the government, we don't focus on the main priorities. I have always said this, and you know I have said this. We should focus on the big three, education, health care, and infrastructure. If there's money left over, then we can talk about these other offices. We can talk about FTE. We can talk about all that stuff. But at the end of the day, it's how we prioritize the funds that we get here in the state. that pull away from our desire, not imputing motive, to grow government at the expense of our roads, our public ed. And I would also say the severance tax, that energy. In my county, oil and gas provides a lot of severance tax, and we're limiting oil and gas here in the state. That goes towards municipalities, fire districts, public schools, teachers, all that stuff. So when we limit also that, that could also pull away from priorities for the roads. And I think that that's something that all of us can agree we need to fix our roads, but it's how we manage the money that we get. Because in a way, we also limit the revenue that we get here by some of the policies that we push. So I would totally – Sorry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would totally disagree with you because we know that Colorado remains in the bottom five of the 50 states when it comes to our per pupil spending in schools. Also, the fact that TABOR is very cumbersome. You have to go back to the voters for everything. When we had the recession, like right last year, also when it comes to pandemic situations, we're not able to tap into the money that exists. Colorado is a very wealthy state. We have over a $40 billion budget, but yet we're still not able to provide the services that we need to Coloradans. So that's an issue, and most of that is limited by TABOR.

Thank you. First, Representative Gonzalez, you did a fine job of explaining Tabor. It appears that you know a lot more than most sitting around this circle, so thank you for that. 71% of all of our money tax dollars right now in the state of Colorado go around Tabor. So a lot of the numbers that were being thrown out just are not true. We are also lowest quarter of the United States in education, but we are in the top 10 of new money spent for education every single year. We keep adding more money, but we suck in education. So that also is not true. When it comes to the actual, This is the term I hear, we can't have nice things because we have Tabor. Knowing that in the last 10 years, we've circumvented Tabor illegally, unconstitutionally, but we keep doing it. Unpack the statement that we can't have nice things because of Tabor.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would say that that's one of the things that we prioritize government issues as the solution to help the most vulnerable and our citizens. Government has its role, but at the end of the day, it's not our money. It's not. We are told to have oversight over the money, but it's not the government's money. It's the taxpayer's money. That is a principle, too, that I think we should all understand, is that we are entrusted by the voters, by the citizens, to manage their money well. I personally think we can do better as a state. But at the end of the day, Tabor preserves taxpayers, protects taxpayers. And here's the thing. We can talk about tax credits all day long, but that does nothing to address the root problem of affordability, of the issues. And there's nothing better than when people are able to have their money when they want it in their pocketbooks and not when they file for taxes. So that's my understanding of how I see that saying.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the bill sponsors for bringing this forward. I was going to kind of ask the same question that Rep Bottoms asked. You know, when I go out to my constituents and say, I asked my husband this last night, how much do you think Colorado has grown the budget in the last six years? And he said, 10%. And I asked him, how much do you think population's grown? So population in the state of Colorado in six years has grown 5%, but we've grown our budget 50% in our state. 5% population growth, 50% budget growth. And when I ask my constituents, what has that gotten you? Are we safer? Are our roads better? Is our educational system better? Is our infrastructure better? So TABOR limits the ability to spend surplus revenue, which is billions more in spending authority, which I don't think that we have the right to do. So $252 million in state share to education just this year in the long bill when 50,000 kids have left the educational system in the last 10 years. And we also are growing Medicaid at an unsustainable rate of 8.8%, which is three times the rate of inflation. So talk to me about why we should be spilling billions of dollars of taxpayer money and why would we be doing that without Tabor?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate your concerns because I hear that too from people who understand the state budget. Unfortunately, it's not – I think we're being ineffective with that money. And if we're going to have Tabor, we would still probably be in the same similar situation. Just look at California, right? They don't have a balanced budget amendment. We do. So right now, California, high cost of living and crime and infrastructure and the Medicaid, all the fraud that we're also seeing. You can't necessarily point to, well, Tabor is the reason why we're basically blocked. The balanced budget amendment, I think, is something that also goes hand in hand with Tabor because it also forces us to make sure we have everything, like the books zeroed out, right? And that's what we should do. Again, we should be more thoughtful with taxpayer dollars. when we're throwing money that essentially there's a problem, we see this legislature say, let's just throw more money at it without getting to the root cause of it. Like Medicaid and education, we should be trying to find the root cause and not just throw more money at it. Again, this could go towards our roads, you know, cost savings, cost benefit analysis, all that stuff. So I would say if we did not have Tabor I think it could potentially be worse we would have high taxes The rich you know we want to say this body says tax the rich The rich people can leave They can move somewhere else It's the people that, you know, can't afford to leave that end up bearing the blame and the cost.

Thank you. But does it blow your constituents' minds that in the state of Colorado, we have grown our budget 50% when population's only grown 5%? Can you imagine running a household with statistics like that?

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I could not imagine because we'd probably, if I was in that situation, I want a house, but I don't have a house, but I would be bankrupt. I would.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Representative Bradley, for bringing that point up. No, we cannot run a house like that. We can't run a business like that. And to touch on that point is the taxpayers bill of rights and our constitutional obligation to keep a balanced budget keeps us as a governmental body at check. That is a good thing, a very good thing. And we should keep it.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, sponsors, for bringing your expertise and knowledge into Tabor. And I think something I've disagreed on is just about the caps themselves. And just to give you some information, and then my question real quick is that because of Tabor caps, we are seeing a huge divide between rural and urban communities. Rural communities are suffering less money being invested in roads, infrastructure, and transportation. And, of course, as we both all know, recently with the budget, with rising Medicaid cuts, inflation interests, we're seeing just a lack of – a growing divide and growing more blooming costs to Colorado. And so my question to you is, how can TABIA be more sustainable and solvent even as we continue to see more rising interests and, of course, inflation?

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Representative Wynn, for the question. And I have to respectfully disagree that Tabor is the problem because of rural roads. The problem lies from the spending that we do in this building. The priorities that we're spending the money in are not aligned with what we need in the state of Colorado. In rural areas, urban areas, roads, health care, that's where we should be prioritizing the taxpayers' money that we do receive under that Tabor cap. and whatever's left over after that then we can talk about other social programs, other helps that we can help the people of Colorado but those four major areas must be fully funded before we can think about anything else. That's the mindset that we're going on to and TABRA is not the problem of why it is. We grew our budget from what was it, $19 billion to $46 billion which just passed in the last five years it's not the revenue revenue is not the problem so Tabor is not the problem I think we just need to reprioritize our spending any other

thank you Madam Chair I would also say again local control I believe in local control if there's a shortage of funding like say with cuts or federal whatever it is this local municipalities can take it to the voters whether it's a sales tax increase or any sort of property like mill levies whatever it is they can take it to the voters so there's also that local control aspect that gives them discretion versus having the whole state decide it focused on the municipality and the district jurisdiction whatever it is to make sure that hey we need funding for roads We need funding for our buildings We need to grow our wastewater plant, whatever it is. Take it to the voters. Let them decide. And I think ultimately there's no greater sense of purpose than to also have local control and let the citizens of that city and municipality decide for themselves. Hey, we need this. We need the money. We know what it's going for. It's not going to go towards the whole state. This is going to better our projects here in our community, make it better. And again, we just have to ask voters. So there's that aspect that I cannot stress enough when it comes to rural urban divide.

Oh, that's a pleasant difference. Anyway, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, House of State Civic Veterans and Military and Veterans Affairs. My name is Michael Neal. Testifying on my own behalf, but I am a member of Colorado People's, a member leader of Colorado People's Alliance and a member of Colorado Cross Disability Coalition. And that does form some of my thoughts today. I'm going to tell you, I think, first of all, I want to thank the sponsors for bringing this bill. Even though I am a fervent no, know. I hope you understand that honestly. I want to tell you a few things I think you probably already know. One is that we are in a 1.5 billion dollar hole and that is largely due to paper, although not exclusively so, largely because the federal government cuts and machinations have not kicked in yet. The worst is yet to come but we have the chance to take a look at TABOR and at least not congratulate a mechanism that I think people are souring on and that has really landed us in this hole. We have now cut hours for parents, caregivers from 128 to 56. We have now capped Coverall Colorado at 25,000 kids. We've done all of those things in the name of fiscal discipline, but we've got a revenue problem. We don't have a spending problem. And to answer question about 5% of growth with 50% more increased spending. Why that would be? That's because we got a differently structured aging and disability population if not more than that And so the other thing that I would like to tell you is that you know this I think is just and I don want to be quite so blunt as this but I going to say it. This is a stint to get folks in an election year to be on, you know, to be on guard from folks that support TABOR. And I know I'm not going to convince folks that already support it here. I'm, aiming right now for folks who have some doubts. What I can tell you is that like Representative Clifford, I have seen massive drops when more information happens to Tabor in people's minds. And that in fact, even I was supportive when it came out and I was 11 years old. I thought we were going to all get little tiny computers to say yes and no to every tax proposal and it would be done the next day. In fact, of course, it goes to every November or every other November.

As I said, my name is Kenny Meskos. I'm a legislator coordinator for the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition, CCDC. CCDC is Colorado's premier disability rights advocacy organization run by and for people with disabilities. We advocate for social justice for Colorado and with all types of disabilities to live full and equitable lives. so today we're justifying with James 50 26 2008 a firm commitment to table our viewpoint is that when we agree Dr. Neal we don't have a revenue problem in Colorado we have a table problem the biggest of which is paper artificially constrained the state's budget including really important programs like Medicaid that affect the lives of people with disabilities at risk this year's budget challenges clearly illustrate the damage table does the people who rely on Medicaid, particularly people with disabilities like myself. Well HR1 aka the big beautiful bill is also the blame for Colorado's current budget woes the underlying structural deficit is built in favor. The state has been forced to make deep cuts to Medicaid particularly to home community-based services because of the double impact of favor in which I want. HCBS or home community-based services are a critical component to aiding people with disabilities by helping us be able to live independently. Living within our own communities allows us to get involved with the health care decisions that has such a feed effect on our own lives. They also allow us to be able to work and not have to live a complete life of poverty and dependency on the government for everything. CCDC is here today to ask you to please vote no on assuming our commitment to table. I'd like to thank you for your time and attention and I'm available for questions.

My name is Caroline Nutter, and I'm the policy manager at the Colorado Fiscal Institute. I am here in opposition to H.R. 1008. For years, CFI has worked to help Coloradans understand the state budgets and The effects of TABOR. We break down TABOR into four main areas. TABOR limits government's abilities to raise revenue at all levels, state and local. It prohibits certain kinds of taxes, including graduated income taxes and statewide property taxes. It arbitrarily limits our revenue collections to inflation and population growth, and it sets election provisions that have been proven to discourage voters from passing revenue increases. It is the single most restrictive tax and budget law in the country, and it significantly impairs this legislature's ability to manage the public sector. There is a reason why multiple states across the country have rejected TABOR and TABOR-like measures, including Maine, Nebraska, Oregon, Arizona, and yes, even Florida. Unlike every other level of government across the country, TABOR creates a form of direct democracy that conflicts with our representative democracy. In a representative democracy, elected officials make tax and spending decisions. Under Tabor, those powers are moved exclusively to ballots, limiting representatives' roles in arguably the most core government function. Moving tax and spending decisions exclusively to the ballot makes it enormously challenging to sustain constant participation by the electorate, continually educate voters about specialized topics, facilitate robust debate around different considerations like budget and spending, and respond quickly in times of emergency. TABOR has also led to less transparency for everyday Coloradans. Despite its far-reaching impacts, TABOR itself is relatively short. It's less than 1,800 words. This has led to three decades of increasing complexity and ensuing litigation that has ended up costing the state, local districts, and the taxpayers millions of dollars. It's TABOR's complexity that makes it difficult for the public to engage with the system, more so here in Colorado than in other states. Because taxes can't be raised and allocated through the standard budget process, there is increasing reliance on things like enterprises and tax expenditures. Together, these off-budget mechanisms account for $35 billion annually. And while they can serve legitimate purposes, they are among the least efficient and least transparent tools that you all have available. Stewarding the public sector for the common good is one of your most important responsibilities, but your ability to do so as elected officials is severely restricted by TABOR. If you want to affirm your commitment to voters, taxpayers, and communities, do so by rejecting this resolution. Thank you, and I'm happy to take any questions.

