April 21, 2026 · 5,394 words · 12 speakers · 103 segments
The Executive Committee of the Legislative Council will come to order. Ms. Kurtz-Balen, please call the roll.
Senators and Representatives. Caldwell?
Here.
Duran?
Here.
Rodriguez?
Excused?
Simpson?
Here.
Mr. President?
Let's do this.
Madam Speaker? Here. We do have a quorum. So we are going to start today with a review of opening day for the 2027 legislative session.
Director DiCecco.
Thank you, Madam Speaker and members of the committee. This is a continuation of our discussion from the last meeting. Just as a brief catch-up, last time we talked about how it's necessary for the General Assembly to convene prior to the inauguration of the governor and the other elected officers, statewide officers, taking their positions. that means that we can't automatically default to the second Wednesday which has been the practice at least the last three years instead need to start on a different day prior to that Tuesday we had a discussion about how that could be done will need to pass a resolution and so that's at the end of the day that would be our ask is that you vote on a resolution for my office to draft based on the start date on the charts that I've or table I have provided and that's That's a good segue to the table that I provided. After last week's discussion, I thought it'd be helpful to see how the deadlines would fall related to both the legislative day and the calendar day. So what I've done is there's five columns in this. The first is the deadline set forth in Joint Rule 23. I've also added the economic forecast because that sort of dictates when the long bill can be introduced. The second column is our current schedule. Now, this is the current schedule under the rules. So for example, the long bill introduction and all the corresponding and subsequent long bill deadlines have been delayed one week. So this just shows what the current joint rule 23 deadlines are. Now, the next three would be start dates for both Wednesday, January 6, Thursday the 7th, and Monday the 11th. These seem to be three dates that were discussed at last meeting. I excluded the Friday, although as before we started, it sounds like there was some movement towards the Friday, of course. But I had excluded it just because it felt like the discussion or the members felt that that might be difficult or a lot to ask for members to come back, drive all the way in through to the Denver area to come just for that first day and then potentially drive back for the weekend. But if you were to choose that, we can easily adapt and pick the deadlines based on that. Now, what you can see is each of these charts shows the 2027, for example, in column three. I've included the current deadline, which will be similar to the deadline in this column two. And so I've included the actual legislative day that we would use for that deadline. And also underneath that is the calendar day that corresponds to it. The green boxes show something that is different, where we need to amend the deadline from what it currently is in column two. A lot of these deadlines are just going to be amended to keep a Friday deadline. So, for example, if you were to look at the Monday or even Monday or the Thursday deadlines, you can see the introduction deadlines made sense to keep those on a Friday. So we just have to shift them a day or two because if you start on a Thursday, what was currently a Friday on a Wednesday start becomes a Saturday. So we just shift those up a little bit. In addition, the one kind of thing I want to draw your attention to is the forecast. So that's the same, and it's currently based on legislative council staff and JVC. It sounds as if they may be able to do that on the 18th of March. To me, that dictates the start date or when you can have the long bill introduced so that JBC staff, or the JBC, has time to make the decisions, and JBC staff has time to then create the long bill and finalize the long bill for introduction. So if you look at that, the actual date on all three of the columns for the introduction, the calendar date is the same in all of them. It just changes when it falls in the session. So obviously, if you were to go to the Monday, it falls on the 78th day. So that means if all the other day lines stay the same, then you have more time after the long bill for any bills that may come out of the Appropriations Committee. If you were to look at the Wednesday the 6th, that's what we're going to have this year. So the amount of time that we'll have when the long bill is finalized this week or when the conference committee is adopted, it's going to be similar to the amount of time that will be left this session after the long bill is finalized. A couple other things I just wanted to mention that the committee would consider is if in this resolution there's two things. One I think we should just make as a matter of course, and that is to, there's a reference on the 101st day to the funding for public schools pursuant to the Public School Finance Act of 1994. So we probably should just update that since we've moved beyond. And then the one other thing I would say is if we're going to be adopting, particularly if we're going to be adopting an entirely new schedule, is the form of this would be to create a new schedule that shows all of the deadlines, if you would pick the Thursday and the Saturday. So we show all the deadlines so the members can easily see what those deadlines will be, and then that repeals after one year. So it's just basically a substitute schedule and calendar that included in a joint rule that it will expire after one year. I would recommend one other switch is just what's called a pilot program, and that's the difference between the deadline for requesting resolutions and the deadline for introducing them. Currently, the deadline for requesting them is on day 87, which falls on a Friday, and the deadline for introducing them is on Monday. So if we get that one on 4.30 on Friday, then we're turning it around to introduce it on Monday, have it ready to be read across the desk on Monday. So I would just suggest that perhaps we could consider as a pilot program on the new deadlines just to make a week deadline there so there's times for the members to request it, work with my office and drafting, and then introduce it to the House and Senate the week later. Happy to answer any questions, but I think really this is just a discussion for what makes the most sense for you and your members for coming back.
