Welcome to the third (and brief) week of the 2025 Colorado legislative session. A handful of early payments are set to hit the Home flooring within the subsequent few days as lawmakers settle in for extra marathon oversight hearings and the primary contentious committee listening to of the 12 months.
That listening to is for Senate Invoice 5, which might eradicate a novel provision of Colorado legislation. It requires unions to move a second election (after the primary vote that formally creates the union) earlier than employees can negotiate a key piece of their union contract with employers. The listening to is ready for Tuesday at 2 p.m. in entrance of the Senate’s Enterprise, Labor and Know-how Committee within the Capitol.
The invoice is a precedence for labor teams and Democratic lawmakers, and most Democrats in each the Home and the Senate have already signed on to help it. Nevertheless it’s opposed by enterprise teams and by Gov. Jared Polis, who has mentioned he’s skeptical of the proposal and desires legislators and unions to barter with teams just like the Colorado and Denver Metro chambers of commerce.
Supporters count on the invoice to clear its first Senate vote Tuesday, which might then ship the measure to the Senate flooring.
The Home and Senate’s calendars are usually dependable, although in addition they usually shift for quite a lot of causes. It’s at all times a good suggestion to double examine the calendar on-line. You may also tune in to legislative hearings on-line or watch livestreams of Home and Senate flooring work on the Colorado Channel.
Right here’s what else is occurring this week:
A parade of oversight hearings
The primary few weeks of each legislative session are usually dominated by SMART Act hearings — principally authorities oversight conferences during which state businesses current to committees and face some grilling or prodding by lawmakers.
That course of began after the session started and continues this week. On Tuesday, the legislature’s joint well being committees will maintain SMART Act hearings for the Behavioral Well being Administration and the Colorado Division of Public Well being and Surroundings, amongst different health-related businesses.
The identical committee will hear from the Division of Human Providers and the Division of Well being Care Coverage and Financing — which oversees Medicaid — on Wednesday.
That may seemingly be attention-grabbing, given issues round cuts to Medicaid amid the state price range crunch and the brand new Trump administration. Each the Tuesday and Wednesday hearings will start as soon as the Home and Senate conclude flooring work, which is able to seemingly be mid- to late-morning.
The legislature’s schooling committees will maintain oversight hearings on Thursday for the departments of schooling, increased schooling and early childhood. The joint navy and state affairs committees will maintain hearings for the Division of Navy and Veterans Affairs and the Division of State, additionally on Thursday.
First flooring work
The Home has 4 payments it’s scheduled to listen to on second readings this week. As a reminder, a invoice first should move at the very least one committee, then clear two votes in its first chamber earlier than switching to the opposite chamber and restarting the method. The primary chamber vote, referred to as second studying, is a voice vote.
These first 4 payments embody a measure to approve using a psilocybin remedy, alongside three different items of health-related laws. All are scheduled for a Home vote Tuesday; in the event that they’re delayed, they are going to seemingly roll over to later within the week.
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