Thank you, Chairwoman Wilford and members of the committee. My name is Joshua Mantell. I'm the Director of Government Affairs for the Bell Policy Center, and I'm here to testify in opposition to H.R. 1008. TABOR has been a ball and chain on the legs of the working people of Colorado for more than 30 years. We have been unable to invest in programs and services that support Coloradans across the state, while keeping in place a system that increases income and wealth inequality at the expense of working Coloradans. While it might be true that Coloradans support the idea of TABOR and answer affirmatively in polls, that is misleading at best. Coloradans overwhelmingly oppose the idea that millionaires and billionaires pay the same income tax rate as everyday Coloradans, yet that is a major part of TABOR. Coloradans overwhelmingly agree that many state programs are severely underfunded in our state, including education, health care, child care, and transportation. Yet, that is an important feature of TABOR. In Colorado, because of TABOR, we have a flat income tax, meaning that every taxpayer in the state pays the exact same percentage, whether you make $1 million or $50,000 annually. This actually makes our tax code less fair, because income taxes are only a small part of our overall tax code Sales and use taxes and property taxes not to mention excise taxes are also a part of the state revenue picture and are much more regressive than income taxes When you look at our overall tax code, the top 1% in our state pays significantly less of their overall income in taxes than everyone else. And as we cut taxes in our state for everyone, because that's the only thing that is allowed by our Constitution, the wealthy have gotten a windfall, while everyone else gets scraps. This continual reduction in income taxes has been a boon for the wealthy, and the rest of us have had to get by with less investment in core programs that hurt working families' abilities to make ends meet. To the spending cap. Tabor, as amended through referendum C, says that our budget can only increase by population growth plus inflation increases. While that may seem fine on its face, just scratching the surface shows why this misguided formula. Inflation is measured by CPI, a measure that is helpful to determine the purchasing power for families and individuals. But the government isn't buying milk and eggs at the grocery store. The government spends money on health care and education. If anyone has had to get health care over the last 20 years, you know that the cost of health care has increased significantly more than overall inflation. And so health care has taken up a larger and larger share of our budget as the cost to deliver needed services increases exponentially. And our cap can't keep up with it because it's tied to a measure that doesn't actually reflect what the government spends money on. Population growth is another misguided metric. Our oldest and youngest populations need more government services than most middle-aged healthy individuals. and yet we treat every person as the exact same in our formula. That has come home to roost as long-term supports and services has significantly hampered our ability to invest in other areas. The taxpayer bill of rights sounds great. What a name. But in practice, it's been more of a wealthy taxpayer bill of rights because while the wealthiest Coloradans can send their kids to private schools and not worry about our crumbling K-12 system or hire doctors, concierge doctors, and who needs a fully-functioned health care system when you have private care, the rest of us are dealing with governmental systems that are inadequate. COLORADO'S ARE UPSET BECAUSE TABOR MANDATES A REGRESSIVE FISCAL SYSTEM THAT IS NOT DELIVERING. THAT'S WHY WE OPPOSE THIS RESOLUTION AND URGE A NO VOTE. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. FOR DR. NEAL, I BELIEVE HE SAID THAT COLORADO HAS A BIG PORTION OF ITS POPULATION THAT IS ON, THAT HAS DISABILITIES. disabilities and I just looked and it says Colorado has actually has fewer people with disabilities as a share of its population than most other states it's about 11% of Coloradans have a disability the average US is around 13% so that puts Colorado near the bottom nationally around 48th highest so I guess my question is I don't think that that's what's growing the budget coverall Colorado is supposed to be a 24 million dollar program it's now 130 million and now we've uncapped it we have an 8.8% Medicaid unsustainable rate which is three times the growth of inflation because it was meant to be a swing, not a hammock. It's become an entitlement program. The budget continues to grow. We had one federal audit of HICPF that found $282 million in fraud. Another one found $40 million in rider fraud. And we have a wheelchair case that God knows how much fraud is in HICPF. So I'd like you to speak about that because it's not the disability that's claiming that. We have the IDD community that's on a seven-year wait list that aren't getting services. So I'd like you to speak to the fraud and the coverall Colorado that's grown from 24 million to 130 million dollars.

Okay. I think I saw Representative Luck's hand. Representative Bradley, did you want to ask a follow-up? Okay. Go ahead, Representative Luck.

Mr. Mantell.