Thank you, Director DiCecco. This table is mind-boggling. I do appreciate the detail and the options before us. I will just offer that I certainly heard Minority Leader Simpson lift up a desire to get out early and get back to the duties in the San Luis Valley, and I appreciate that. And as I'm looking at these options, I guess the thing that troubled me with January 6th was having our pre-file bill filing on December 31st. And I understand why that is. That would be the day we would have to have them done, given that January 1st is a holiday and then we're into the weekend. end. So I think that concerned me, and I also appreciate having lived through a few sessions with different deadlines, having extra days after the long bill makes it through. But I would certainly be open to the January 7th, 8th, or 11th. The 11th would be my preference, but I think those other two dates would work as well. I hear the concern about coming for one day a Friday. If you live in rural Colorado, that means a lot of travel for one day, and that can be a bit much. Anyone else?
Oh, thank you.
Welcome, Mr. Majority Leader. I didn't realize you were online. My apologies. Can you hear us?
I can hear you.
Mr Majority Leader can you hear us I can Okay welcome Sorry Director Dechenko Thank you Madam Speaker I just wanted to mention one thing about because I did explore for the 1 deadline whether it would be possible to move the deadline so it wouldn be introduced five days before
Because if you look on the Thursday, it's three days before. So I was able to move that. The problem with the Wednesday is that it's, again, it's a lot of bills coming through. And it's just in discussions with other staff. it sounds like that may not be enough time for them to be delivered, printed, and for the presiding officers in each chamber to evaluate and decide where those bills should be assigned for committee so that on day one they can be introduced. And so, because the alternative of going six days prior is to do two days prior, and that just didn't seem like enough time. Three days was sort of like, well, that's somewhat, that's what we currently have under, for the House, for the rules under the joint rule 23 to be after it's been delivered so there's that time to be able to to read them across and so three days seemed like enough two days was just a little bit too short so that's why I kept that at six days. Thank you.
Mr. Minority Leader. Thank you Madam Speaker. Much like I would hate to drive up here for one day on Friday I would operate under this I'm sure I'd hate to drive back, I'd hate to drive back one day for the last day of session knowing that the Senate won't be working the weekend of the last final days. But I've always been motivated earlier the better, but Thursday, Thursday the 7th, it works fine for me. Again, the earlier the better, I'm happy to say the 7th works for me to come up for two days and then finish the session on a Thursday instead of a Monday, I would prefer.
Madam Majority Leader, Birthday Girl.
We have to celebrate somebody's birthday. That's right. That's right. I don't know. I mean, it's such a long way off. It really is. If we're not going to look at the six for all the reasons that have been mentioned, then I'm more for starting fresh just on a Monday and being consistent all the way through instead of breaking it up. So I'd go for the 11th.
The 11th. Mr. Minority Leader?
I understand the arguments for either or. Seventh makes sense to me as well. I do dislike that for the sixth that the deadline's on New Year's Eve. I don't think that's fair to staff. The seventh seems more workable, but I'm sort of a more afraid of that.
Okay. Mr. Majority Leader.
Hi. Thank you. Thanks for the discussion. The only concern, the Monday after the weekend, is that correct? Yes. The only concern I have with that being the year that we ended a little early, a few years ago, that's going to be when we're at the end of session. I mean, we'll probably be here through that whole weekend, which is a little different than the house is used to being here on a Sunday, but it's just something I wanted to have for thought. I'm not feeling it. Weekends are good.
Mr. President.
Yeah, man, I think everything you said in terms of the 11th sounds great. That's all I got.
Well, we've had some back and forth. Mr. Majority Leader, did you have another comment? I see your hand is still raised.
Oh, it's still raised. Sorry.
Okay. So we've got some 11ths and some 7ths. I'm going to put it in your hands, Mr. President.
Thank you so much, Madam Speaker. I move the Executive Committee requests at the Office of Letterset legal services draft resolution. It was set Monday, January 11th as a convening day for the 2027 letter set of session with the company deadline schedule as presented by staff you have to say and as amended by the committee it's in highlighted I'll just leave it there if you want to do the amendments the tech the technical and the highlight I recommend it yes great and as amended by the committee thank you mr. president all right second seconded by madam majority leader
ms Kurtz-Valen please take the role senators and representatives Caldwell
Respectfully no.
