Colorado lawmakers advance invoice permitting chain-assist distributors to arrange alongside highways to ease winter site visitors
A Colorado invoice geared toward combating winter site visitors jams and stopping crashes on Interstate 70 and different highways by letting personal corporations arrange roadside tire chain stations is advancing within the state legislature.
Senate Invoice 69, backed by Sens. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat, and Marc Catlin, a Montrose Republican, handed the Home Finance Committee Thursday after clearing the total Senate earlier. It’s headed subsequent to the Home Appropriations Committee.
The invoice would enable the Colorado Division of Transportation to difficulty permits to service suppliers that would promote, set up and take away tire chains for drivers of economic vans and passenger automobiles.
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Colorado Senate votes to override Gov. Jared Polis’ veto of social media regulation invoice
The Colorado Senate voted Friday to override Gov. Jared Polis’ veto of a invoice geared toward regulating social media — step one in a maneuver that, if profitable, can be the primary override within the state in additional than a decade.
Senators voted 29-6 to override the veto the morning after Polis issued it. Senate Invoice 86, if it turns into regulation, would require social media corporations to promptly ban customers who violate their phrases of service, make annual experiences to the Colorado Legal professional Basic’s Workplace and higher cooperate with regulation enforcement.
The Home will even must vote to override Polis’ veto for it to achieve success. The invoice handed the Basic Meeting with sweeping bipartisan assist earlier within the session. Backers say it should higher defend Colorado’s youngsters by eradicating predators and individuals who use social media platforms to promote medication and weapons; opponents warn it represents a worrying intrusion on First Modification rights and quantities to a de facto deputization of social media corporations by the state.
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Colorado will cowl abortion for Medicaid sufferers, state staff as Gov. Polis indicators public funding regulation
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed two abortion-rights payments Thursday that can allow using public funding to cowl the process and supply extra safety for medical doctors and sufferers from out-of-state interference.
“Colorado is ensuring that we’re fully defending the appropriate to decide on,” Polis mentioned earlier than signing the items of laws into regulation. “On the federal degree, we’re already seeing the federal government overreach threatening primary freedom with regards to essentially the most private and personal selections.”
“That’s not the Colorado manner,” he added.
One new regulation, handed by the legislature as Senate Invoice 183, implements Modification 79, handed by voters in November to determine a constitutional proper to abortion in Colorado. It repealed an earlier provision within the state structure that prohibited placing public funding towards abortion; now the brand new regulation requires abortion care protection for Medicaid sufferers and Youngster Well being Plan Plus program recipients utilizing state cash. Public staff’ insurance coverage will even must cowl abortion care.
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Colorado Senate rejects childhood intercourse abuse modification — once more. Advocates hope to place it on poll anyway.
Colorado Senate Republicans have once more stopped a proposed constitutional modification geared toward finally opening the door to civil claims introduced by victims of decades-old childhood abuse.
Each member of the GOP on Thursday voted in opposition to Senate Concurrent Decision 2. If handed, it will have put a constitutional modification to voters asking them to permit future lawmakers to move legal guidelines allowing victims of childhood sexual abuse to convey ahead civil claims in opposition to their previous abusers and any enabling establishments.
Its placement on the poll required two-thirds assist from each the Senate and the Home. Within the Senate, each Democrat plus one Republican can be mandatory to fulfill that 24-vote threshold. It failed Thursday alongside occasion strains, 23-12.
That is the second yr Republicans have united to cease the modification from continuing.
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New Colorado regulation goals to search out “without end houses” for canine and cats utilized in well being analysis
A brand new Colorado regulation would require health-related analysis amenities that use canine and cats as take a look at topics to strive adopting out the animals earlier than euthanizing them.
Well being-Associated Analysis Check Topics, or Senate Invoice 85, was signed into regulation by Gov. Jared Polis on Tuesday.
“Any further, canine and cats which might be topics to scientific analysis in Colorado can be valued for his or her service and given the chance to discover a without end residence,” Polis mentioned in a press release.
The regulation requires amenities “to supply a canine or cat to an animal shelter or a pet animal rescue for the aim of adoption earlier than euthanizing the animal,” or to search out them houses by way of an inside adoption program.
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Uber says it might pull out of Colorado if ride-hailing security invoice passes
Rideshare big Uber has dusted off a well-recognized menace in its bid to defeat an effort within the Colorado legislature to tighten oversight of ride-hailing drivers and enhance riders’ security.
If the invoice have been to move, an organization spokesperson mentioned, it will put “the way forward for Uber in Colorado in jeopardy.” In a follow-up assertion despatched Wednesday, Uber additional warned that it might “stop operations” within the state if the invoice passes.
Uber made the preliminary menace in a press release to JHB final week after Home Invoice 1291 handed the state Home on an awesome 59-6 vote. The measure is backed by Rep. Jenny Willford, a lawmaker who mentioned she was sexually assaulted by a Lyft driver final yr.
The invoice would require corporations to conduct background checks on their drivers, each when a driver begins working for the corporate after which at the least each six months after.