And so the problem is that there's just a complete mismatch between what we are allowed to do as a state in terms of spending revenue and what we actually do as a state in what we spend the money on. And that's been the big problem. If we had a cap that was actually tied to governmental services, I think we'd be having a much different conversation here. But we don't. We have a cap that's tied to things that are not really relevant for governmental spending purposes. And that's the core of the problem. Go ahead, Ms. Nutter. Thank you. And thank you, Representative, for the question. I will also say that since 1999, our spending per capita and adjusted for inflation has actually remained relatively flat. So although there have been a lot of numbers thrown around today about how our budget has grown by 50%, et cetera, those are all in nominal dollar terms. And so when you adjust those dollars for inflation and for per capita spending, we actually really have not grown our budget very significantly at all since the 90s. And so the services that we've offered have been getting more expensive because they've been getting better. You know, our kids have better services in schools and our teachers are paid a little better and our health care system is a lot more modern than it was in 1992. But we haven't been able to adjust our spending very much to reflect those changes. All right, any other questions? All right, I've got just a couple, and I'll just ask them all together since we're pretty short on time here. I guess, one, from your perspective and your experience, do you believe that it's typical for governments to adapt and modernize rules as economic conditions change? Two, is Tabor constitutionally a settled legal question? And then three, have any other states adopted Tabor? And why do you think they have or haven't? Ms. Nutter? Yeah, I can answer some of those questions. So like I said in my testimony, there have been five states that have either asked voters or tried to pass legislation that are either Tabor or Tabor-like. And they have all failed, oftentimes explicitly citing Colorado's experience with Tabor as the reason against choosing to go with that measure. Oh, I forgot. Oh, thank you. Tabor's constitutionality is not necessarily a settled legal question. There was a lawsuit that was brought in 2011. It ended up being Kerr versus Polis that challenged the constitutionality of Tabor, arguing that Tabor denies Colorado a Republican form of government by forcing a plebiscite on tax policy, which violates the Guarantee Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which mandates that the federal government ensure every state mandates a Republican form of government. That case was dismissed, but only in the standing of the plaintiffs. So the actual merits of the case were not decided upon. And then in answer to your question about flexibility and adapting, TABOR has really hindered Colorado's ability to be flexible and adapt to changes. HR1 is a really good example of that being the case. We got a $1.2 billion budget hit out of nowhere that we really weren't able to respond to in any other way than cutting and rating our rainy day fund. And other states were able to respond really quickly by taking away a lot of the things that HR1 did to those states. Or they have an AGI-based tax system, and we cannot implement that because of TABOR. Mr. Mantell, did you want to add? Yeah, I'll just add to the last part from my colleague, Ms. Nutter. You know, we really have an inability to respond to the economic conditions as they kind of confront us. And, you know, piggybacking off of something that was mentioned in response to Representative Luck, like there are a lot of things that have happened since 1992 in our world, and our inability to actually adapt to that. I think about this a lot. Ms. Nutter mentioned 1999 as being this kind of inflection point, and 1999 was when Columbine happened. And since then, we've seen a lot to try and make our schools safer, and that all costs money. And yet, we don't have more dollars to actually be able to implement a lot of these things that we think are necessary to keep our kids safe. And that's just one example in one place of our budget. We have so many other areas where we are just not able to meet the needs without finding a place where we have to cut from something else that's really important. And I think that's where the problem is. We do not have the flexibility. We are in a dynamic economic time right now where things are constantly happening, constantly shifting. And we have an inability to respond in the moment because we have to make tax changes at the beginning of the year. And we have an inability to respond in more long term because we have this cap on spending that is not actually representative of what we're spending our money on. Thank you both so much for your time and your testimony as well as our remote witnesses. we're going to move into individuals that signed up in support of the measure, and we'll call everybody at the same time. So we have Adriana Kuva, Jeannie Rush, Aaron Meshke, Jody Nickerson, Missy Espinoza, Brandon Wark, and Nancy Rumfeld. Oh, and I apologize. There is one other person that signed up in support in person, Penn Pfeiffer. FIFNR. Okay. Please come forward. And if there's anybody else that wishes to provide testimony, you're welcome to come forward as well. All right. Let's get started with Miss Jeannie Rush, a.k.a. Grammy Sparkles. Can you hear me Yes ma we can Great First of all it not your money or the people that you spoke It is the people money When we are not a representative democracy we are a constitutional representative republic And talk about money. The government jobs have increased three times more than the private jobs. So what the heck? Other people's money is not there to be found. And the schools are putting out nationally. Fifty four percent of the adults can't read above sixth grade level. And that includes us. So where's the money going? Administrators making six hundred thousand or six figures, hundreds of thousands, unions, para, everybody taking money that ought to be going into the hands of the teachers and the students, academic education, not all this stuff that's grooming and destroying children. Um, both before and now backdoor sneak methods have been attacking Tabor, which is the taxpayers protection that the money won't be spent in, you know, wrong in a bad way. Um, so we have all these increases that we're trying to keep reasonable. We don't need to increase taxes. We need to reduce taxes, more people stay, and we need to look at the spending. This body has not got a budget problem. It's got a spending problem. All the committees, the authorities, the NGOs, the PPPs, every organization, all these groups, that is what is wrong. We're doing Marxist socialist stuff. We're not doing free enterprise and the safety costs so we can't vote on it. You don't have the right to just spend our money without being accountable to us. You should be responsible to us. And the amount of orbital bills that you are passing that sneak all around taking fees and money and penalties, that's really just a covert sneak attack on Tabor is unbelievable. We are getting taxed without representation at every stand of the way. Over collecting. The people are going broke trying to keep up with everything. Everybody says there's nothing you see here. You don't have a clue what's happening to the middle to lower income people and the 40 or more thousand illegal people taking money that even the citizens don't get. I mean, this is a bend over economy. It's terrible. Over collecting taxpayer funds and then spending and planning and executing programs without proper accountability, transparency has a negative impact on everyone. And I would go so far as to say it's criminal what's happening in this state. And even though you might mean well, you have not been accountable to the taxpayers and we have had enough. We're not going to keep doing it. As the song goes, we're not going to take it anymore. With that, your testimony is expired. Thank you very much. Let's go to Ms. Jodi Nickerson. Go ahead. I challenge you to also sing your testimony. I want to apologize for my previous on 1007. I'm having technical difficulties, but thank you. And thank you, chair and members of the committee. I'm here to support this House Bill, or not House Bill, House Resolution 261008, which stands up to the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, something that's been protecting the Colorado families and businesses for over 30 years. Tabor simple It makes sure that the government raises taxes or takes on new debt that the people of Colorado get to vote on it That means no surprises If the government wants more of your money we get to say Before Tabor tax hikes and spending increases could happen without asking the people, Tabor changed that, putting the power back in our hands. Since Tabor was adopted, it's put billions of dollars back into the pockets of Colorado taxpayers. Its purpose was not for institutions to use freely. That's monies families can use for groceries, rent, or their kids' education. And when voters decide the state can keep extra money, it's spent on things that people care about because we approved it. You can still ask for taxes to be raised when needed for your budget, for institutions and special needs, but TABOR keeps government spending in check, so it grows at a reasonable pace. No runaway budgets. It also protects against unfunded mandates, so the state can't just push costs onto local communities without the proper funding or approval. The legislators have chipped away at our TABOR. It works if you stop grabbing at it. And it's not to blame for the problems we have. Think how you balance your checkbook. But I really want to reiterate, what would you do if you didn't have TAVR? But most of all, I want to urge you to support this resolution and keep the protection strong. Let's make Colorado taxpayers always a voice for the facts they need to make smart choices. Most importantly, Tabor is about trust and transparency and make sure the government is honest with you and respects your right to decide how your money is spent. When officials try to get around those rules and hide the real impact of tax changes, it breaks that trust. But I want you to always think about the things that are being said here today. Please evaluate them and consider all the things that are being said. There's very good points. But I want you to know that your vote today is being watched and it will be a loud message because this is an election year. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Next up, Mr. Brandon Wark. Hello, House State Affairs Committee and people of Colorado. My name is Brandon Wark, and I'm representing myself. Colorado's Taxpayers' Bill of Rights is a fundamental reason why Coloradans are not in a worse financial situation than they otherwise would be. Colorado taxpayers have saved millions of dollars over the years thanks to Tabor. A recent poll even shows that Coloradans rank the cost of living, affordability, and taxes as the most important issues facing our state. Now, without Tabor, all of these issues would be much worse. As you know, Tabor requires a vote of the people before any tax increases could be implemented. This requirement has saved untold billions of four taxpayers. The same poll shows that a solid majority, 59 percent of Coloradans, view taxes as too high. And more than three in five Coloradans say they have a favorable opinion of Tabor. I would even suggest that Tabor's approval rating is higher than the approval rating for the Colorado legislature. For those who don't know history, Tabor was approved by Colorado voters in 1992. And in 1997, the first Tabor refunds were issued. Many Coloradans didn't realize or maybe don't know that in 2021, every taxpaying worker in Colorado paid less income taxes when Tabor lowered the income tax rate from 4.55% to 4.50%. And in 2024 the income tax rate was reduced to 4 percent thanks to Tabor Tabor has restricted the growth of government and allowed every taxpayer in Colorado to keep more of their own money Tabor is a fundamental taxpayer protection that is widely supported by the people. So I ask and encourage the legislators on this committee to support the will of the voters, the consent of the governed, and our state constitution. Please support this resolution. And I would have to say, just since I have a little bit of time left, there's an incredible issue brief put out by the Independence Institute in January of 2026 that talks about how the growth of Colorado state government has really surpassed what Tabor actually limits through different mechanisms. But I think some of the key highlights that we need to recognize, and especially with the other testimony from the other people who maybe oppose Tabor, is that our state government is spending way more money probably than they really should, ultimately. Medicaid enrollment has increased by over 200 percent, while the state's population has only increased by 20% since 2009. Since 1993, Colorado's total private employment has increased by 61%. However, in the same period, Colorado's state employment has increased by 189%. Colorado's GDP has grown at an average of 5% since 1997, while state spending has grown at an average of 6% during the same period. So our state government has consistently been growing faster than what Tabor should even allow. Of course, we know a lot about fees. We know a lot of reasons why this might be the case. But nonetheless, the people of Colorado support TABOR. They deserve TABOR. It's an important part of our Constitution, so please vote yes on this resolution. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you. Next up, Nancy Rumfelt. Chair and committee, I'm here today to ask you to let you know that TABOR exists because Colorado voters understood something fundamental. Government cannot be trusted with a blank check. This should not be a partisan issue. Year after year, Tabor is blamed for budget shortfalls. That's simply not accurate. The issue is not a revenue problem, it is a spending problem. Families across Colorado live within limits. They budget, they prioritize, they make trade-offs. State government should be expected to do the same. Instead, we've seen a steady expansion of spending paired with an increasing reliance on fees that function like taxes without voter approval. That approach undermines both transparency and trust. There is a limit to what taxpayers can afford. Calling something a fee does not change the reality for the families paying it. The rising cost of living in Colorado is not happening in a vacuum. The continued pressure on taxpayers is part of why it's becoming harder for young people to stay here, build careers, and raise families. Tabor is not the problem. It is a guardrail. It reflects the will of the voters and ensures accountability in how government grows and spends. If we are serious about affordability and responsible governance, we should be in reinforcing the guardrail, not working around it. I support upholding TABOR as intended and urge a yes vote on HR 261008. Thank you. Thank you very much for your testimony. Let's go in person to Ms. Natalie Menton. Welcome. Thank you, Natalie Menton. I'm representing myself, but I'm also a board director with the TABOR Foundation and TABOR Committee. the taxpayers bill of rights provides nine paragraphs within those nine paragraphs very much to the point, it provides multiple protections for the citizens. Not only the ones that we know about right off the bat that we are supposed to be able to vote and give consent on tax increases and debt, but there are, and of course, also the taper refunds that many residents know about directly because they've benefited from those. those taper refunds can be implemented in multiple ways as mentioned decreasing the income tax rate a sales tax rebate to taxpayers but there are other goods in there also one of the ones that's most important to me would be the property tax caps local mandates there's protection for local governments within there. So there is more when people say that they don't like Tabor. What I would like to know from them is which part would you not like? You get a taxpayer consent. Taxpayers consent for debt. You can see our debt situation in Colorado is much better than some other states because we have these protections. But it is a moderate control on government that is one of the things that probably is least understood. And I heard it here in committee when Representative Clifford asked a question about what are these limits. Well, let's answer the question is, does CPI allow for the rate actually out there? Yes, it does. So they have not been between just that 2% and 3%. And you can look at our economic quarterly forecast in the record there that will reflect up to over 7%. I think it was 8.6%. But by the time. So I'm not clear what your comment was because that's actually not correct. The state spending has been allowed to grow by that. When we look at the other limits, they make just as much sense. The limits on schools, inflation plus student enrollment, the people you need to support, that's what the growth is based upon. A local government based upon inflation plus local growth, which is basically population, but in a sense of housing. Very, very logical. What needs to be stated also is that, and I'm going to jump back to something in a second after I get, one of the things that's very important within the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights is transparency. and not letting the voters know what they are voting on and how much that will cost. And as the legislature addresses Senate Bill 26-135, I ask for that honesty. Ms. Menton, your time has expired. Thank you so much. Within that bill. Thank you very much, Ms. Menton. Let's go to Ms. Kuva. Chair and members of the State Affairs Committee, Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak today in support of House Resolution 261008. My name is Adriana Kuva, and I'm here on behalf of myself. I am an American by choice, an Army spouse, an airman mom, and a former teacher. My family's story is rooted in sacrifice, hard work, and a deep respect for the principles that make this country strong. This is why this resolution matters. The taxpayers bill of rights is not just a policy. It is a promise that government remains accountable to the people. It means that before taxes are raised or debt is incurred the people of Colorado have a clear voice and a clear vote House Resolution 26 reaffirms those principles of taxpayer consent ballot transparency and the constitutional accountability According to the Colorado Polling Institute 2026 spring roll, a solid majority of Coloradans, 59%, view taxes as too high, including nearly one in three who say they are way too high. More than three in five Coloradans, 62%, say they have favorable opinions of Tabor. As someone who built a life in this country by playing by the rules, I believe the rules should apply to government too. Families across Colorado are already facing rising costs, housing, groceries, insurance, and property taxes. They deserve honesty. They deserve clarity. And they deserve a government that respects their right to make informed decisions about their money, their own money. This resolution restores balance. It ensures that when the government asks more from the people, it does so openly, honestly, and with consent. That is not partisan. That is foundational. I urge you to support House Resolution 26-1008 and reaffirm your commitment to transparency, accountability, and the trust of the people you serve. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your time and testimony. Now, former Representative Piffner, and I hope I got your last name correct. You didn't. Of course. I'm notorious for being here. Good afternoon. I'm Penn Piffner, and I live in Lakewood. I'm also the chairman of the TABOR Committee and served in this body for four full terms. the speakers before me have done a wonderful job of providing statistics, providing some good information and so I'm going to pivot a little bit from that and just talk about why it is that we should have TABOR. First of all it has served Colorado very well for the last 33 years and 34 years and we know that the people have again and again said that they wanted to continue The heart of the concept is that society has to provide for both public goods and private goods. The question is, how do you get to the right balance? The Taxpayers' Bill of Rights says the government can have the budget it had before, plus automatic increases either to reflect the additional cost, inflation, or the additional demand, more people, more activity. But when a legislative body, and that can be anything from the General Assembly down to a local library district, makes a decision that there is a government project either to enhance one that exists, put in a new one, expand government in some way, that that legislative body, having made that decision, then has to turn around and ask the families whether this makes sense. The families then the voters get to decide whether this increase in public goods which is going to take away from the private sector take resources is worth what you asking them to do what you asking them to spend what you asking them to give up in their private sector The very important part of that, then, is it adds a check, another check, to our American system of checks and balances, so that the people do get to have that final consent. We've had another important benefit from this, too, and that is that it has changed the question. If you impose a tax and spending limitation, then the question is no longer, what can we get, Bill, ignoring the costs, but then we have to ask instead, what do you want more? It really reflects the reality that you can't have it all. The representatives have given you a very thorough and comprehensive resolution. I'd ask you to send it on to the House floor and let them vote on it too. Thank you so much for your time and testimony, members. What questions do you have? Representative Ricks and then Representative Luck. My question is for Mr. Fefner, did you say? Fefner. Fefner. Good Swiss name. Okay. Mr. Fefner. So you talked about TABOR and how TABOR allows for population growth or increases in inflation in order to get more money, to keep more of the taxpayers' money. But what about in instances of a pandemic or recession like we've had last year where there was a special session called just to fill in the gaps? How do we address those things? When Tabor was... I'm sorry. You may remember how it was probably when you were in the legislature. We have to call on people. Representative Pifner. When Tabor was passed in 1992, it very intelligently anticipated exactly what Representative Ricks has just asked about. What do you do in an emergency? And in fact, it mandates that every district, that is every government in Colorado, set up a 3% emergency fund. Now that has been terribly abused at the state level, where your emergency assets are buildings, are other hard assets. It's not where you can go and get a bank loan or take money out of an account that should be existing. But that's the fault of your predecessors in making the decision to change really the definition of what an emergency should be. But every district should have that 3% available in case of an emergency. Furthermore, there's a provision that allows you to spend without a TABOR vote in a true emergency. You know, a huge flood, terrible catastrophes. And then it says you pay that back later. But you can declare an emergency and have that resolved. Representative Luck. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you guys all for testifying. I am going to narrow my questions to either Ms. Menton or you, sir. I won't try to pronounce the name. FIFNR. Mr. Fiffner, former representative Fiffner, as potential subject matter experts, I had asked the prior panel some questions related to spending related to service growth regulations and I just curious what your thoughts are vis things like healthcare has its own CPI so to speak its own inflation rate its own level of costs, and we need to alter the cap to account for that. You know, that we are at a flat spending rate since 1999. That interaction I had with the prior panel, I'm just wondering if you all have any comment on any of that. Who would like to answer? I'd be glad to answer that. Representative Fiffner. You go first, please. Representative Fiffner. Take a listen to the alternative or the position being taken by folks who say, we have expenses in the government that are growing faster than the rest of the economy. if you take that not just this year or next year or even the next 10 years, but just extend that on out, you're saying eventually the government is going to take a larger and larger proportion of the economy to the point where you really are impinging on any private spending. So as you think about having a spending limit that reflects the reality of life, that you can't have it all, even in a wealthy country, even in a wealthy state, you're going to have to make choices. And if you think the choice of people in their homes and in their businesses of trying to retain the money for their kids, for their incomes and so on, their housing, then you need only go ask them and explain. These costs are so high that we need to take more of your income, more of your private resources. Ms. Menton, did you want to add? I do. Thank you. I'm going to address the argument, the assertion by some, that the CPI is not a valid way to measure this. And I feel it is because we should be first and foremost focusing on the funders, the taxpayers who have to support that level of the government. So I've looked to take the argument that they have presented that CPI is not a good way to do it, and I have taken a serious look at what are the alternatives. The alternative is the PPI, Producers Price Index. and when I have taken that and measured it out on what I feel are good calculators, let's say, the PPI, which is based off more of these industrial or commercial type of application, is very, very, very similar. So I think it throws the argument right out. I think the answer for those who want to assert that CPI is not a good way to do it is they want government to be able to grow as fast as somebody wants without any regard for those who must pay for it. Now, that is a situation we were in right before 1992, and that is why TAPER was implemented. So I don't find any valid argument in the assertion. Now, as for health care and some of the others that you put in there, I'm not sure if that was all bulked together, but I know when the others were speaking about CPI, and I didn't have the time in my original comments to address that, that this is a very, very adequate, logical, reasonable, moderate way to let government grow while bearing in mind it has to be sustainable. And if we continue to lose more and more of our income in the private sector to government, it's not sustainable. Yes, follow-up question, Representative. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you both. The other part that I was trying to get at, in light of your history in this area, in 1992, if we were to compare the services that were offered then in healthcare, education, and the like, with the services that we offer now, has there been a great expansion in that? Or how would you characterize that comparison? Ms. Menton. Thank you. So I think government is going far beyond where we were in 92. And I think that's part of our problem. I mean, talk about the pandemic. Well, that was an artificial inflation of our economy with federal money, which I argue shouldn't have been done in the first place with our debt levels. But what it is continued to bloat government, build programs. And the saying goes, what government program goes away, right? Now, 1992, I was that was many years ago. but from my impression and watching the state legislature, we have continued to expand programs, what things will cover. And in some cases, we have gone far outside of the lane the government should be staying. And when we are talking about subsidizing film festivals and a variety of different little things here and there, we have gone way beyond. All right, we have 30 seconds left for this panel. I saw your hand. Did you want to add anything, Representative? We've also seen the private sector improve and get better services in many different ways. Understand that it's not just what government can have and can offer to people, but also leaving enough resources in the private sector for them to do the same. And in fact, you haven't mentioned anything about whether the government should be productive. That is, productivity should go up within the government so that you get better services for the same amount of money, just as computers have gotten a whole lot better since 1992 and gone down in price. Government doesn't seem to work that way. All right. Thank you all so much for your time and your testimony. I did make a last call for witnesses, so with that, the witness testimony phase is now closed. Bill sponsors come back up please. Welcome back. Do either of you have any amendments? No? Okay. Committee, any amendments? Seeing none, the amendment phase is now closed. Bill wrap up. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. Just to wrap up here, it's quite obvious that my co-prime here and myself are very adamant about the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights. I just want to – I'll be quick on my closing statements. I just want to come back to consent. Let me give you a good example of consent, and this is a big part of the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights. you go to a store and you know they always ask you when you when you put your card if you want to donate a dollar or or round up your your your money to a certain uh program or or non-profit or any kind of a cause and they ask you to do that if you want to do it great if you don't it's your choice now would you prefer that to be automatic they don even ask you they say you know what we taking another dollar we taking another 25 cents from your total Even if you do not care about it it might go to a program or an organization you do not agree with That's what the taxpayer's bill of rights does. It asks you for your consent for that money, and that's a very important part of it. I respectfully disagree with some of my colleagues' concerns that a taxpayer's bill of rights is the cause, is a root cause, or even one of the main causes of our structural deficit. It isn't. Like my co-prime said before, before nine years ago, it never was a problem. It just became a problem because now we want to spend it on something else. We shouldn't be spending on that. the local control aspect of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Last year in November, City of Fort Lupton, where I live, we put a ballot initiative to raise a tax for a new high school. Our high school is over 50 years old. The taxpayers spoke. They didn't want it. We respected that. That's an important part of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. The people of Fort Lupton spoke. They did not want their taxes raised. We understood that part because they're already overtaxed. They're already overfeed in the state. Why would they approve another tax, even if it went to a good cost for a new high school? So right now, what the school board in Fort Leapton in the city, the municipality, have to have an IGA to work together to build a new high school. They will find the funds they need without having to go to the taxpayers to build that new school. If they need to bring another tax initiative, another ballot initiative for whatever is left over, whatever they need, they will do so. But it will go to the taxpayers. It will go to the people to decide if that's what they want to spend their money on. And we will respect the outcome of that ballot initiative, whichever way it goes, like we did last year. So I strongly urge support on this resolution for the entire body to be able to decide if they want to support this Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, committee members. I want to also thank everybody who showed up to testify, even those who are in opposition. You have two contrasting views, obviously. And so I just want to highlight a couple things that were said. Number one, the importance of the private sector. when the government wants to take on everything you're asking for a government to have unlimited power and resources we have to bring the private sector to these conversations when it comes to the issues like health care like infrastructure like education and things in business right i would also like to set the record straight that when we talk about special session we didn't fill the hole we literally just shifted the tax burden on businesses and we're seeing businesses right now leave the state and and doves and it's really sad to see because Colorado can be a model when it comes to business and when it comes to overall a healthy economy, environment for everybody. Since Tabor's passage, Colorado taxpayers have received over $12 billion in refunds. Colorado workers and families are struggling, and without Tabor, they would be struggling even worse. Tabor has led to greater Democratic participation and budgeting and a higher bar for tax policy, reducing the risk of unchecked revenue growth. Before Tabor, Colorado state revenues and spending grew at rates far exceeding inflation plus population. Around 8.5 to 8.9% compounded annual growth in the 1980s to the early 1990s. Tabor capped this slowing the trajectory and producing ongoing savings Independent analysis estimate that without Tabor the average Colorado would have paid hundreds of dollars more in taxes annually in later years with cumulative per-person savings reaching thousands over decades, enough in older estimates for college tuition or vehicles for a family of four. By limiting automatic government expansion, Tabor has encouraged more efficient spending priorities and made Colorado more competitive for residents and businesses seeking lower tax burdens relative to high-spending states. In summary, Tabor's primary benefits for Coloradans have been tangible. Billions return directly as refunds, a structural break on government revenue growth that has saved taxpayers money over the long run, and the power to vote on tax increases. It treats excess revenue as belonging first to the people and not the state. Whether this outweighs trade-offs in public investment is debated, but the financial returns and accountability it provides remain its clearest, most consistent advantages for everyday residents. For the latest refund details, you can check the Colorado Department of Revenue's TABOR page. And lastly, I will just say a lot of people, you know, I know how some of the people in this body feel about TABOR. In 2022, this body pushed Colorado cash back, $7.50 for everybody, touted it as stimulus checks. But that was the Tabor refunds that some people do not like to give back to the people. But this body touted Colorado cash back four years ago. And when some people do not like Tabor and then they say, well, HR1 is the reason why there's no Tabor refund and this and that, there's no Tabor refund. There's people that do not like to give that refund because it's money that could have been invested back in the government. So, again, this policy does not just benefit the rich. There's that notion for that. It benefits the low-income people, people who are really struggling, families, working families. So with that, members, I encourage and I vote. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Resolution 261008 to the full House with a favorable recommendation.

