A 2023 poll by Pew Research showed that 84% of Americans believe that “special interest groups and lobbyists have too much say in what happens in politics.” In a democratic system, where representatives are intended to listen to the will of the people but are often seen as being swayed by the Wormtongue-like influence of lobbyists, it’s understandable how the profession came to be demonized. While lobbyists are often painted purely as extensions of corporate power into the halls of governance, I always find it interesting to note the extent to which different levels of government lobby against each other – and the amount of taxpayer dollars they spend doing it.
This year, the Colorado state legislature considered a handful of bills designed specifically to protect Coloradans from the federal government’s ongoing overreach and brutality in pursuit of Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Some of them passed and some of them failed, but all of them were lobbied against, and most of that lobbying was funded by taxpayers.
In 2026, the majority of lobbyists whipping votes against bills to make Colorado a humane refuge for immigrants were not representing corporate interests. They were representing public bodies: counties, cities, and even school districts allocated portions of their taxpayer-provided budgets to the effort.
In fact, as I trawled through lobbying disclosure reports in an attempt to get a full picture of what forces were marshaled against pro-immigrant legislation at the General Assembly this year, I found that virtually every single organization lobbying in opposition to the bills was either taxpayer-funded, or a member organization representing elected officials.
Looking at the three most consequential bills pertaining to immigration introduced at the General Assembly this year, the pattern becomes clear.
Senate Bill 5
There is a case to be made that Senate Bill 5, or SB26-005 in the specific parlance of the Colorado state legislature, was the most timely and consequential piece of legislation introduced in Colorado this year. Designed to create a statutory cause of action for Coloradans who have their rights violated by federal immigration officers, the bill – which was sponsored by Senators Julie Gonzales and Mike Weissman, and Representatives Javier Mabrey and Yara Zokaie – was a much-needed response to a pressing issue.
As with so many much-needed responses to so many pressing issues, the bill attracted opposition.
Unlike with the other bills on this list, the majority of the lobbying effort against SB-5 was not directly funded by taxpayers, but it was still done on behalf of elected officials. Though state lobbying disclosures don’t separate client expenditures on a per-bill basis, they show that the County Sheriffs of Colorado spent more than $20,000 on lobbying while the bill was under consideration, and that they tasked no fewer than 8 lobbyists with opposing the legislation.
County Sheriffs of Colorado is a member organization representing, well, county sheriffs in Colorado. Their budget derives from corporate partners like Flock Safety, but their lobbyists work at the direction of the sheriffs who make up their membership. The Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP), another member organization that lobbied against SB-5, functions in much the same way. CACP spent $25,000 on lobbying during the months when the bill was under consideration. Together, the two organizations representing state law enforcement leadership lobbied against all three bills on this list.
Despite the time and money spent on opposition to the bill, legislative records indicate that no representatives of the sheriffs or police chiefs chose to expound upon their reasons for opposing the bill in public testimony.
The sheriffs and police chiefs were joined in opposition to SB-5 by three local governments, funded by taxpayers: Weld County, El Paso County, and the Town of Castle Rock. During the time the bill was under consideration, Weld County spent $28,891 on lobbying, while El Paso County spent $14,708, and the Town of Castle Rock spent about $2,700.
No one appears to have represented the reasons for their opposition in public testimony, either.
Despite the opposition’s lobbying efforts, SB-5 passed and is now awaiting the governor’s signature.
House Bill 1276
House Bill 1276, also known as HB26-1276, was designed to strengthen Colorado’s prohibitions on certain kinds of cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials. Among other provisions, the bill aims to expand the liability for certain violations – such as the improper sharing of personal identifying information – while opening certain immigration detention centers to public health inspections and introducing new training standards for law enforcement officers.
Like with SB-5, HB-1276 was also opposed by the County Sheriffs of Colorado and CACP. Unlike with SB-5, representatives from CACP actually shared the reasons for their opposition in testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
The bill “creates a lot of ambiguous reporting requirements,” testified Deputy Chief Todd Reeves of the Westminster Police Department, representing CACP. Reeves then spent most of his testimony indulging a hypothetical: what if the police arrest a terrorist but then find out that he’s an undocumented immigrant? What then, huh?
One begins to understand why they did not send anyone to testify against SB-5.
The bulk of opposition to HB-1276 did not come from law enforcement member organizations, though it once again came from public bodies. El Paso County and a host of municipalities – including Woodland Park, Fountain, Parker, Colorado Springs, and Monument – all contracted lobbyists to oppose 1276. Once again, none of them chose to send representatives to testify publicly.
During the months that the bill was under consideration, Woodland Park, Monument, and Fountain each spent $4,500 on lobbying, while Parker spent $7,500, and Colorado Springs spent $13,500.