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Outstanding Colorado LGBTQ+ teams hedge on assist for transgender rights invoice
In early April, the political director of a number one LGBTQ+ advocacy group urged state lawmakers to assist laws that may lengthen new authorized protections to transgender Coloradans.
Home Invoice 1312, One Colorado’s Jax Gonzalez testified, was a present of solidarity for transgender individuals amid a “coordinated and escalating set of assaults” nationwide. The invoice, they mentioned, represented “one piece of an ongoing dialog about how we reply.”
“Not simply with coverage,” Gonzalez mentioned, “however with precept.”
A bit of greater than two weeks later, that assist took a flip. Gonzalez advised the invoice’s supporters final week that One Colorado was hedging and would search adjustments to the proposal, an advocate mentioned. The group advised JHB that it had authorized considerations and that it needed to make sure the invoice didn’t jeopardize “present protections.”
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Colorado invoice would give new information facilities massive tax exemptions, however critics query if that’s mandatory — or proper
A bipartisan proposal supposed to attract information facilities to Colorado by providing large 20-year tax breaks has confronted a litany of criticisms stemming from the facilities’ environmental impression — and questions on whether or not state incentives are mandatory to draw an already-booming business.
Senate Invoice 280 would create a certification system that may grant tax incentives to information heart builders in the event that they meet sure benchmarks for funding and water and power effectivity.
The Knowledge Heart Growth and Grid Modernization Program would each draw profitable growth to the state and be certain that the extra power use wouldn’t have an effect on different electrical clients, its sponsors mentioned final week through the invoice’s first committee listening to. Additionally they famous that it will set up guardrails to reduce environmental impacts.
“Welcome to the long run,” sponsor Sen. Paul Lundeen, an El Paso County Republican, mentioned
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Colorado Senate passes immigrant safety invoice geared toward limiting enforcement actions in state
The Colorado Senate superior a invoice Monday that may develop protections for undocumented immigrants and restrict the place federal officers can implement immigration regulation within the state.
If Senate Invoice 276 turns into regulation, it will prohibit federal immigration authorities from getting into personal components of detention amenities with out a warrant; restrict entry to public youngster care facilities, faculties and well being care amenities; develop the state’s prohibition on the disclosure of private figuring out info or immigration standing; and prohibit the delay of an inmate’s launch from custody due to an immigration detainer.
The measure would additionally prohibit different states from sending their Nationwide Guard items or different army items into Colorado with out the governor’s approval or federal orders.
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New Colorado ‘junk charges’ regulation signed by Polis will prohibit widespread condominium fees, require transparency
Colorado landlords will quickly be prohibited from charging charges for pest management and common-area upkeep underneath a brand new pricing transparency regulation signed into regulation Monday by Gov. Jared Polis.
The brand new regulation, which handed the legislature as Home Invoice 1090, bans a number of charges widespread in rental housing, and it additionally usually requires corporations to indicate the full value of the services or products they’re promoting. That features the worth of the product and any obligatory fees and charges included. The overall value should even be proven as one full quantity in corporations’ ads.
“I proceed to assume again to (an earlier legislative) listening to, and my constituents who got here out to speak concerning the abuses they have been experiencing of their condominium complexes — and the nice that this invoice goes to do for them,” Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat, mentioned Monday. She sponsored the invoice with fellow Democrats Rep. Naquetta Ricks and Sens. Mike Weissman and Lisa Cutter. “This can be a actually essential step ahead for the state of Colorado to say ‘No extra.’ ”
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Colorado’s first-in-the-nation sperm donor guidelines simply took impact. Now lawmakers might roll some again.
Three months after Colorado’s first-of-its-kind sperm donor laws went into impact, state lawmakers are weighing whether or not to unwind a few of these necessities amid considerations that the brand new guidelines have chilled donations for would-be mother and father who want them.
However the proposal, Home Invoice 1259, is opposed by the previous legislator who sponsored the regulatory regulation again in 2022, in addition to by a coalition of individuals conceived with donated sperm and eggs. They’ve accused the invoice’s supporters of searching for to decontrol a multibillion-dollar business that, they contend, wants tight oversight.
The invoice — which additionally would explicitly enshrine protections for in vitro fertilization, or IVF, in state regulation — comes at a time of upheaval and broad anxiousness concerning the state of reproductive well being care within the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s 2022 choice overturning nationwide abortion protections. It has pit advocates — and one giant business participant — who wish to make fertility remedy as accessible as potential in opposition to a group of people that say they’re dwelling reminders of why regulation is significant.
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Immigration invoice, childhood sexual abuse modification and veto override up in Colorado legislature this week
With simply over two weeks to go within the 120-day Colorado legislative session, lawmakers need to push ahead proposals that may enhance protections for undocumented immigrants, examine a statewide common well being care system and, probably, outcome within the first veto override of Gov. Jared Polis’ tenure.
On Monday, the Senate is planning to take a proper vote on Senate Invoice 276, a proposal to develop protections for undocumented immigrants and restrict the place federal authorities can function within the state. Assuming it passes within the Democrat-controlled chamber, it should nonetheless must move a Home committee vote and full flooring votes within the second chamber earlier than it goes to Polis for consideration.
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