Members, do you have any closing comments? Representative Ricks.

the bill. Representative Locke. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you both for bringing this. I really appreciate that you took the time to lay out in five almost six pages the history of Tabor the the terms of Tabor It makes explaining Tabor to those who are new to this much easier Just give them this document And so I appreciate that I appreciate too your willingness to bring it, knowing that it would likely not move forward out of this committee. So thank you guys for coming and continuing to advocate for a policy that I do genuinely agree needs to continue forward and that the strength of it needs to be understood by our citizenry. I'm going to say in my own language what I see Tabor as doing, even though it's very much repetitive of what everyone else has said. I believe that we have an unalienable right to property, the pursuit of happiness, because property is an extension of ourselves. What we build with our hands and our minds and our lives is our own. And how we allocate those items of property is ours to make. What choice we make, whether we take the efforts that we have made and reinvest it, whether we give it away, whether we save it, whether we use it to pay for other services, those are choices that we as people should be able to make. And when an outside body seeks to make those decisions for us without our authorization, that is seen as theft, right? If you decided to, well, it goes without saying, I don't need to give an explanation of that, a hypothetical, in the same way that if your neighbor moved into your, or came into your house and took the ice cream out of your freezer, which ice cream is very near and dear to me, so it's not you know it's not a light topic um that would be theft in the same way if the government came in and and took things that you own without your consent it is theft and what Tabor I believe recognizes is that truth fundamentally that the people have said we understand the importance of government we understand that you offer services that we think are valuable and that we want to pay for, but we want to pay for it at this level and to this amount and no more. We don't want to continue to give you access to our credit card unlimited. And so we have said you can spend this amount plus if you have to pay for more people or plus if things become more costly. But if you want to expand your programs, if you want to expand your services beyond this, you need to come back can ask for a credit increase, right? If you want to take because you have collected more than you're allowed, and you want to retain that for different issues, you need to ask us. And that those are just common principles of respect, frankly, of our citizens. Could things be different in terms of the technicalities? Yeah, I guess they could. I would say that they need to be tightened up because of all of the ways in which this body has been able to erode over the last number of decades those protections, even within this year. And I'm getting glared at, but it is true. And I could bring up specific bills that point to that erosion. And I think that's unfortunate. I think it's unfortunate that this body has a problem with letting people keep their own funds and is very clever at trying to find unique ways to get more dollars and more revenue from the people. So I would say Tabor could be tightened to limit some of those open doors. I do want to respond to a few things that I heard today. First of all, with respect to the guarantee clause, my understanding of the U.S. Constitution's guarantee clause, the The reason that that was pushed forward is because there was a fear that states might establish a monarchy or some other non-Republican form of leadership in government. And there was a desire to protect against foreign influence in the establishments of states. I don't see that here. I also don't see the idea of it being contrary to a Republican form of government insofar it's a direct democracy initiative, right, which in some ways is actually the baseline of our caucus system and the baseline of a Republican form of government. That being said, as I understand it, SCOTUS has said that that particular clause is non-justiciable, right, that they will not take up cases. And yes, there was an illusion, I believe, with Sandra Day O'Connor related to maybe there is a question that they would take up at some point, but for by and large issues will be considered just politically established or politically determined by the legislature, by Congress, by the executive branch. Also, I think it's an interesting argument to say that the guarantee clause should speak into this and thereby strike down paper because it then opens the door to whether all of the initiative processes are unconstitutional. Everything that has been passed, including Amendment 79 and the quote-unquote reproductive health care right and the funding of abortion, does that also fall under the guarantee clauses prohibitions as some of the proponents of this argument are laying out? So those are all curious questions. I also think that it is worth noting just some dynamics. I'm working in real time here to look up some of the funding and rankings. Colorado is one of the top spenders in the U.S. I think it's top 10 spenders for health care. We spend more than 40-some other states on health care. We are average in terms of the raw numbers of per-pupil spending in school districts. Now, I have been advised that perhaps there's data to show that when you incorporate cost of living, that goes down. But I didn't have a chance to fully vet that out, and so I appreciate that, and I will continue to look into it. But I will just say that we seem to be at a pretty baseline with some of the other states with this protection still present. And so then it leads me with the conclusion that perhaps we just want to spend more, right? And we're concerned because we can't just spend more willy-nilly because we have requirements not to go into debt because we have these revenue restrictions. And to me, that's not a persuasive argument. because as has been pointed out, there are personal costs. And unless we are going to consolidate all of the services into the hands of government, people need money to buy things. They need to be able to access their own property. And so to get rid of this in light of my experience in this building would be to set Colorado on a path towards deficit spending, towards towards putting people in a position where they don't really have their own property because the debt of the state has been growing so much and so I will leave it there but just again to say thank you both for bringing this are

Representative Froelich. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Thank you both. I understand your enthusiasm and the enthusiasm from folks from your caucus. It's interesting because when, for example, your example, Representative Barone, this interplay with local governments. But the fact of the matter is 230 out of 274 municipalities have de-bruced, 51 out of 64 counties and 174 out of 178 school districts have debruced and 178 school districts are near the cap of their mill levy. So their ability to raise additional funds to pay for what they need to pay for is reaching its limit. So it's clear that on the local level, Tabor has been constrictive in terms of what local governments want to provide for their residents. I think it's just fundamentally, and this has been highlighted in the testimony, a philosophical difference. And we feel like there are some things that we can only do collectively. you know it doesn't we I can't with my individual refund of Tabor fix the pothole or my streets and there are no refunds there haven been for the last couple years and there won be in the near future so even if we were able to give refunds we won be giving refunds and there are just some things we can fix as individuals so no big surprise for you guys I'll be a no today but I do appreciate the conversation.

Representatives, Bottoms.

Yes. Carter.

No. Bray.

No. Luck.

No. Ricks.

No. Madam Chair.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I move House Resolution 261008 be postponed indefinitely with a reverse roll call vote.

Is there any objection to postponing indefinitely? Hearing none, House Resolution 1008 is postponed indefinitely. Thank you both. All right. Our next bill is House Resolution 1005 with Representative Marshall. Welcome back to the committee, Rep. Feel free to get started and tell us about your bill. Thank you, Madam Chair. Always a pleasure to be at State Affairs. So here we are, deja vu, all over again. This is the resolution, again, on the vacancy appointment reform. Two years ago, I pulled this thing at the very last second possible to pull a resolution because it was a huge issue, and I had people saying, somebody should do something, somebody should do something. Well, you look in the mirror and say, well, I'm somebody, I probably should try and do something. So I pulled it. It was held for almost a week before being introduced at the last second, but we got it out of the committee, 7-4, and wasn't allowed to get to the floor. The next year did a lot of work up on it. We had 14 co-sponsors, seven Republicans, seven Democrats, and we had some serious issues as a lot of people know where it was very much skylined in the news how broken our vacancy appointment process has gotten in this state we had a counter proposal for reform that wasn't real reform we still have the same issues and as you all remember the minority leader herself came in to replace a member who was a sponsor on this bill to kill at 6-5. So I wasn't planning on bringing this forward again, but at the last second, again, after seeing some things go south that I thought were inappropriate, I think it's good to keep the conversation going. Because we do have a problem. Anywhere from 25% to 30% of our legislators originally got their seats by a vacancy appointment. And that's not a slam on any single vacancy appointee because some of our best legislators are vacancy appointments. But from a systematic view, it's really bad. There are only four states that do this process that we do. And two of those four are those paragons of political virtue, Illinois and New Jersey. The difference is we have done this for 80 to 100 years at least, and it was never a problem before. And it wouldn't be if there was just three to five. Nobody would bat an eye, three to five out of 100. But as an unintended consequence of term limits in the mid-90s, it looks like it's been creeping up and creeping up. creeping up. And so now anywhere from 25 to 30 percent, because people have a date they have to leave, it just has become easier and part of the process to try and manipulate the system. And that goes to both parties. So it's becoming a self-perpetuating issue where we had a state senator who was a vacancy appointee in Douglas County, gave up their seat, and they were replaced by a vacancy appointment. And the same thing in Denver. We had a state senator who had been a vacancy appointment, gave up their seat, and were replaced by a vacancy appointment. And people say, oh, well, they're ratified by the next general election. But the problem is, once you have the power of the incumbency in our state, it makes it very difficult to dislodge the individual. Nobody wants to challenge the party's choice that's in there. And then most of our districts, by a huge percentage, are really not competitive. So if one party places the person in there, they're likely going to retain that seat. And I've had people say, well, what about this one? What about that one? The fact that we can remember the handful, literally less than one hand, of the people that have been able to overcome a vacancy appointment versus the score of 20 to 30 that just continued on because they were put into the incumbency role. Again, the exception proves the rule. There's really two ways we can address this. Special elections is what the majority of the states do, and that would solve the problem. But Colorado does have some peculiarities where it wouldn't be the best option likely for us. One, special elections are expensive, and it would be a burden on a lot of people to do it. Secondly, we have a 120-day session. And to do a legitimate, legitimate special election, you probably need about 60 to 90 days lead up so people can get involved and can actually run an election because if you do it with just 15-day staff notice, of course, the people that are in power will put who they want. Since we only have 120-day sessions, there would be a lot of times districts would go without representation in the most important times that they need. So I came up with this as being the least worst option. It's a very blunt instrument, but the problem that people are seeing is the 25% to 30%. And again, not a knock on any individual because one of the most honorable things anyone can do is get power or benefit from a systemic issue, but then when they're in a position to change it, say, you know what, that's really not the way we should do business. So the same reason Joe Kennedy was put in charge of the SEC was like, well, if we want to go after crooks, put a crook in charge. And he stopped all the tricks and machinations that he had learned of manipulating the stock market. So, again, I hope we can get to a place where we at least send this forward because it will be the voters who decide, not us. This has to go to the voters because it is a term limit. And all we are saying is if you get your seat by a vacancy appointment, you will finish out that term. You're a true interim appointee. You can run for that office in the next cycle. You can run for a different office, but you will finish out that term. So people who want to get in the legislature for the long term, which a lot of our best vacancy appointments do, they just need to wait until the regular general election and do it in the regular cycle. So, again, I hope we can get some support for this. Pulled it at the last second. Set up immediately. So here alone and unafraid but I think it the right thing to do ALL RIGHT WHAT QUESTIONS DO YOU Representative Bradley Thank you Madam Chair and thank you for bringing this again There have been some changes to the law since this was introduced last year My first question is as relates to more fully flushing out, if you see this as still necessary in light of those, which I think you've already done, but just a little bit more flushing out. But the real crux of my question, what would you say to those folks who would argue that under this particular setup, you will see the party apparatus appoint folks who otherwise are – well, who may be otherwise unelectable, but who are integral to the party that the party wants to give a nod to as like a professor emeritus. Like we're thanking you for all of your efforts. We know that you would never be able to win an election. We'll put you in as appreciation for your hard labor. And then whether in that situation or not, just anyone who has short timer syndrome, such that when they try to take on this very overwhelming job, right, you're drinking water out of a fire hydrant, that they are limiting the ability of the next representative to come in, come up to speed as quickly as possible so that that district is best represented as soon as possible. There's a lot in that. Yeah, thank you. At Representative Marshall. Yeah, thank you. And that's a knock people keep saying is, well, we won't get good people to run or we get someone good and they get spun up. But it's always one of those static analysis things. If you change the rules and you change the system, people react. I don't see – again, these are party stalwarts. We're not changing who determines who does the vacancy appointments. We just are changing that whoever gets there finishes out that term. So they could pick a former representative because, again, our term limits aren't for life. There you have to take a break. They could pick a legislative aide that is brilliant but doesn't have the political chops himself or herself right now to run a political campaign but put him in there. They could put in someone that's an up-and-comer to get their feet wet. And, again, we're not saying you can't run for another office. We're not saying you can't run for the same office. We're just saying that that office has to be done by the normal general election cycle rather than putting in our preferences to have ongoing incumbents because we're having that issue now. And we're seeing it. And we are the only state that has 25 to 30 percent from vacancy appointments. And I just don't see – I mean, I know you're a big fan of the founding fathers.

