Legislative Agenda

Updated May 16, 2024

In 2024, CoPIRG supported 25 bills at the legislature on a range of public interest issues that protect consumers, safeguard our public health and improve our quality of life across Colorado.

Our successes this year include passing bills that give Coloradans the broadest repair rights of any state, requiring additional consumer products to be PFAS-free, significantly increasing funding for buses and trains and reducing ozone pollution. 

Here are the complete list of policies we supported:

HJR24-1005 – Resolution Repairability Scores for Devices. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Brianna Titone, Ron Weinberg

Senate Sponsors: Jeff Bridges, Nick Hinrichsen

Status: Passed and sent to the Federal Trade Commission

HJR24-1005 calls for a national Right to Repair score system for our tech. The resolution was sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which had opened up a public comment period asking for feedback on how they can help states improve and foster repair. Repair scores for tech such as laptops, phones, and appliances provide consumers with a 1 through 10 score that measures availability of spare parts, ease of disassembly, and longevity of support.

HB24-1121 – Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Brianna Titone, Steven Woodrow

Senate Sponsors: Jeff Bridges, Nick Hinrichsen

Status: Passed and sent to the Governor’s desk

HB24-1121 will add consumer and business electronics to the list of items that Coloradans have the Right to Repair and get the tools, parts, diagnostics and software access to fix. This gives the owner a choice in how repairs are made and will save time and money while reducing the amount of waste that we produce. The bill, combined with previous policies the state passed, ensures Coloradans have the broadest repair rights of any state.

SB24-184 – Support Surface Transportation Infrastructure Development. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Julie McCluskie, Andrew Boesenecker

Senate Sponsors: Steve Fenberg, Janice Marchman

Status: Passed and signed by the Governor

SB24-184 creates a new $3 rental car fee to fund statewide rail and bus expansions. Projects that would be eligible include the Front Range Passenger Rail from Pueblo to Fort Collins, passenger rail connecting Denver to Craig via Winter Park and Steamboat Springs and an expansion of Colorado’s Bustang bus system. In addition, the bill spurs more of the dollars raised from our state’s managed lanes to support expanding multimodal travel options. 

SB24-230 – Oil & Gas Production Fees. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Julie McCluskie, Elizabeth Velasco

Senate Sponsors: Steve Fenberg, Lisa Cutter

Status: Passed and signed by the Governor

SB24-230  would create a new fee on oil and gas operations to raise approximately $140 million a year. 80% of that money would support local transit with the majority going to service and increasing ridership to tackle air pollution. Additional dollars would be available for rail projects. 

SB24-041 – Privacy Protections for Children’s Online Data. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Lisa Frizell, Javier Mabrey

Senate Sponsors: Robert Rodriguez, Paul Lundeen

Status: Passed and sent to the Governor’s desk

SB24-041 – Almost every website and app we use collects some amount of information, and that includes ones used by kids. This bill puts some limits on the collection and sharing of kids and teens information with advertisers, requires companies delete kid’s data when it’s no longer required to deliver the service and puts strict limits on the collection of a minor’s geolocation data.

HB24-1378 – Consumer Protection in Event Ticket Sales. Vote YES. 

House Sponsors: William Lindstedt, Alex Valdez

Senate Sponsors: Tom Sullivan, Bob Gardner

Status: Passed and sent to the Governor’s desk

HB24-1378 enshrines a set of protections for consumers who purchase tickets to games and shows. Among its sections, the bill requires ticket sellers to disclose all fees at the time they disclose the price of the tickets, ensures consumers can get a refund if a ticket seller sells a counterfeit ticket or the event was canceled and does not allow a venue to deny someone access if they have a valid ticket. The bill also targets ticketing websites intended to mislead consumers.

HB24-1447 – Transit Reform. Vote YES. 

House Sponsors: William Lindstedt, Meg Froelich

Senate Sponsors: Faith Winter

Status: Failed in Senate Appropriations

HB24-1447’s amended version would put into place more guidance and direction for Denver’s transit agency, RTD, to prioritize ways to increase budget transparency, planning coordination with the region and ridership building strategies. The amended version would also set up a facilitated stakeholder process to explore if there are improvements to be made to the board system. 

SB24-081 – Perfluoroalkyl & Polyfluoroalkyl Chemicals. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Cathy Kipp, Manny Rutinel

Senate Sponsors: Lisa Cutter

Status: Passed, Signed by Governor

SB24-081 adds cookware, dental floss, ski wax, menstruation products and most outdoor apparel to the state’s list of items that cannot contain PFAS, a dangerous ‘forever chemical.’ The bill also prohibits installing artificial turf with PFAS. The restrictions kick in at different times over the next few years.