In the end, HB-1276 was passed by both chambers of the legislature and is now waiting, in the same stack as SB-5, for the governor’s signature.
Senate Bill 176
Though SB-5 and HB-1276 both survived their respective onslaughts of taxpayer-funded lobbying efforts, Senate Bill 176 attracted more taxpayer-funded opposition than the other two combined. In the end, it was not so lucky. A companion to SB-5, which created a pathway to accountability for those whose rights are violated by a federal officer in the course of immigration enforcement, SB-176 sought to expand that pathway to apply more broadly. When asked in a committee hearing why the second bill was necessary, Sen. Julie Gonzales put it succinctly.
“Because if President Trump deploys ICE agents to polling places during the 2026 midterm elections, that would not constitute immigration enforcement.” Meaning, if ICE is put to uses beyond immigration enforcement, SB-5’s protections likely don’t apply. Sen. Mike Weissman, Gonzales’ co-sponsor, said the bill was specifically in response to a late March executive order in which the president “purported to claim a lot of control over elections pending in this country later this year, notwithstanding the pretty clear language in Article 1 of the Constitution about who gets what authority.”
In other words, the threat had expanded, so the remedy needed to expand to encompass it.
This, apparently, was a bridge too far. While the lobbying efforts in opposition to the other two bills came in dribs and drabs, the flood of entities racing to register their formal opposition to SB-176 was torrential. SB-5 and HB-1276 attracted opposition from roughly a half dozen entities each. SB-176 attracted nearly ten times that amount.
A brief list of local governments in Colorado which spent taxpayer funds lobbying against the bill: Adams County, Boulder County, Weld County, Elbert County, Mesa County, Jefferson County, Lake County, Larimer County, the City of Arvada, the City of Centennial, the City of Colorado Springs, the City of Fountain, the City of Lone Tree, the City of Thornton, the Town of Castle Rock, and the Town of Monument.
But local governments were not the only public bodies spending taxpayer funds to kill the bill. For some reason, they were joined by a number of school districts, including Aurora Public Schools, the Lewis-Palmer School District, and the Douglas County School District. They were joined by other players in the education space like the Colorado Association of School Boards, the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, and the Colorado Community College System.
By the time I had gotten this far in the lobbying disclosures, I was sure I had missed something; that there must be some reason why all of these entities were opposing this reasonable-sounding legislation. But I was wrong.
In reality, the cities, counties, towns, and school districts that lined up to kill a bill designed to protect Coloradans from the rapidly advancing authoritarian inclinations of the federal government were almost unanimously motivated by the most mundane of things: liability. A simple fear of being sued, of insurance premiums going up, is what killed SB-176.
Hannah Arendt had a term for that.
In the end, Democratic senators Dylan Roberts and Lindsey Daugherty joined with the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and killed the bill.
Lobbyists take a lot of heat in our system of government, and while I understand the reason for it, I think it is, to some extent, misplaced. In theory – though, admittedly, far less often in practice – lobbyists are supposed to be subject matter experts, answering questions and providing insight to help lawmakers make their decisions. Sometimes this is a good thing, like when lobbyists work on behalf of critical but little-understood causes like multiple sclerosis or the foster care system. More often, of course, they serve primarily as purveyors of steak dinners, cocktails, and conference trips in pursuit of advancing corporate agendas. But placing so much of the ire on lobbyists leaves too little of it assigned where it belongs: not on the middlemen, the mercenaries, but on the two ends of the transaction.
Lawmakers have agency. They are the ones who get to vote yea or nay, who get to make laws or prevent them from being made. It’s the job they were elected to do. That so many elected officials choose to outsource all of their thinking to the lobby corps is not an indictment of the lobby corps; it’s an indictment of the elected officials. You’d be amazed at the things many lawmakers never choose to Google.
But blame also belongs on the other end of the transaction, on the clients. After all, they are the ones hiring the mercenaries to do their bidding. We broadly understand, as a society, that corporate interests are going to dedicate a certain portion of their profits to lobbying, to ensure that they continue making profits. Many of us do not condone it, many of us believe that this mechanism is poison to the body politic, but we understand it.
What far fewer of us understand, I think, but what is laid bare by the lobbying disclosures surrounding the three bills discussed above, is the extent to which local governments are lobbying against the safety and legal protection of their own citizens, and using those citizens’ taxpayer dollars to do it.
No laws were broken here. The county commissions and town councils and school boards that chose to lobby against these bills did nothing illegal. They were, in all likelihood, convinced by their own attorneys that the positions they ultimately took were the right ones, that the town not being exposed to a lawsuit was more important than the constitutional protections of people living in the town – but they have agency, too, and their constituents deserve to know how they used it.