All right, let's do Bradley, then Ricks, then Wynn, then Carter.

I am completely against that Is there a question in there Okay great Representative Marshall Yeah And I heard the question is what what do other states do So as I mentioned about half the states do do special elections and that would be the gold right standard to do

All right, let's go to Representative Ricks.

Representative Marshall.

Representative Ricks.

Representative Nguyen.

Representative Marshall.

Yeah.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Question one is what other states basically do this process of having a constitutional amendment to address a vacancy problem? And the other part is going to be just why is a constitutional amendment necessary for this to address the vacancy problem?

Well, the first one is real easy. There is no other state that has this problem. We're the only ones that have 25 to 30 percent of our people in the legislature, 25 to 30 percent with 100 legislators total from the Senate. We're the only ones that have that massive differential. We are way outside the norm. So is there another state that has a constitutional amendment to stop the vacancy problem? No, because no other state has had the problem. So we've been fishing around for a problem, and I've had some people say, well, I know we've got a problem, but I don't like this solution. But it's like, okay, well, what solution have we had? We tried to have some kind of reform last year that was basically to head off any real reform because it wasn't real reform. When we have a ratification of the person in the office rather than a real election, that's not reform for what the issue is. I mean, I don't know what I can say if people think there isn't a problem that 25 to 30 percent come in on vacancy appointments. It's extremely anti-democratic. But people think that's becoming the norm, and it's not supposed to be. But your two questions, you know, is there any other state that's done a constitutional amendment? No, because no other state has had this problem.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you again for bringing this back. I think my colleagues have asked most of the questions that I had, but one of the things I wanted to point out, I believe taking the person who wins a vacancy committee out of the process, as some of my colleagues have pointed out, kind of blunts the will of the people, period. Even to the effect, the same reason term limits also, to a lesser extent, blunt the will of the people. But if you take out a name that we are no longer allowed to vote for, obviously, that's going to have an effect. But one of the things you spoke about kind of piqued my interest. We know that we as a group have the value of being a state legislator has been lessened because not quantifiably but based on the fact that people keep giving up those seats We keep having vacancy committees over and over and over again And one of the collateral consequences of that is there are people in these seats are there people in this building that have more power than the people in the seats based on their institutional knowledge? So not only are we blunting the will of the people, as in you can't vote for that person, you can't vote for that person, but the people that know the most about what's going on in this building aren't the people in the seats. And what do you say to, we are constantly turning over our institutional knowledge, and this is another way that we are, your resolution is another way for us to have even less institutional knowledge regarding what we're actually supposed to be doing here. And that's to put it easy, make it clear. The lobby knows more about. Process and bills in this building. And it is not a fair fight when a legislator who's brand new. Has to have a fight and or confrontation with the lobby and they know more about the issue and the and the history than that legislature. And this is going to actually increase the level of that not being a fair fight.

Yeah, sure, because, I mean, those are all valid points. Like I said, it's not a static system, though, so if the vacancy committees are taking that under consideration. When we have individuals, we could have lobbyists that would never, ever want to serve a full two-year or four-year term, but, hey, I'll take up a vacancy appointment for six months and take care of it. You could pick people that have already institutional knowledge to put into the seat because they're interim. They're not going to be there long term, and people know that. So I think the source of who you would put is going to be different because people will react to the rules that they're presented, not play the game the same way the rules were before. Your point is well taken on term limits, because I was in the belly of the beast with Joint ID Defeat Organization in D.C. and was a big believer in term limits until I got there and realized after watching things that if they had term limits, the people that would run the government would be all the GS-15s and SESers, not the congresspeople. So there should be maybe lengthy term limits, but that's a whole other subject, because we have term limits. And like I said, the interaction with term limits and our vacancy process is what has led to pushing up the number of vacancy appointments that we have. And when you say, well, you're limiting the choice, it's like, well, all term limits do. The age does. Under 18, you can't vote for someone. The residency restrictions do. We already have tons of restrictions. It would be a shame that we're only looking at this one restriction that only impacts a very handful of people. but they're people we identify with closely.

My last question. It's what you said in your opening. We know that the way to fix this is a special election. I understand we trying to do everything but but if we know what the issue is we know what the problem is and we know what the fix is why are we doing everything but the special election

Because we'd have institutional pushback on that, too, for the reasons I told you, and I do think we've set out. I mean, special elections are the way half the states do it, and it would legitimately fix the issue we're looking at. But they do have the downside of cost and they do have the downside of timing because we're not in 365 days a year like Congress or New York or California. We only got 120-day session. So the vacancy system, before we've had this problem of creeping up, when it was three to five people and they'd get in, it's a very fast and efficient way to get a competent person into a seat to represent the district. So the thought was we can still keep that, and we would just try and blunt down the problem of it becoming a de facto system where 11 to 40 people are deciding who represents 90 to 120,000.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Representative. As you know, I'm not a fan of this issue, but in part because one of the things I think you're missing is the primary as a result of what happens after a vacancy, especially in the House where we only serve two-year terms. If that vacancy happens mid-cycle, the individual is serving one term and there is a primary, so the person who's appointed in the vacancy doesn't have the same level of incumbency if they're challenged. Your presumption and your assumption of this bluntness, I mean, the reason I guess I'm concerned because it seems like the bluntness is because you do not trust the public to have someone run against these appointed individuals and allow the system to be functioning as the primary where you have a new person running against that individual. Can you explain why you think that the system which allows for these primaries doesn't work effectively?

Yeah, I mean you look at the numbers and we can keep saying, well, you give a massive basically unearned advantage of incumbency to anyone who gets the appointment. Term limits started becoming a huge topic in the late 80s and early 90s because people were pointing out the re-election rate to Congress was higher than the Politburo for the Soviet Union. and that was just it was wrong um so again the unearned advantages of incumbency through the system we have right now and again if it was three to five no one would bat an eye but it has been climbing and climbing and climbing and i think we may get to a norm here of 25 to 30 percent um but do i trust the people yeah but you know the system is set up so both you know we have gotten to such a partisan system, more than half the voters don't trust either party. They're not part of either party. And we don't seem to want to accept that, you know, that they're, you know, a pox on both your houses. So we got more and more tinier and more cloistered people picking who goes into those seats and then goes to the primary and then goes to the general election where only seven to eight of our districts, our house districts, are truly competitive in a general election because things have gotten so partisan. So this self process of having these tiny cloister groups deciding is very anti and you see it in the response of the general population on having less and less trust both in the government and the parties

Yes, thank you. Just one follow-up. As I see the problem that you're trying to address, my concern really is that this back-end approach does not fix the problem. It seems to me the problem is that people are not filling their terms and thus creating the vacancies. How does your solution in any way address that issue, which is causing the vacancies in the first place?

Yeah, and again, as I explained, the research showed that it was once we used to term limits, these things started going up because people had a set date they had to leave. So the machinations and the benefit of controlling the system as you go out has increased astronomical. Has that been for everyone? No. But I've had, you know, we've had people just absolutely deny up and down that they didn't time their vacancy to benefit someone else. But I've had a couple people that were very honest with me and said I did everything I could to set it up so so-and-so could get my seat. So the manipulation and the ability to manipulate it is there, but the incentive to do that would be tamped down immensely if they knew it wasn't for multiple terms.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I appreciate that you brought up the question of why people are vacating. I'm wondering, do you think that people are vacating because we're not paid a living wage or we don't have affordable childcare, onsite childcare, or it's not good on our mental health or our family's mental health? Just wondering if any of those are variables.

Yeah, they might be, but all the vacancies I've seen that have been the biggest ones lately, they were vacancies by choice, you know, and I'm worried too that when we use that as the excuse, again, we're looking at it through our own personal, to be blunt, selfish lens, rather than looking at the system. I mean, we're here and looking at it, well, how does this impact us? Well, we need more money, more childcare, more benefits, and then we would stay here, rather than the fact that the voters are saying, you got 30% that are just taking off and manipulating the system so so-and-so can get into the seat. And that's true for quite a few. And again, are we saying all of them? No, of course not. I mean, somebody drops dead, well, we do a vacancy appointment. If somebody gets extremely sick, we do a vacancy appointment. But there has been a lot of front page cases where it was very obvious that people knew that they were going to give up their seat and manipulated the system, got reelected, and then gave up the seat to try and manipulate the system. So we can't say there's not a lot of Mickey Mouse stuff going on, so to speak.

You're up. You had your hand up.

Thank you, Natalie Menton speaking on my own behalf. I would like to see this measure go forward just so we have more of a robust discussion about what seems to be a problem in representation that has not been elected by the public. And so moving this forward as to that discussion, and I agree the end result of special elections, which would be costly, but would be the ultimate solution, it sounds like. But moving this forward adds to more of the public being aware of the problem because the average person probably isn't even aware. What do you mean the person that's sitting in that seat? I didn't even elect. I didn't vote for. So let's push it forward, have some more discussion on it. Go from there. Thank you.

I am Chris Nicholson, the RTD Director for Central Denver, but I am testifying in my personal capacity. So this bill is about an elected body where some seats were uncompetitive with a structural deficit that's now facing incessant and recurring calls for reform. This feels oddly familiar. Seriously, though, I think what this bill does is gesture at the thing that we really like about vacancy committees, that they are decided by parties. People like vacancy committees because parties are good. small groups of active party members are not influenced by things like dark money the way that the electorate can be. That's good, but it also cuts against the reality that voters very much want to be able to choose. These reforms are hard. They're complicated. And there's a good reason why the legislature takes these questions seriously. That's important for any publicly elected body. So I just ask you to consider all of your comments today as you think about the RTD reform bill next week and whether, as Senator Benavidez pointedly asked today, whether that reform bill actually fixes a problem. Thank you.

Martha Tierney Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. My name is Martha Tierney and I'm here today on behalf of America Votes in opposition to HCR 261005. While I commend Rep. Marshall for bringing this back and it's hard to argue with his concerns, I have to agree with many members of the committee that this is not the right solution and special elections I don't think solve the problem because of the fact that districts would go up unrepresented in many times for up to the whole session and they're costly but I think the cost is secondary to the unrepresented district issue. I definitely think that that raising salaries of legislators would help. But given term limits, we are still going to face this issue where there is a finite time when legislators need to leave and they start looking for their next opportunity I think the one issue that hasn been raised by anyone yet unless I missed it is the fact that the folks that would get chosen for these temporary positions would have no power. And they would not be able to move legislation, I don't believe, in the same way that other members who will be there for a while would be, or members who had already been there for a while and had established their bona fides as good legislators who knew how to move policy. So you would have a whole bunch of brand new legislators who don't know the process very well and are powerless to really move anything, which is almost as bad as not having representation for the district. I also think it's a bit unlikely that you would get people like lobbyists and others to take these positions because of the short timeframe and the lack of benefits and the low salary. So these folks aren't going to leave their good jobs and go into this very temporary position, even though that is aspirational, I think, on Rep. Marshall's part. I just don't think that's going to happen. And finally, I think we really did do good work last year, this legislature did, on House Bill 25-13-15, which does, as Rep. Espinoza pointed out, require that anyone appointed has to run in a primary in the very next November, so they would never serve more than one session without having to run in a primary. So I believe that we have done, the legislature has done good work here, and I urge a no vote on this resolution. Thank you.

John Barella speaking for myself. I'm here speaking in support of Representative Marshall's bill. I believe that the committee has asked all the right questions. and in particular the key is how do we try to prevent vacancies? One of the things that I think has not necessarily been brought up is if we were to limit, if we were to restrict the folks who would be able to vote and run in the next election, there is that benefit, as Representative Marshall noted, of being the incumbent that gets taken away. And so I think you would actually start to see the parties start to take more seriously questions around the commitments of the legislatures. Are you really in this for the next two years? Do you have the understanding of all of the challenges that the legislature faces? Because I agree with many of the other committee members. This is a very tough job for very low pay. And so if we start to ask those questions at the very beginning, if we make sure that we are getting legislators who understand what is going to happen and are committed for the next two years, I think we will start to see that decline in the number of vacancies to begin with, which is ultimately the way that we're going to start the problem by limiting the role of the parties to be able to put in another person who will have that, if nothing else, name ID advantage going into both the primary and then the general election in the future years. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My question is for the opposition So there is a lot to be said about vacancy committees And what I find interesting is that vacancy committees actually link into direct democracy So the way that vacancy committees are selected by and large is through the caucus process, which is open to everyone in a particular, throughout the state, right, who is registered with that particular party, they can go and participate in the caucus, they can raise their hand and get selected to move into the party apparatus further. and become part of that vacancy committee. It's not a cool kids club, right? It's not a good old boys club. It's not close to people. You participate and then you're able to access. And often when we talk about vacancies, we talk about it as if this group of folks is somehow untouchable or can't be influenced or accessed or somebody can't become a part of that. And so I'm just wondering if you have a reaction to that piece of this larger conversation as it relates to using a vacancy committee to appoint someone for that short period of time that is now applicable under 1315 of last year.