Come on.
Duran. Yes.
Rodriguez. Aye.
Simpson. No.
What? Mr. President.
Respectfully yes. Yes.
It passes with a vote of four to two. Thank you, Director DiCecco.
Thank you, Kimi. And I won't be here, so you all will have to. Actually, I will be there first day. So this will, we will do this resolution. And so whether the, if the committee, again, we won't be bringing it back for your consideration unless you'd like to come back and review it.
I see some no's on that. If the committee would like to sign sponsors and co-sponsors. Oh, thank you.
I'm happy to sponsor along with Madam Majority Leader. We can start it in the House.
Mr. President and Mr. Majority Leader, are you happy to co-prime?
Respectfully, yes.
Thank you. Happy Sunday.
Happy Sunday. We're here both weekends. I think we're in the weekend. Maybe not.
Moving on, folks, we are going to take a review of our legislative budget, and Director Castle will walk us through these changes.
Thank you so much, Madam Chair. So happy to be here. I just want to say thank you to all of you for all of the hard work that you did to get us through the budget process this year. each of the members of the executive committee and the sponsors and also to all the staff that worked on it and there were there there were many it's a it's a huge collaborative effort so thank you so much the legislative branch budget package as you know has been sent to the governor and there are just a few summary tables in your packet there's table one which is the net impact and general fund budget balancing. We were looking for a 7.1% decrease when we introduced the budget package, and we ended up with a 7.2% decrease. That's the bottom line at the very bottom. That includes the impact of House Bill 1332 that transfers the $12.7 million from the legislative department cash fund to the general fund. And it also, of course, includes the legislative appropriations bill and the House Bill 1331. That modified the interim committee activity for this year. The second table is the figure setting table, and I have not taken the impacts of House Bill 1331 and distributed that throughout all of the different line items. That's just added as a single line at the very top of that table, but you can see how we changed the budget between this fiscal year and next fiscal year, up by 2.2% or $1.6 million. dollars. Seventy-three percent of that, I know you've heard this and you've said this, is Health Life Dental Vision costs. Another half a million is to align the legislative department's budget with the executive branch's budget for compensation. That is another 31 percent. 71 and 31, of course, adds up to more than 100%. We had some cuts, the biggest of one of which came from House Bill 1331, which reduced our expenditures by $453,000. The last page that you have in your packet is just a summary of the amendments that were made that were successful to the budget package, so you can look at those. There are very few bills out there remaining that have any fiscal impact on the legislative branch. There is one bill, Senate Bill 89, which has been heard in Senate Agriculture. It recreates the Wildfire Matters Review Committee. It has been heard in Senate Agriculture It is waiting for Senate appropriations right now It has not yet been scheduled And it is the usual impact for an interim committee and it would be effective in 2026 about in FTE in fiscal year 2627 That's the only bill that has really any significant increase in spending related to it, and it's the only one that has any increase in FTE in it. It's also the only one that would go before Legislative Counsel Committee if Legislative Counsel Committee chose to be a committee of reference for bills that affect legislative staff, which is something that is in statute and in rule but permissive. The other bills, and I'm just looking at Rachel because Rachel tracks this for us. you have this tracking spreadsheet that Rachel and Hamza, sorry, Ms. Gritz, Phelan, Phelan, and Mr. Syed put together for us on a weekly basis. So all of this information comes from her work. There are nine bills that add legislators to various boards and commissions. There is no fiscal impact for that per diem or that should be stripped out of the appropriations clause because House Bill 1331 said that for the 2026 interim, there should be no per diem paid for those committees. Two of them subtract, and again, no fiscal impact for that, but a little bit lower workload for members for that. And then there are a few bills out there that increase workload for staff but don't have an appropriations attached to that. So that's what we have remaining for us for the legislative budget this year. That's what I have for you.
Director Kessel, just a quick question. I know there are a number of people who have found value in the Wildfire Matters Committee. I believe that effective date, maybe it's a safety clause, I'm not sure, But if the effective date was pushed out, still being able to realize a commitment to the committee but not impacting the budget year, there is a way that we could renew that committee without having fiscal impact and suspending meetings, much like we have with all the other interim committees, correct?
