For the third year in a row, Colorado lawmakers are headed back to the state capitol for a special legislative session, largely to tackle a roughly $1 billion budget shortfall and to revise a controversial law regulating Artificial Intelligence.
This is the legislature’s 30th special session since 1952; before that, lawmakers only met regularly every other year, and special sessions were commonly used to deal with things that cropped up in the off years.
According to records kept by nonpartisan legislative staff, over the years, those extra sessions have tackled topics ranging from grasshopper infestations (twice) and soil erosion to 1993’s “summer of violence,” civil unions, and marijuana taxes. Lawmakers came back out of season to vote on congressional maps, immigration policies and constructing the Continental Divide tunnel.
But three years into a run of special sessions, for the latest crop of state lawmakers, coming back to the capitol out of season is becoming somewhat routine. As one former member jokingly quipped, “At what point do we stop calling it special?”
Democratic Rep. Brianna Titone of Arvada is headed into her eighth and final year in the House. Special sessions have so far been called in more than half her years in office.
“The first one was pretty special because we had a pandemic. That was, I thought, pretty extraordinary and justified. But the other ones were kind of … (it) lost its luster after a while. The specialness sort of wore off when they just kept coming,” said Titone.
However, Titone does believe the upcoming special session due to President Donald Trump’s federal tax and spending bill is necessary.
“I think this one was kind of an unavoidable one because we were beholden to the federal tax changes, which lowered our amount of revenue that was coming into the state. And because we have to have a balanced budget per the constitution, that did make a lot of sense,” she said.
Titone thinks addressing AI in the special session makes less sense. Two years ago, she sponsored a bill to regulate the AI algorithms used in some business and government decisions. She doesn’t think Gov. Polis needed to add that to the special session agenda and said any tweaks could have been handled when the regular session begins in January, before the law takes effect in February. She said special sessions can be abused pretty easily if lawmakers aren’t careful.
Republican lawmakers, in particular, seem to share that view.
Republican Sen. Mark Baisley would like to see lawmakers largely work within the bounds of their four-month regular session. Baisley said one special session stands out in particular; in 2023, lawmakers returned to the Capitol just weeks before the regular session to pass property tax relief after voters rejected a Democratic ballot initiative on the issue.
“That was not good governance,” said Baisley. “I think it's an embarrassment that we're not coming in with good maturity, good, long-term thought, and getting things done in the 120 days allotted to us. And I think it's a sign of dysfunction that we keep coming back in special sessions.”
Republican Sen. Byron Pelton of Sterling said in a text message that he doesn’t think lawmakers should be returning this August.
“It’s not so special when it happens every year!! It’s very unfortunate that we are being called back to the capital to punish those hard-working Coloradans who got tax relief from the congressional republicans!!” he wrote.
Republican Rep. Ken DeGraaf from Colorado Springs also blasted Democrats, accusing them of using “a contrived crisis to attack the Taxpayer Bill of Rights and push for unlimited taxing power.”
“This so-called ‘special’ session is nothing more than an extra, ordinary rubberstampapalooza excuse for Democrats to raise taxes and grow government. Years of reckless spending, not federal tax cuts, created this problem. Instead of cutting waste,” he said.
Democratic Sen. Judy Amabile of Boulder serves on the powerful Joint Budget Committee, which maintains a fairly heavy meeting schedule throughout the year. She takes a pragmatic approach. She said it’s part of lawmakers’ job to figure out if something needs to be addressed outside of the regular session and do it.
“In a perfect world, that would never happen. But this is far from a perfect world, and some really consequential things have happened in the time that I've been a legislator.”
The 2025 special session will last a minimum of three days, the shortest amount of time required to pass a bill through both chambers, but it is expected to go longer. Most special sessions in the past haven’t gone much more than a week, although in 1991, lawmakers spent sixty days arguing about school finances and electoral maps.
At least one member is hoping that conditions under the gold dome may spur legislators to work expeditiously.
“I'm sure nobody wants to be here at the Capitol in the summertime without AC,” said Democratic Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez of Denver. “But we're going to take the time we need to be thoughtful about these policies and get them right.”
If the threat of sweltering chambers isn’t motivation enough, Rodriguez noted the holiday that’s just around the corner.
“Hopefully we can get done, outta here before Labor Day weekend.”
To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org.