Well, thank you, Representative Luck. And I agree that the way to get on to the vacancy committee is very much part of our direct democracy process. And being a part of that party apparatus, I know that almost everyone who raises their hand at caucus to become a precinct committee person gets chosen. And so it is not hard. And I agree, it's not the cool kids club. It is very much everyday folks who want to participate in the process and does extend our direct democracy in a way that I think is useful for choosing people who would fill a vacancy until the next November election, whether that's the primary or the general.

Okay, and committee, any amendments? Okay. Seeing none, the amendments phase is now closed.

Thank you, Madam Chair. So, again, this is an effort where there's a problem. Some people think there isn't a problem. There is a problem. This is a very anti-democratic system when we have 25 to 30 percent of the vacancies or legislative seats filled initially by a vacancy appointment. And when we say, oh, well, the vacancy committees are just part of the moral democratic process. Well, we recently had one colleague that – and they knew it was wrong from El Paso County that got a vacancy appointment where the party refused to hand out or send out the names and the contact information of the people who were on the vacancy appointment. you know talk about a secretive cloistered decision and I sure it was illegal and somebody could have challenged it but that how it operating and it wrong So again if you don think there a problem that all right But, again, people are pushing back on the parties. More than 50% of the state is unaffiliated because they don't want to belong to either one. And the more we sit here in our ivory towers and say, well, there's not a problem, it's good for me, the worst things are going to be on the outside. So I hope we can at least move this forward to get the discussion going because there is an issue. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I do. I move House Concurrent Resolution 261005 to the Committee of the Whole with a favorable recommendation.

Seconded by Representative Frey.

I like this. I've seen the appointments be used intentionally to put people in positions. We can name those names to make sure that they're the ones elected next time instead of really doing this pure through the election process. And so, yeah, I'm surprising myself, but I'm going to vote for this.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I've spoken to you last year about this bill, and the same concerns I have are still here. This bill doesn't fix the problem. If we have an issue with vacancies, then we need to do special elections, period. We are piling on the inadequacies and just kind of moving them around. And you know the actual fix is a special election, period. There may not be the will for a special election, but that's what will fix the problem regarding vacancies. And so I'm going to be a no.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Representative Marshall, as in last year, I also will be a no. And I know you've pointed to me as the unicorn in this circumstance. And so I think that's part of the reason I come to this table with a little bit different perspective. That is, having defeated an individual who was appointed in a vacancy, I know that that can be done. And that if we do encourage the parties to encourage people to challenge those individuals and not give them the title of incumbent, which I pushed deeply against in my election, because someone appointed was never an incumbent, because incumbency implies election by the people. And that's the point of what you're trying to do in your bill, which I totally support, but I do not believe that this is the mechanism to obtain that, because as I looked at serving in the vacancy, when I was looking at it for my own deceit, there was one ear left on the term that the person was appointed to, which I was able to run during the vacancy time. And then the question became keeping our House district on the same cycle as our Senate district. So my initial intention was to do the vacancy plus one term in order to actually get to the effective legislator that you need to be. I don't believe putting someone in for one year or a partial year will allow that individual to become fully effective. there's so much of a learning curve in this house and in this process that I think it's really unfair after someone has dedicated so much time to learn how the process works and to become an effective representative to then say, okay, now you know how to do the job, but we're not going to let you continue to do the job. And I think we stand for re-election after that, and if you haven't done the job as a vacancy appointee, there have been instances where that individual will no longer stay representing the population that they're serving. So I will be a no.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Go ahead. Madam Chair, yes. Rep. Marshall, I would say that we need to address the root cause, and the root cause is not that vacancies are going to happen. They happen because people get sick or something happens, but a lot of it has to do with pay, quality of life, et cetera. So maybe we should address pay. What can we do to make it possible for more people to come into this legislature? We've run bills. We ran a bill on the pay commission, and they're going to increase us, or the suggestion is that we be increased to $50,000, which is not a whole lot of money still. But I think that we need to address the root cause, and I don't think that this bill is addressing that. So I'm going to be your note. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I do appreciate this conversation, and it gives me much to think about. I struggle with the premise that we have a quarter of our vacancies filled because people are setting up others to run, right, that they're passing on the baton. The reason I struggle with that is because as I do just a quick review, you know, you had in the last eight years, let's say, you had at least one representative, one senator who took presidential appointments with either party. You had at least three people pass away. You've had two folks who were in their first year stepped back because of the political toxicity and lack of pay. You had an individual who, well, two individuals who resigned even just last year and relatively early in their tenure here. Another who stepped down because she was, I believe, upset about not getting into a higher level of leadership. There was a member who stepped down for legal issues. And so when I look at that just as a quick cross-section, I'm not persuaded that the reason we have these vacancies is because of a sense of corruption or a desire to pave the way for the next person in a particular community group or clique to get in. Not saying that doesn't happen. I just don't know that it happens to the degree that would rise to us having to address this. and with the changes that were made last year, even though I posed them, I think that a lot of these questions have been answered, especially when you consider that the vacancy committees are open to anyone to sit on, and so it's not as if the people can't have a voice if they want to participate, and so for that reason, I will be a no today.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I've I've heard from my colleagues. I don't disagree that we're not dealing with the root cause. This is it a fascinating conversation And I think I said last year I would be a yes vote so that we could talk about this on the floor on the committee of the whole and I still feel that way a little bit I do think that this is some kind of conversation that we should have at large, primarily so that we can start to address what causes vacancies. I came in on a vacancy from somebody who left, citing the vitrolic nature of the work. Now, I had the opportunity to sit down with her and talk about that, and there was no waiting until January 12th to resign. There was no – it was clean. It was just, I'm leaving. Best of luck. I've seen things that were other than that, where people continued to get reelected and then resigned on a day appropriate for that. I disagree with that way of doing business around here. I also disagree with things that look like a shell game, you know, where I think we had a vacancy that opened up in the Senate last year, and then somebody that had just been appointed by a vacancy committee also ran in the vacancy committee to move to the Senate. I don't like that kind of stuff. And what I was proud of, not to diminish any of those people, by the way, I'm talking about the process, all of those people are – I'm not concerned about the people, I'm concerned about the process. I appreciated that the parties and the vacancy committees didn't buy that either. That's not how it worked. That's not who won. And, you know, I think that at the end of the day, when you get down to a group of people that happen to make a decision about who their leader is going to be, that that is an authentic conversation. And I think if those vacancy committees are large enough, that it is a really tough election. I think that vacancy commission is a very tough election. It's probably the most grueling conversations that I've had over conversation after conversation after conversation after conversation that I've had in my life, to tell you the truth. I think there's something to be done here. I don't think where you are today is it, but I appreciate that we're going to keep talking about it as long as you keep coming back. and I'm willing to have this conversation with the whole committee in order for you to get the opportunity to find something to get right. I have seen you do the same with other pieces of legislation, so I give you trust as a colleague to be able to do that. That's where I am.

Representatives Bottoms.

Bradley. Yes.

Espinosa. Respectfully no.

Krolik? No.

Wynn? Respectfully no.

Clifford? Respectfully yes.

House concurrent resolution 10.05 fails on a vote of 7 to 4.

Madam Chair, I move to postpone indefinitely. House concurrent resolution 261005 with a reverse roll call vote.

Seconded by Representative Farray.

Seeing none, House concurrent resolution 1005 is postponed indefinitely.

which is House Concurrent Resolution 1004

I'll start. Brandy said it was okay. Good afternoon, committee members, or those of you who are here. Parental rights are not a modern political construct. They are a natural right rooted in the enduring relationship between parent and child and essential to a free and ordered society. Long before the existence of the state, families formed the first and most fundamental unit of society. It is within the family that children learn responsibility, character, and self-government. As William Blackstone observed, the parent-child relationship is, quote, the most universal and natural of all human relations, carrying Rights and duties no government should lightly disturb. This principle is not merely philosophical. It is firmly established in American law. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, the court held that the child is not the mere creature of the state. In Wisconsin v. Yoder, it affirmed that the primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate. And Troxell v. Granville, the court recognized that parental rights are perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests. These decisions reflect a simple truth. Parents are the primary and most accountable stewards of their children's well-being. That authority is inseparable from the duty to raise, guide, and protect. We also know from outcomes that this matters. Children raised in stable, engaged families consistently experience better educational and life outcomes than those who spend extended time in the child welfare system. By contrast, youth who age out of foster care face significantly higher rates of mental health challenges, lower graduation rates, and increased risks of homelessness and incarceration. Recognizing parental rights does not weaken protections for children. It strengthens them. The state has the necessary but limited role to intervene in cases of abuse and neglect with full due process. but absent that high threshold, the presumption must remain with the parents. HCR 26-1004 reflects these foundational principles by affirming in our state constitution, the right of parents to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children. It restores clarity where ambiguity has begun to grow. At its core, this is about preserving the proper balance between family and state. When that balance holds, families thrive, children are better protected, and government intrusion is minimized. The question before us is straightforward. Who should bear primary responsibility for raising the next generation, families or the state? For the sake of our children and the preservation of liberty itself, the answer must remain with parents. I respectfully urge your support for HCR 26-1004.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to my bill co-prime on bringing this resolution forward. We've brought it several times, so I thought I would just put on the record what it doesn't do before the opponents bring that forward. This will endanger children. It won't. The proposal does not eliminate the state's role in protecting children. It simply requires the government to meet a higher legal standard before overriding a parent. We're not seeing that happen. We are seeing several lawsuits being brought against Colorado because of these acts that are happening to parents in Colorado. Courts already balanced parental rights with child safety. This measure doesn't remove intervention. It ensures it's justified and not arbitrary. Other states recognize strong parental rights without dismantling child protection systems. It's too vague and will create lawsuits. I would say it's already creating lawsuits against parental rights. Constitutional rights are intentionally broad. speech, religion, due process, and courts interpret them over time. Clarity comes through case law, not overly narrow drafting that can be easily bypassed. If anything, this reduces conflict by setting a clear constitutional standard up front. It will undermine schools and teachers. Parents already have primary responsibility for their children. Schools are partners, not replacements. I think sometimes we forget that. This doesn't dictate curriculum. It ensures transparency and parental involvement in major decisions. STRONG PARENT ENGAGEMENT IS CONSISTENTLY LINKED TO BETTER STUDENT OUTCOMES IT CAN HARM VULNERABLE KIDS LIKE LGBTQ MEDICAL CASES THE STATE RETAINS AUTHORITY IN TRUE CASES Parent engagement is consistently linked to better student outcomes It could harm vulnerable kids like LGBTQ medical cases The state retains authority in true cases of harm or medical necessity This measure doesn't create a right to neglect. It protects lawful parental decision-making. We already trust parents with life-altering decisions every day. This just ensures government doesn't override them lightly. Parents already have these rights. This is unnecessary. While courts like Intraxel v. Granville recognize parental rights, they are not explicitly protected in Colorado's constitution. Without clear constitutional language, those rights are more vulnerable to shifting policies and court interpretations. This measure locks in a consistent standard for future generations. This is about ideology or politics. The idea that parents direct the upbringing of their children is a widely shared principle across political and cultural lines. This is less about ideology and more about who has final authority, families or the state. Staying grounded in rights and balance, not absolutism. Emphasize legal continuity, not disruption. And I'll just say, let's be honest about what this resolution actually does, because, again, I'm sure there will be some false rhetoric. This resolution simply says that parents, not the government, have the fundamental and alienable right to raise their children. That's it. And, yes, we will be hearing arguments that this somehow endangers children, dismantles schools, or creates chaos in our legal system. That's not just exaggerated, it's backwards. Because here's the reality. We already trust parents every single day with life and death decisions. And I know you have watched me speak out about what happened to my son. And I assure you that the government wasn't sitting by his bedside for six weeks while he was in the hospital. Medical care, education, values, discipline. But when it comes to government systems, suddenly we're told parents need less authority. That doesn't make any sense. This resolution does not eliminate child protection laws. It does not prevent intervention in cases of abuse or neglect. What it does is require the government to meet a higher standard before stepping in and overriding a parent's decision. In other words, it restores due process. Opponents will say the language is too broad. Well, so is every right we hold dear. Free speech is broad. Religious liberty is broad. That's the point. Rights are meant to endure, not be narrowly written so they can be worked around. And let's address the claim that it's unnecessary. If parental rights are already respected, then why the resistance to putting them in the Constitution? Why the hesitation to affirm clearly and permanently that families come before bureaucracy? The truth is, without explicit protection, those rights are vulnerable to changing administrations, shifting policies, and unelected decision makers. This measure draws a clear line. The state has a role, but it is not the parent. And finally, to those raising concerns about difficult or edge cases, those situations already have legal frameworks. They don't disappear under the resolution, but we should not use rare extreme cases as justification to weaken the rights of every family in Colorado. This is about something simple and foundational. Who decides what's best for a child? The people who love them and raise them or the government? I trust parents, and this resolution makes sure Colorado does too. Thank you.

