Last Thursday, the Republican Women of Weld hosted a Special Session Legislative Update at Ben’s Brick Oven Pizza in Hudson. The event featured State House Minority Whip Carlos Barron (R-Fort Lupton), State Representative Lori Garcia-Sander (R-Eaton), State Representative Dusty Johnson (R-Fort Morgan), State Representative Ryan Gonzalez (R-Greeley), and State Representative Dan Woog (R-Erie). About twenty-five people were in attendance.
The Repblicans’ focus for the evening was on the fact that a special session called to settle the budget deficit resulted in more spending. As Woog put it, “it’s a spending addiction. They truly are unwilling, and it seems incapable, to cut anything.” Garcia-Sander added, “Democrats just don’t know how to balance a checkbook.”
Gonzalez commented that Democrats, “just continue to blame HR 1 for their failure to balance the budget.” The so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” resulted in a $1.2 billion decrease in tax revenue for the state of Colorado. About $400 million of that amount does not need to be refunded due to the fact that the state’s revenue now falls below a spending cap set in 1992 under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), bringing the true deficit to just under $800 million.
During the special session, legislators passed a bill putting guardrails on the governor’s statutory obligation to make budget cuts to comply with Colorado balanced budget amendment, including that he present his cuts publicly in a meeting with the bipartisan Joint Budget Committee. Other bills closed corporate tax loopholes, ended some tax breaks for businesses, and permanently extended a tax on the wealthiest Coloradans- those making over $500,000 per year. And while the session ended without legislators actually having cut any spending, two days later the governor made numerous cuts, including to higher education and various grant programs, that re-balanced the state budget in concert with the revenue generated from the special session bills.
Legislators did authorize additional spending to ensure that Medicaid patients who receive their health care at Planned Parenthood can continue to do so despite the new restrictions created by Trump’s budget bill. They also referred a measure to voters asking to protect low-income Colorado families’ access to food assistance via a tax increase on incomes over $300,000, which was also in response to federal cut-backs to the SNAP food stamp program.
There was also an emphasis on upcoming elections and plans for the next legislative session. Woog, who won his seat by only 110 votes, said of his campaign, “I’m gonna need all the help I can get.” He said he is hoping to raise $200,000. In his next session he would like to focus on public safety and law enforcement, the cost of living, and potentially challenging House Rules 14 and 16, which can be used to prevent fillibustering and to limit debate. He said, “I truly believe both parties should be able to filibuster if that’s what they want to do.” Woog said he will likely work on a bill addressing retail theft, but he didn’t have details regarding what it would entail.
Garcia-Sander, who is an educator as well as a politician, said she plans to focus on education. In particular, she would like to reduce the amount of paperwork and bureaucracy that school administrators face.
Barron said he plans to focus on deregulation. When asked for details regarding his deregulation plans, he didn’t have any, but said he is currently in the process of talking with stakeholders, primarily in the building and development industries, to better understand what regulations are driving up their costs.
Johnson, who will spend some of the off-season traveling to Taiwan and Canada as a representative of Colorado, plans to focus on having EMTs declared “essential services.” She said that doing so would protect them in situations like pandemics or storms where everyone but essential workers is ordered off of the streets.
Gonzalez emphasized the importance of voting, saying “we have to show up, we have to unify, we have to have that front.”