HB24-1151 – Disclose Mandatory Fees in Advertisements. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Naquetta Ricks

Senate Sponsors: Tony Exum

Status: Failed in Senate Business, Labor and Technology Committee

HB24-1151 would have required companies to disclose any mandatory, non discretionary fees when they advertise the price of their product. These fees go by many names – “service” fee, “environmental” fee, “resort” fee, “administrative” fee, “processing” fee and the frustratingly named “convenience” fee. But if they are required and not dependent on what you choose, they are really a way to hide the true price.

HB24-1030 – Railroad Safety Requirements. Vote YES. 

House Sponsors: Javier Mabrey, Tisha Mauro

Senate Sponsors: Lisa Cutter, Tony Exum

Status: Passed and signed by Governor

HB24-1030 ramps up safety protocols for trains that operate in Colorado including requiring more transparency around the state of safety equipment designed to stop train derailments and more coordination and preparedness between train companies and emergency responders. The bill also allocates money for the state to use to increase safety along railroad lines.

SB24-150 – Processing of Municipal Solid Waste. Vote YES. 

House Sponsors: Meg Froelich

Senate Sponsors: Lisa Cutter, Dafna Michaelson Jenet

Status: Passed and sent to Governor’s desk

SB24-150 will prohibit plastics-to-fuel combustion units from being eligible for any state incentives and requires pyrolysis and gasification processes to be regulated at the state and local level as solid waste-to-energy incineration systems, ensuring they have to meet higher air pollution standards. Plastics-to-fuel pyrolysis and gasification facilities have become a source of toxic pollutants such as dioxins, arsenic, mercury, and benzene, which are associated with serious health issues ranging from cancers to respiratory disorders. 

HB24-1148 – Amending Terms of Consumer Lending Laws. Vote YES. 

House Sponsors: Mike Weissman, Javier Mabrey

Senate Sponsors: Julie Gonzales

Status: Failed in Senate Finance Committee

HB24-1148 would ensure the additional charges that borrowers are paying for products like insurance are included in the APR calculations on installment loans. Costly add-ons that increase borrower expenses past our state’s current APR tiered maximums undermines the intent of our laws and hurts consumers unnecessarily.  

HB24-1370 – Reduce Cost of Use of Natural Gas. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Cathy Kipp, Jenny Willford

Senate Sponsors: Faith Winter

Status: Passed and sent to Governor’s desk

HB24-1370 establishes a process for utilities and local governments to identify neighborhood scale projects to transition to energy and heat that does not require gas. Last winter gas prices skyrocketed. Reducing our reliance on gas can save consumers money, especially if whole neighborhoods can retire from the gas system and avoid paying to maintain both electric and gas infrastructure in an area.  

HB24-1058 – Protect Privacy of Biological Data. Vote YES. 

House Sponsors: Cathy Kipp, Matt Soper

Senate Sponsors: Mark Baisley, Kevin Priola

Status: Passed, signed by Governor

HB24-1058 expands the scope of the Colorado Privacy Act so that the definition of sensitive data includes biological and neural data. As technology advances, more and more of our data is collected and can be used to identify us. The bill places a higher privacy bar around this data. 

HB24-1117 Invertebrates & Rare Plants Parks & Wildlife Commission. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Karen McCormick, Matt Soper

Senate Sponsors: Janice Marchman, Jeff Bridges

Status: Passed and sent to the Governor’s desk

HB24-1117 extends the state’s wildlife conservation efforts to include bees, butterflies and rare plants. Bees and other insects are just as important to our ecosystems as eagles, bighorn sheep and coyotes. Pollinators are critical to our food supply. In fact, bees pollinate one out of every three bites of our food including Palisade peaches and Rocky Ford melons.

SB24-229 Ozone Mitigation Measures. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Jennifer Bacon, Jenny Willford

Senate Sponsors: Kevin Priola, Faith Winter

Status: Passed and signed by the Governor

SB24-229 will address Colorado’s severe ozone air pollution problem by cutting emissions from the oil & gas sector, strengthening air quality enforcement by giving state agencies more tools for holding polluters accountable, increasing transparency by requiring the state to publicly share information on enforcement actions. The bill also increases funding for the state’s program to plug “orphan” oil and gas wells and expands the program to include so-called “marginal” wells, which are wells that are low-producing but often highly polluting. The bill will also codify Gov. Polis’s targets to reduce ozone-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) from oil and gas production and preproduction activities (such as drilling) within the Denver Metro/North Front Range ozone nonattainment area by 50% by 2030. 

SB24-032 Methods to Increase the Use of Transit. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Julia Marvin, Stephanie Vigil

Senate Sponsors: Kevin Priola, Faith Winter

Status: Passed and signed by the Governor

SB24-032 will provide flexibility for transit agencies around youth and ozone zero-fare programs. While not enough to fully fund both youth zero-fare and ozone season zero-fare programs for every agency, it gives agencies flexibility so they can maximize the remaining funds for these successful ridership boosting programs. Thanks to funding allocated by the state legislature in the past two years, Colorado implemented a grant program for local transit agencies across the state to offer fare-free transit to increase transit ridership and reduce pollution from tailpipes during the heart of our state’s ozone pollution season. In the Denver metro area alone, transit ridership jumped 22% (about 1 million additional rides) during the first year of the program. 