My name is Daniel Frick. I'm here on behalf of myself. I'm a father in Larimer County. Some of you know my wife, Angel Mom, Patty Fox. She wanted to be here today, but she had other engagements. Between the two of us, we have eight children between the ages of 11 and 33. I'm here today to support HCR 26-1004. At its heart, this resolution is very simple. It recognizes what most of us already know in our hearts. Parents are the ultimate authority on what is best for their own children. We love our kids more than any outside agency ever could. We know their needs, their strengths, their challenges, and their dreams better than anyone else. That natural authority belongs with moms and dads, not with the state. This amendment doesn't take anything away from anyone. It simply says the fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of our children should be protected in our state constitution, so it cannot be slowly questioned or eroded over time. As a dad who is actively raising my own children, three of which who are under the age of 18, I believe every parent in this room feels the same way. None of us would want a distant and faceless entity stepping in and overriding our decisions about what is best for our sons and daughters. That's why this matters. This simply puts into writing what should already be obvious. Parents, not the state, have primary authority over their children's lives. I respectfully ask you to support this resolution and send it to the voters of Colorado in November so they can affirm this fundamental truth. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Sabrina Ballister. I live in Colorado Springs, and I'm representing myself. I stand in support of Resolution 1004. I am asking all members of the committee to vote yes on this resolution. Resolution 1004 is the first step in specifying and thereby ensuring one of our most basic human rights, that of parents to raise their children without the threat of governmental entities trampling that right. Resolution 1004 is a valid and legitimate legislative act towards specifying parental rights in our state's constitution. It is my estimation in 1876, when Colorado became a state, it was self-evident to the founders of this state that parental rights are basic, therefore not necessary to specifically state such in our state's constitution. Although not as prevalent then as today, there were organizations, usually under the umbrella of various church denominations, that were created to assist families with significant socioeconomic issues related to raising and providing care for children so as to prevent true abuse and neglect Eventually the courts became more active in resolving family disputes and protections of minors This began with good intentions but from my understanding family courts in Colorado have headed in the same overbearing ideological Marxist progressive direction this legislature and the current governor have. An overbearing and authoritative mentality displayed by the Democrat leftists ruining this state necessitates this resolution in order to protect the further erosion of parental rights in Colorado. The Democrats of this committee will not disappoint in their automatic no votes for any legislation that comes before them that they perceive threatens their political agenda. I have witnessed this time and again. Democrat members regularly dismiss the will of the people of Colorado. Today will be no different. But as your employer and voting citizen of this state, I am asking you to do your jobs in accurately representing all the people of your districts. that were somehow questioned the validity of the elections, and now I understand from previous testimony that the vacancy problem is a major issue for the state as well.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the committee. My name is Adriana Kuva, and I'm here to testify in support of HCR 26-1004. This resolution simply affirms that parents have an inalienable right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children, placing the right alongside life, liberty, and the property in Colorado's constitution. The question before you is not whether that principle is new. It is whether Colorado is willing to explicitly recognize that courts have already said for decades. In Troxell-Wert's Granville, the United States Supreme Court made this unambiguous. Parents have a fundamental right to make decisions for their children.

Thank you very much. Next up, Rebecca Pes.

I can.

children in Colorado and also common decency and common sense. Thank you so much for your testimony. Thank you. And last but not least, Joe Jameson.

Thank you very much. Members any questions for this panel Representative Luck Thank you Madam Chair My question is for Ms Lee Ms Lee what would you say to those who would argue that your story is a one or that your

Thank you for that question. There have since been multiple lawsuits about secret school transition filed just here in the state of Colorado. Dozens have been filed all over the country. Four of them, after my case, have already reached the Supreme Court. Two are still sitting there, and we're hoping that the Supreme Court will decide on this once and for all. But this is a very pervasive issue. And I think that's reflected in House Bill 24-1039, which mandates that teachers must affirm child's wrong sex confusion and not be required to tell parents that they're performing this psychosocial medical intervention on other people's children. So it's state law that this happens. There are so many lawsuits to back it up. And I'll just also mention that this is common practice in the family court system in addition to the public education system. So I've now helped over a dozen parents who have actually lost custody of their children for an unwillingness to affirm that wrong sex confusion or for simply asking questions to doctors about their children being put on wrong sex hormones at a young age, just trying to understand the ramifications of what these medical interventions mean. For example, some parents who have gone public with this, there are many, but just some names you can Google. Gene Main, Jason Zook, Dustin Gonzalez, Cynthia Stein in Durango, Heather Fitsky out in Rifle, Colorado. So this is Paul Serrini who's testified here. There are many parents who've gone public about losing all rights to their children for an unwillingness to do what the government believes is the best for their kids, which is lying to them about who they are, affirming that they've been born in the wrong body. It's a very pervasive issue. It's affecting so many parents in this state. It's a hard thing to talk about publicly. It was a hard thing to go through with this lawsuit, painstaking, but that's why you don't hear more parents being vocal about it. They're just trying to protect their kids and hold on to custody.

Thank you, Chair. This is another question for Mrs. Lee. You talked about that this happened with your child, and then obviously the lawsuit and everything that's involved, but how did the state or Child Protective Services or any of those groups, how did they interact with you?

Thank you for that question. I, within two days of finding out that my daughter had been connected with outside organizations, was secretly going as a boy at school, had been sexualized, taught concepts like polyamory in this club, I had no idea was happening. I actually FOIA'd, CORA'd my school district and found that just 48 hours after they were vilifying me, they were assuming all parents are guilty until proven innocent. Those were their words, not mine. I've released those emails. And within a week, I had Child Protective Services, a mandated reporter at my home, claiming that we were abusive for not going along with our daughter's belief that she'd been born in the wrong body. our 12-year-old daughter who had just started puberty and had all kinds of circumstances that led to this confusion So the state wasted no time not just the schools in vilifying us and calling us the problem even though we had no idea what was going on with our child which was a violation of our fundamental rights But then they called in Child Protective Services, and we're really lucky we didn't lose our daughter that day that we had a sympathetic mandated reporter. But again, I know over a dozen families who have not been so lucky.

Representative Bradley. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I want to thank everyone that waited it out to testify in support of this bill.

No.

Thank you, Madam Chair. For everyone that testified, thank you. Thank you for staying late to be here. To all the parents who have lost rights to your kids, we will never stop fighting for you. I think, one, witness that it best when families fail, societies fail. I think parents are angry at the bills this body continues to bring forward to attack parental rights, and I think it shows. I'll be brief. I do think it's worth noting for the record that we didn't hear opposition testimony today. That may reflect how widely accepted this principle is, or I think on the other hand, it may reflect a broader concern that outcomes here are often decided before testimony is even given. And I didn't see a single one of you other than the two on the ends basically ask questions, which I will have to say on the record bothers me. I ask questions for every bill that comes in front of this committee, no matter what I think my outcome might be. I ask the questions so I can understand the policy better. So for only a couple of people to ask questions, it's disappointing. Either way, the responsibility still falls on us to get this right. This resolution is straightforward. It affirms that parents have a fundamental and inalienable right to raise their children while preserving the state's role in cases of real harm. It doesn't create new programs or costs. It simply ensures that this foundational right is clearly protected and ultimately decided by the voters. At the end of the day, this is about clarity and consistency in how we treat families across Colorado. And, you know, we'll just keep bringing it forward. We have four more years to do this, right? So we'll just keep on keeping on. I ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. All persons have certain natural, essential, and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, of directing the upbringing, education, and care of their children, of acquiring and possessing and protecting property, and seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness. So what we're looking at doing is just inserting that very natural statement into what is already ensconced in our Constitution. As per my opening, parental rights are not a modern invention. They are grounded in what our founders called the laws of nature and nature's God. And they are grounded in the foundational laws of our nation. This is not philosophical, just philosophical. It reflects a natural duty. Parents are responsible for the care, protection, and upbringing of their children and extension of themselves. Longstanding legal tradition and modern science point in the same direction. As William Blackstone observed, the parent-child relationship is among the most natural and universal of all human relations. And as noted, biology itself equips parents through lasting neurological and hormone changes to be uniquely responsive to their children's needs and well-being. This is not an abstract idea. It is a consistent pattern across human experience and throughout nature that parents are the primary protectors and stewards of their young. Yes, there are exceptions. Some parents fail in that duty, but we already have systems in place to address abuse and neglect. Public policy, however, must be built on the rule, not the exception. This HCR places these rights and responsibilities squarely within others that can also be deprived via due process, just not by an arbitrary and impersonal bureaucracy with conflicted interests. Institutions, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot replicate the individualized bond between parent and child, and they are not immune from failure themselves. So to restate the central question before this body, should the state displace parents as a primary decision makers in a child's life? It should not. I respectfully ask for your support.

That would be great.

Yes, to the committee of the whole.

I move HCR 261004 to the committee of the whole with a favorable recommendation.

Seconded by Representative Furet.

Representative Black. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you both for bringing this bill. Sorry I was explaining the difference between HRs that go to the full house and HRs that go to seconds. In any case I want to thank you guys. Obviously I'm supportive. I have my name already on it, which is no small feat because you know I I tend to be a little bit more resistant to putting my name up there on the small letters, non-bolded. In any case, this is essential to proper functioning of society. The family unit is the first building block of a good society, and if we do not honor and preserve and protect that and strengthen it in all the ways that we possibly can, our society will suffer. I did ask the question of the second panel, what would the state look like if we didn't affirm this truth, if the opposite is what we affirm, that the state is very similar to the question you just asked. And I find that to be dystopian. The answer to that question would be horrendous. I suspect that since you both have multiple children, your decisions vis-a-vis each one are different. The schools, all of the things are different. The way you discipline them, the way that you interact with them because of their uniqueness. and that is not done at a centralized structure. It has to be decentralized in the way that God created the social order. And to not affirm that will just lead to greater and greater suffering and breakdown in our communities. And so I hope that this committee finds its way clear to supporting this self-evident truth and advancing it to the floor for further conversation, at which time I will happily provide statistics on what family breakdown does to our budget as a state because it does contribute a lot in terms of cost and also other things that whole families bring to a healthy society so as to have a more robust conversation on a night that is not so late So thank you all I will be in support Representative Espinoza

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank those who came out and testified. I truly appreciate your preferences, your stories, speaking your truth. I want to emphasize that for me, I just don't see the urgency of having a constitutional amendment in the rights of parents. Because right now, I believe that parents are able to still take their children to homeschool. And it sounds like for the most part, the fact that a lot of children are still able to grow and prosper with their families. And the testimony I've seen and I want to recognize is that people have those options still. And so I really appreciate the sponsors for coming and bringing this bill here, resolution, but I will respectfully be a no today.

Thank you guys for bringing the bill. Obviously, you've brought the bill because kids are being taken away. I mean, how many hundreds of people have to come into this building or into that building? and testify about this with legal case law after legal case law before somebody says, oh, okay, maybe this is an issue. The idea that this is a precedence, yeah, it has been a precedence, but that has been robbed from us, that has been taken from us. And some people don't seem to think that's a problem. I do. These children do not belong to this state. No matter how many times it's said in that building over there, no matter how many times people put it online, no matter how many times that's part of their platform, our children belong to us. And so thank you for bringing the resolution. This is, we have to keep shouting this, and we're in the hundreds now, but pretty soon it'll be into the thousands of children that are being taken away from their parents, and eventually there will be an overthrow, and we will get this done. So stay strong. Maybe the next couple of years we'll see some good changes.

Clifford no Adam chair no house concurrent resolution 1004 fails on a

House Concurrent Resolution 261004 with a reverse roll call vote. Second. Seconded by

Who would like to begin? Representative Garcia.

Representative Garcia.

You're welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, Mr. Vice Chair. Is it originally named Hugh McKean? So what's the Hugh McKean connection here?

Are there any further questions for the sponsors? Seeing none, we'll move into the witness testimony phase. We only have three witnesses signed up online. Are there any witnesses in the room before we get started? I'll call up Shannon Johnson, Joe Jamison, and Aaron Lee. Oh, I was looking on the wrong monitor. Sorry about that. Shannon Johnson, you may begin, and you'll have three minutes.

Thank you, Ms. Johnson. Now we'll go to Joe Jamison. You'll have three minutes. Please state

Thank you, Mr. Jameson. Next we'll go to Aaron Lee. You'll have three minutes. State your name and anyone that you represent for the record.

This ends our witness testimony phase. Oh, my goodness. I am so sorry. We will entertain questions for the witnesses from the committee Are there any questions Seeing none the witness testimony phase is complete Amendments. Committee members, do you have any amendments? I got the affirmative no nods from the sponsors. Seeing no amendments, the amendments phase is closed. Wrap up. Representative Garcia.

Madam Chair.

Madam Chair, would you like to move the bill?