Yes, of course, you can always move the effective date. it would need to move to fiscal year to the 2027 interim. And actually, I do believe that appropriations clause will be reduced somewhat because of House Bill 1331 from the $67,000 because it's an interim committee. It shouldn't have any per diem and travel paid pursuant to House Bill 1331. So that will fall probably. I don't know exactly. Probably off the top of my head around it could be. It depends on the number of meetings and the number of meetings. maybe between ten and twenty thousand dollars from that amount but yeah you could move that for the staff impact it would be until the 2027 interim that you
would need to move that effective date thank you any other questions members I will just share my gratitude to everyone who works so hard particularly you Director Castle, you were herding cats getting all of us together to align on the proposals, and I really appreciate the work of staff to help us find places where we could save. Thank you.
Thank you so much, and again, it was a group effort. Thank you.
Next on our agenda, we are talking about member email, and Director Wimberly, take us away.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the time given me today for a quick explanation of the communication plan for the member email policy change. To refresh everyone's memory, there's a critical security and operational risk in allowing members to returning in the 2027 session to forward their official emails to personal email accounts. We would like to communicate our plans to all members in a kind of a phased approach. Phase one, starting tomorrow, sending email to all returning members containing the following. A memo for the General Assembly regarding this policy change, an attachment of the memo regarding adding aids to Google Workspace, as well as an attachment with instructions on how to set yourself up in Google Workspace. Phase two, starting May 1st to May 13th, 2026, we'll have follow-ups for in person, as well as phase three calling any outstanding members starting May 18th and finalizing those processes. Our final phase is allowing the auto four to be turned off on June 1st. We ask for your support today and with your permission Madam Speaker I'd like Natalie
to expand on this just a little bit.
Thank you Director Castle.
Thank you Madam Chair.
To be very frank and transparent with all of you, and Mr. Majority Leader, thank you so much. Staff could do this without member support. I don't want to. We really, really need to do this because if we continue to allow members to auto forward every email from their official Coleg.gov account, that creates significant risk that eventually our domain Coleg.gov will lose its reputation enough that we will not be able to function. The email will stop working for us. And not just for the members, but also for all the staff as well, the nonpartisan staff, all the partisan staff. We will not be able to deliver, you know, there will be emails that will not be delivered to people that we send them to and there will be no notification to either the person sending the email or the person receiving the email because these really wonderful tools that for the most part protect us from a lot of internet traffic and email traffic that we really do not want to have that it could just be annoying or could also be very dangerous to us and very costly in the end, they also watch out for bad behavior that we might have. And auto-forwarding is bad behavior. And especially when you have these situations where you have a lot of people emailing about a particular subject. So you have these mass email campaigns that come through. This first memo that you have in front of you, it's marked confidential. We're not putting this out on the website because some of this information could put us at risk. Some of the people listed here could be more at risk for being attacked if this information was available. On the very back page of this first memo that you have, it shows you members affected by this policy change, these are members that are auto-forwarding all of their email or were, maybe some of them have shifted recently, were auto-forwarding all of their email into a personal Gmail account or a personal email account. If all of these members or a good subset of these members receive thousands of emails in one day and all of those emails get forwarded on, that is a huge impact on our domain's reputation. And it labels us by many of the software, by Proofpoint and the other software providers that protect against these things, as a bad actor. And that makes it more likely, a lot more likely, that eventually we'll no longer be able to use our email effectively. So that's why it's very important that we do this. And like I said, we could be active as staff, which is never, ever something that I want to do. I never want staff to do something outside of the authority of all of you. And just because it protects the institution, and we know that we will be responsible if the institution suffers as the damages from this. and implement this without your support, but I would really love your support. There will be members who are unhappy about this change, so we're asking you for your support and your help in enforcing it and in explaining why it important So we have a motion in front of you that really just moves to require us to prohibit automatic email forwarding and require these members to use their Google Workspace account. I think that these members will be happy with their Google Workspace account once they get used to it. It does require a change in how you work. Whenever a workflow change happens, that's disruptive. That's why we wanted to wait until after the legislative session to do this. And we will provide as much or as little support to members as they want for this. But this motion requires us, the legislative information system specifically, to make the change that we are recommending to you to make.
Thank you, Director Castle. I have a question. I'm counting 37 members of the House. Do we have members right now who are not using auto forward? Is that why we don't have all 65?
That is correct. Beginning with the last election, we put all new legislators onto Google Workspace automatically. That was a decision that was made a few years ago. And then there were some that voluntarily moved to Google Workspace and moved away from the auto forwarding.
Great. Minority Leader Simpson.
I think I was particular.
Questions? What happens if we make this policy change and a member chooses? Doesn't actually make the change by June the 1st.
What happens to their email accounts after June the 1st? And the second one was I was one of the volunteers that made the transition within the last two or three weeks. and it was largely very seamless and happy with how it's functioning for me.
Great. Director Castle.