HB24-1357 Pipeline Safety. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Kyle Brown, Tammy Story

Senate Sponsors: Kevin Priola

Status: Failed House Appropriations Committee

Methane gas piped through our communities can result in dangerous leaks that endanger people and pollute the air.  HB24-1357 would increase public safety by setting up a rulemaking to explore requiring operators to inspect pipelines using advanced leak detection technology, and by  requiring operators to fix leaks within a certain time frame since being discovered. It would increase penalties for operators violating rules . It would also increase transparency by expanding the annual reporting requirements by pipeline operators and requiring the PUC to develop a user-friendly, public-facing website for pipeline safety data.

HB24-1330 Air Quality Permitting. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Jennifer Bacon, Jenny Willford

Senate Sponsors: Lisa Cutter

Status: Failed in House Appropriations Committee

HB24-1330 would have brought much-needed reforms to the way Colorado considers permits for newly-proposed sources of air pollution. It would have ensured that a company couldn’t begin drilling a new oil and gas site until it has an approved air permit. For example, under this bill, all the air pollution an oil and gas company produces from trucks and vehicles and drilling or fracking engines as they prepare a site for production would have been included in their air pollution permit application.

SB24-165 Air Quality Improvements. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Lorena García, Manny Rutinel

Senate Sponsors: Lisa Cutter, Kevin Priola

Status: Failed in Senate Finance Committee 

SB24-165 would have tackled sources of ozone from transportation, warehouses and oil and gas. It would have created a new, publicly accessible database for oil and gas air emissions, required a pause on non-electric oil and gas drilling during the summer months when the concentrations of ozone in our air often spike to unhealthy levels, and put into place the goals and process to get Colorado on track to cut NOx and VOC emissions from the transportation sector and reduce nitrogen oxide emissions from the oil and gas sector by 50% by 2030. 

SB24-166 Air Quality Enforcement. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Meg Froelich, Andrea Velasco

Senate Sponsors: Faith Winter

Status: Failed in Senate Finance Committee

SB24-166 would have strengthened the state’s efforts to enforce existing air quality laws. The bill would increase both the maximum and the minimum fines for companies who repeatedly break the law by polluting our air. This bill also would have allowed the public to enforce air quality laws if the state fails to do so – joining 26 other states that already have such community enforcement laws on the books. People should not have to rely on the government to protect them. Citizens should have the ability to protect themselves from environmental harm even when the state may not have the resources to protect them in all cases.

SB24-214 – Implement State Climate Goals. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Judy Amabile, Karen McCormick

Senate Sponsors: Lisa Cutter, Chris Hansen

Status: Passed and sent to Governor’s desk

SB24-214 would provide funding for the newly formed Colorado Office of Sustainability. This office has the opportunity to align sustainability measures across more than 20 state departments and save taxpayer dollars. The bill also allocates $400,000 a year for transitioning the state from dirty gas-powered lawn equipment to electric powered and ensures energy efficiency products will be used in new buildings built with state funds.

SB24-022 – Regulate Flavored Tobacco Products. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Kyle Brown, Elizabeth Velasco

Senate Sponsors: Kyle Mullica

Status: Failed in Local Government and Housing Committee

SB24-022 gives clear authority to county commissioners to regulate the sale of all types of tobacco products, including flavored tobacco products. Currently, local control around tobacco sales and taxation was something cities were able to govern, although the authority for counties to do so remained unclear.  This bill helps clarify county commissioners can use this authority.

SB24-218 – Modernize Energy Distribution Systems in Colorado. Vote YES.

House Sponsors: Monica Duran, Kyle Brown 

Senate Sponsors: Steve Fenberg, Chris Hansen

Status: Passed and sent to the Governor’s desk

SB24-218 requires utilities that serve 500,000 customers or more in the state to upgrade our grids to ensure there is enough capacity to transition to more electric vehicles and building electrification systems like heat pumps. The bill sets a cost cap for what utilities can charge a customer to connect a new electrification project to the grid. The bill will also set up a grant program to train more people in the electrification field and requires utilities begin a process to bury electric lines and other parts of the grid.

HB24-1449 – Environmental Sustainability Circular Economy

House Sponsors: Junie Joseph, Mandy Lindsay 

Senate Sponsors: Lisa Cutter, Kevin Priola

Status: Passed and sent to the Governor’s desk

HB24-1449 merges different waste reduction programs to maximize the impact of the programs. Fees collected from waste facilities will be used to fund grants and technical assistance to support efforts to reduce waste and build infrastructure that can support a circular economy.   The program will be overseen by the Colorado Circular Communities Enterprise.