Second. Seconded by Rep. Furey.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing this bill forward. One of the things that I have been grappling with, and I recognize the deep connection you have with the senator, is that we just renamed something a few weeks ago. You co-sponsored that. We named a bill after a legislator's son. We are constantly thinking about how do we honor people. and it feels like in my head I wonder if we should stop doing that and then revisiting years later when something comes up and I'm not not to say that that is of the senator that we're trying to honor today I think what I'm trying to say is more broadly when we're looking at how we're naming things, is it worth trying to decide who we name things after, parks, buildings, and bills, or is it better to not do that and having to revisit those changes in the future, like we just saw what we had to do with Cesar Chavez? So that's just a broader question to about of how do we fairly decide what we name things after, whether that be parks, buildings, or legislation, or councils. It's just a broader discussion that I've been thinking about, and I don't want to be disrespectful by bringing that up because I know you have a relationship and a connection and you want to honor that person. I just am thinking in a more broad lens in policy making how do we balance that and I just wanted to offer that because it was in my head and I wanted to share that I just wonder what's the right way to name things in our policy making decisions

yes Espinosa yes Bray yes Brolick yes luck respectfully no when yes Ricks yes Clifford or actually Wilford yes mr. chair yes that passes on a boat eight

Thank you, Madam Chair. you all may remember sitting here in August of last year having a conversation about the governor's powers vis-a-vis calling the special session before you was at that time a resolution substantially similar to the one before you today because this committee said we want to continue this conversation we hope you will bring this back during normal session when we don't have to worry about whether or not this conversation fits ironically under the call that was very narrow that the governor issued in August. And so here it is again. You will note that now we have a legislative declaration based largely actually on the work, the great work of our nonpartisan staff, Ms. King. She had written a memorandum in September of last year related to the topic of the special sessions and its history. And so a number of those data points were included in our legislative declaration so that if this does go to the voters, there is an understanding of where this comes from. And also for those who may forget what the conversation was about, that there is an outline there. In salient part, this bill would add into the state constitution under the governor's power to convene the legislature or the Senate. The statement, the business specially named in the proclamation may limit the General Assembly's consideration to a specific area of a general subject, but must not limit the General Assembly's consideration so narrowly as to restrict the possible outcomes. If you all will remember, and there's actually a citation in this legislative declaration. Last year, just by way of one example, the governor had called us to, quote, make adjustments and reductions to the sales tax vendor fees in CRS 39-26-105. That is a very limited and narrow call, and it was only one of, I believe, 11 different areas that he called us that were very specific such that basically we were asked to do what he had already designed probably with leadership or others to do that is a violation of the separation of powers we're the legislative branch we make the rules the executive enforces them yes he can identify that there are particular problems that can't wait to be addressed until the next session and call us back to address it but it needs to be a much broader statement not so narrowly tailored that really the outcome is determined I will note just for fun if you haven't had a chance to read this whether here on the committee or listening in in the audience or online that for a number of years Colorado only met in odd-numbered years we weren't a session that legislature that met every year during the first special session in 19 or in 1894 it lasted for 52 days the longest special session that we have seen as a state lasted 71 days in 1910 The legislators considered a range of different topics, everything from grasshopper infestations and soil erosion to sentencing laws and budget issues. In total, there have been 52 special sessions. All of them have been called by the governor. None of them have been called by the legislature, and only one of them ended without any bills being passed. Of those 52, our current governor, I believe, has called four of them. So I ask you to support this resolution, which if it passes in both chambers, bypasses the governor, goes straight to the ballot, and would be open for the people to speak into whether or not they want to just once again verify that there should be separation of powers and that the governor should not legislate from his mansion.

Thank you Thank you members of the committee and I'm honored to be sitting here with my co-prime on this house concurrent resolution as somebody who is part of the majority party who quite frankly has benefited from these special sessions and two of the most recent special sessions I have carried bills that have been super narrowly defined. I understand, and what I'm trying to share here is that as somebody who has benefited from this privilege, I understand that it's also unfair. For example, in 2023 Executive Order D-2003-024, everything listed from A through H had a very specific bill attached to it. The one that I carried was listed under H. concerning the nutrition of over 300,000 food insecure Colorado children during the summer months by establishing departmental authority to authorize a summer electronic benefits transfer program in Colorado beginning in summer of 2024. Where is the room for creativity? Where is the room for more stakeholding? Where is the room for determining as a legislative body what is the solution we should bring to addressing a summer EBT program? It's so narrowly written that there is no room for the legislature to do its job except for do what the governor says this is what you should do. In 2025, again, you know, I crafted many of the bills that we saw in the special session of 2025. I worked on the tax measures we brought in 2025. I worked on one of the health care measures for 2025 and for Medicaid. I carried the food security measure around healthy school meals. And all of these, when we read through them in Executive Order D-2025-009, we can see how extremely narrow they are, essentially taking away the power of the legislature to be its independent branch, as it should be, but instead doing the rubber stamping work of the governor. Again, I benefited from this. I got to carry really great bills that, from my perspective, have done incredible things for Colorado. Because of the narrow scope here, I wasn't challenged by by any other competing bills that could have been brought because they did not fit under this scope The Democratic Party benefited from this but that does not mean that it fair Just because you privilege and you have privilege in something does not mean it's fair. It is important to recognize when your privilege can get in the way of other people, of those in the minority. This is why I am supporting this, and I ask that you all support it as well.

Thank you. I appreciate your bringing this bill back, Representative Luck, as we kind of instructed you to do so during the special session. And you know you and I talked about it, and I declined being a co-sponsor of this bill. And I just focus you on page 3, subsection G. This is the biggest issue that I have. That is that the Colorado Supreme Court has recognized that the governor may define the appropriate subject matter for the legislative consideration, but he may not prescribe the specific form that the legislation will take. The governor cannot so narrow the matter for legislative consideration that the General Assembly is forced to, quote, unquote, to do the bidding of the governor or not act at all, end quote. And I guess kind of like some of the other questions I have, and this was my fundamental issue, is why do we have a constitutional amendment if the law and the case law already indicates that the governor should not be allowed to do what he did in terms of narrowing it? And the remedy for us would have been to challenge that order. Or we also, as legislative branch, have the authority to call our own special session without the governor's interference in any case. So those are my two questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for those questions. I'm going to start with the latter one and then move to the first. you may remember during that special session last year i made repeated statements both in this committee and from the well about how i thought it was best for us actually to dissolve to not do any of the work that the governors called us to do and call us ourselves back on our own authority so that we could deal with the issues as fully as we otherwise would without this specificity As you guys know, nobody took me up on that. The business continued as was directed to us. Secondly, as relates to the case law and why that needs to be inputted into the Constitution, I think we can remember that or realize that it sometimes is hard to remember all of the things we're subject to. so I know that for me when I go to look at the rules I look at the rules as they are in total and sometimes I forget to look at all those other extraneous pieces so if the governor's staff goes and looks at section 9 of article 4 and says this is the power the governor has it's good to have that just as a restatement of what is that case law precedent it's also always good because as you know as a jurist The courts can overturn things And if this becomes a trend as my amazing co pointed out in 23 and 25 we have examples of this And so if it becomes a trend and the legislature doesn push back perhaps because the majority as was stated is getting the bills through that they want to get through and perhaps because the minority doesn have the resources to actually push against that then it becomes some sort of precedent in and of itself that this is done without challenge and to put it in and to remind the governor and the executive branch there are three branches and that we would like to be able to do our job without being directed I just think that it's good practice.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I was just wondering, who will decide when a proclamation is too narrow? Representative Locke. Thank you, Madam Chair. So obviously that is ultimately a question of fact that would have to be adjudicated by the courts. That being said, by putting it in the Constitution, you are giving notice, just a constant reminder to the executive that he needs or she needs to be within these proper confines. Otherwise, what is done in that special session may be thrown out.

Thank you. And what if this amendment actually weakens the existing judicial standard that's not there now?

Well, thank you for that question. When you look at the bill language and then the case law, it was intentional to craft the bill that will go to voters with the actual decision of case law so that it's matching and it doesn't weaken what came out of the decision.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Jody Nickerson and I'm wanting to speak in support of this bill. It interests me because anything that's going to go to a ballot or be concerned, considered down the road, that may be a voter's choice. I want to learn more. And I was really interested. I want to keep a balance in our government. So in learning about the government and reading this bill, it just seems that sometimes the governors have called special sessions to address urgent issues. I was reading, and I know these special sessions that have occurred recently in my couple years, I've really gotten involved. But these calls have been broad, and it's giving our elected representatives the freedom to find best solutions. But it also mentions there have also been times when the governor's call was so specific, and it seems lawmakers with no real choice were forced to do exactly what the governor wanted or in one case says I just learned nothing at all. But I was trying to imagine to solve a problem, what if I was asked but I was told exactly how I must do it with no room of my own ideas? So I do feel representatives need to be able to debate and consider different options and craft laws that truly serve the people. But it appears in this amendment doesn't take the power away from the governor. It simply ensures that when a special session is called, the legislature can actually legislate. It would also seem that the governor can set the subject as I read it and you were just discussing, but not dictate the outcome. This amendment puts that concept into the Constitution so it is clear and protected. It seems that we need to do that more frequently to put things in our Constitution so it's clear and people should have an opportunity of voting that in. But I do urge you to support this amendment because I want to make sure our government remains accountable, responsive, and balanced. Thank you for your time.

Hello again, Chair Wilford and committee members. My name is Donna LaBelle and I represent myself. Thank you for allowing me to testify in support of this resolution. Our Colorado Constitution specifies boundaries to the governor's power in order to maintain a healthy balance, which is the purpose of the three separate branches designated in Article 3. The governor is vested with power to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, quote, but the power to create those laws is solely given to the General Assembly. Our nation was founded on an abhorrence of tyranny, having been subjected to a long train of abuses and usurpations. And this opposition to authoritarian rule continues to be a driving force, an American character trait that we share with the Founding Fathers, who designed constitutional checks and balances to guard against concentration of power. Centralized power and executive overreach are one step away from tyranny. Limited legislative action and predetermined outcomes would surely elicit a strong response from our forefathers as it does for modern freedom lovers and needs to be addressed And it hints on infringing on First Amendment rights for the representatives So I thank the two reps who passionately contend for freedom and for their constituents. And I ask you to vote yes. Thank you.

Thank you. Speaking on my own behalf and in support of the bill, it's going to the voters. The voters will get a voice in how the special sessions will be outlined. And I think I've gone through, I know I've been through three special sessions recently, maybe a fourth. So it's a little bit surprising we've had actually so few over time. But at the end of the day, I think we could have, in the recent special sessions, had some bills presented that would have made better solutions, specifically or especially the property tax special session. So, again, I support this bill and I'd like to see it move forward to the floor for debate, further review, and then present it to the voters to be able to weigh in on such an important matter. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to just add one more thing to, like, the examples of what happens when the lines get blurred between the executive branch and the legislative branch and when they're not. What we saw in 2024 Executive Order D the proclamation stated concerning property taxes starting with the property tax year commencing on January 1 2025 Most of us I think were here for a special session that year And I don't know if you remember, but that was also a year where we had more bills introduced in a special session because the call was so much broader, which lent to the many different ideas and possible solutions that different districts and different legislators had. To me, I feel like that is actually healthy governing. When you have more ideas at the table, when you can build off each other, when you can bring multiple different solutions to the table, when there is a problem, that is good governance. That was a good special session. I mean, the other ones were two because I won bills, but you know what I'm saying. That was a really inclusive, open, special session addressing an urgent need. Ask for an aye vote.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I couldn't say it better than my co-prime. I appreciate the committee's time that's late into the evening. There is one other thing that I wanted to point out in light of some of the conversations we've been having behind the scenes. And if this were to go on the ballot, yes, there are already five initiatives that are on the ballot. There are remaining, apart from this particular House concurrent resolution, I would say two additional legislative bills or resolutions that could possibly make it to the ballot. Five initiatives that are approved for circulation, but we don't know where they are. and then a slew of even duplicative other resolutions that haven't even been approved for circulation. But we're looking at probably seven different questions on the ballot. If this were to pass through the process, it would be eight. And I had a conversation with an influencer today when it came to my attention of if we put this on, do we have enough force to carry it through and be successful? AND JUST THAT ONE PERSON, I HAVEN'T HAD A CHANCE TO CALL OTHERS, JUST THAT ONE PERSON WITH THE NETWORK AND THE ORGANIZATION THAT THIS PERSON RUNS AS WELL AS THE PRESS THAT THIS PERSON GETS ON A REGULAR BASIS THEY ALREADY COMMITTED TO SUPPORTING TO GET THIS ACROSS THE FINISH LINE I THINK WITH A FEW OTHER CALLS THAT WE COULD GET SIMILAR SUPPORT TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS PASSES AND SO I JUST WANTED TO PUT THAT ON THE RECORD SINCE I KNOW SOME CONVERSATIONS BEHIND THE SCENES WE'RE CONCERNED ABOUT THAT. AND I ASK FOR AN I VOTE.

THANK YOU. I MOVE HOUSE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 1006 TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE with a favorable recommendation second it by representative for a members you

chair thank you bill sponsors for bringing this forward I love seeing the bipartisan fashion I love rep Garcia your honesty I something that I totally value in this space and I do agree with you that that session there was a ton of bills and I felt like our caucuses were trying because several people kind of of brought the same type of bill and there's brainstorming about how to best address for the people of Colorado. And it was real. I feel like camaraderie in a special session, which is what I believe it's supposed to be instead of something so narrow. So I appreciate you bringing honesty to the conversation and wanting that good governance and for it to be a much broader call to address things maybe that we're seeing that the executive office or branch is not seeing. So I'm very supportive of it a year ago and glad you brought it back. So thank you.

Okay.

Representatives Bottoms.

Bradley.

Carter.

Espinoza.

Paray.

Froelich.

Luck.

Wynn.

Ricks.

Clifford.

Madam Chair.