I'm very grateful to hear that it was seamless for you. I believe that the members will just stop getting email. It will go into, it will just not get forwarded to them. That could be exciting.
Minority Leader Caldwell.
Thank you. Yeah, I understand. If you notice, my name is not on that list. I don't afford it. I will say one of the issues that I have, and I'm not very smart on IT stuff, but using the Google Workspace is that when I have staff or aides who have access to my email, the Google Authenticator, it's like a constant thing. I mean, sometimes I have to do it four or five times a day to give them a code from my phone so they can access my email on a different device. It's extremely annoying and if I don't happen to look at my phone and see a text asking for the code, they could not have access for an hour or more. Am I wrong about, I am wrong?
Okay. Director Wimberly.
Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. The Google Authenticator is supposed to be used for individuals, so you should not be sharing that code with other people, only yourself. So if you need to delegate access to your inbox to aids, we can set them up and we have a memo here on how to do that.
Okay.
Okay. So stop giving my personal code. Yeah, including social security numbers. Yeah, I know. I forgot a lot too. Okay, well then I guess we'll fix it. Yeah, I understand the issue with the forwarding. reporting and yeah, don't want us to not get emails because of the system.
Yes, Director Castle. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Yes, we have two Google Workspace accounts available for each legislator. One is for them and one is for their aides. And the policy, and it's a policy right now, says that up to two aides can be given access to that and they're given access via their own credentials. So if you had two people, each of them would have their own individual credential, they'll stop asking you for it. And then that Google Workspace account, which belongs to you, the member, not to them, and you're the custodian over all that information, it all belongs to you, that can be delegated to yours so that they can have full access to your email account, they can have access to. Whatever you give them access to in Drive, you can have a shared Drive. They can have access to your calendar, all of that. And all of those permissions are already set up in a form that Chief Clerk Riley and Secretary Van Maureek already have put together to give you the ability and the member the ability to decide how much to delegate their aides into that account. We have that set up. It's all right here in your packet.
Madam Secretary. Ms. Castle, or, yes.
That's okay, Nat. Natalie, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the one thing that we talked about when we discussed this ahead of meeting with you all is that there is a benefit to all of them, additional benefit to all of you all moving over to the workspace is that there's a big desire to work towards automating aid timesheets, and having everyone on the workspace will certainly help us in that endeavor, making no promises on the timeline, but having everyone on the workspace is a big step in the right direction for automating aid timesheets. So just if that helps you talk about this plan and the need to do it, and that's one of those nuggets, I certainly encourage you to use that in your communication with your folks.
Thank you. Any further discussion?
Mr. President. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move the legislative information system to be required to prohibit automatic email forwarding from the legislative branch's Google Workspace environment for all members who will or could return for the 2027 legislative session beginning June 1, 2026 and transition effective members to a state-provided Google Workspace account on or before that date.
Second. It's been properly seconded by Madam Majority Leader, Ms. Kurtz-Falen.
Please call the roll. Senators and Representatives.
Caldwell? Yes.
Duran? Yes.
Rodriguez?
Mr. Majority Leader, can you hear us?
Aye.
Thank you.
Simpson? Aye.
Mr. President? Aye.
Madam Speaker? Yes, that passes unanimously. Members, we have nothing else on our agenda. I do want to be clear, we do not have a meeting now until June 2nd, is that correct, Director Castle?
Yes, Natalie Castle, legislative council, that is correct. That is correct. June 2nd. Right now it's scheduled for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. for director performance evaluations. That's actually more time than you normally, well, in the past people normally take. You never can tell how much time you'll need. But also there might be a few other items on your agenda that will work with you for that meeting.
Excellent. Wonderful. Any other business for the good of the group? Yes, Director Castle.
I do have another piece of business. I want to introduce you all to Stuart Kurtz. He is our brand new controller. Just started yesterday. We're very excited. Hello. This is Stuart Kurtz.
Hey.
Have a seat. Me too.
Stuart comes to us from Pueblo Community College where he was Vice President of Finance and Administration. And so he has a long career. He's been a controller in several other nonprofit and government agencies, and we're very happy to have him.
Welcome, Mr. Kurtz. Glad to have you here. Any words for the group?
I am very excited to be here. I'm thankful for the opportunity. I've been in this building many times, you know, just testifying for things and whatnot in committee. And I love this place, and I'm really excited to be here, and I want to come here to make a difference.
Well, we're excited to have you. Welcome. Thank you. And welcome, Mr. Majority Leader.
Thank you, Mr. Say bye.
Seeing no further business, the Executive Committee of the Legislative Council is adjourned.