Following are Boulder County’s priorities for the 2024 state legislative session, including references to legislation that we anticipate will be introduced in the General Assembly. We ask for our delegation members’ support for these bills that are important to Boulder County and our shared constituents.
CLIMATE ACTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
Air Quality and Ozone Reduction: Support state legislation, regulation, and other policy means to improve air quality and public health. Expected legislation includes air permit reform to strengthen analyses for minor pollution sources; improved enforcement to discourage permit violators, refinery specific legislation; and emissions reduction measures. A key focus of these bill concepts is to protect low-income communities and communities of color.
Environmental Justice: Support legislation implementing the General Assembly’s Environmental Justice Task Force recommendations and adding staffing and resources to expand petroleum refinery oversight and regulations to decrease air pollution and protect heavily impacted vulnerable communities located near refineries.
Distribution System Planning: To address barriers to electrification such as utility rates, support legislation to require any public utility with a Distribution System Plan to develop and implement a Clean Distribution System Plan to meet greenhouse gas targets and create increased access to electrification.
Local and Regional Airports: Support legislation requiring local and regional airports to implement sustainability and noise mitigation programs in order to receive state funding.
Waters of the United States: Support legislation to create a state-level permitting regime to ensure that the State of Colorado can adequately regulate the state’s water resources and preserve the environmental systems benefits of these resources.
PERA Proxy Voting: Support legislation to require PERA to adopt proxy voting procedures that ensure PERA’s voting decisions align with and are supportive of Colorado’s statutory greenhouse gas emission reduction goals.
COMMUNITY HEALTH
Gun Violence Prevention: Support legislation to prevent gun violence and save lives through an assault weapons ban and other gun violence prevention measures.
Youth Substance Use Disorder Prevention: Support efforts to prevent and reduce youth substance use disorder and death from substance use, including prohibiting the sale of these substances to youth via social media platforms.
COMMUNITY JUSTICE
Behavioral Health Diversion: Support policies to divert people with behavioral health disorders involved in the criminal justice system to behavioral health treatment, such as the program outlined in the Opioid and Other Substance Use Disorders Interim Committee treatment bill. Support enhanced funding for other community-based sentencing options for low-level offenses.
EQUITY
Marriage Equality and Parental Rights: Support efforts to codify marriage equality in Colorado and full parental rights for non-biological parents in same-sex relationships.
GOVERNANCE
Local Government Fiscal Notes: Support legislation to enact local government fiscal notes to account for the full financial impacts of legislation in communities across Colorado.
HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
Gender Affirming Care: Support legislation to ensure youth in Colorado have access to gender-affirming care.
Opioid and Other Substance Use Disorders: Support legislation that funds services for prevention, treatment, and recovery from substance use disorders, including harm reduction approaches.
HOUSING
Affordable Housing: Support policy and funding initiatives to increase Colorado’s stock of permanently affordable housing and expand access to diverse housing options.
Land Use: Support efforts to increase access to affordable housing, affordable transit, and home ownership opportunities in Colorado through land use reform strategies, including local government inclusionary zoning requirements, expanding residential uses in commercial, retail, and office zones, and other strategies.
Local Government Land Use Regulation: Support policy and funding initiatives to require local governments to provide expedited entitlement and permit processing for affordable housing developments and encourage local governments to reduce, defer, off-set, or waive development and impact fees for affordable housing developments.
Home Ownership: Support taxing structures and other efforts to disincentivize vacant and second homes as strategies to expand home ownership and wealth-building opportunities for first-time home buyers.
Mobile Homes: Support legislation that modernizes the Mobile Home Park Act and ensures that people renting-to-own manufactured homes are protected against predatory loan practices.
Support policy initiatives to ensure that the rights of people living in manufactured homes are protected.
Supportive Housing Services: Support consideration of a Section 1115 Medicaid waiver to provide access to Medicaid funding in support of homelessness prevention initiatives.
HUMAN SERVICES
Access to Benefits: Support efforts to ensure ease of access to public benefits, including food assistance, by aligning eligibility across programs, increasing funding for outreach and enrollment, reducing documentation burdens, streamlining administrative processes, and ensuring adequate staffing to administer benefits.
Child Welfare: Support funding and policy to address racial, ethnic, sexual orientation, gender identity, and ability equity in the child welfare system, and increase support for foster care homes that serve children with a range of needs, including financial support for kinship care.
LANGUAGE JUSTICE
Language Access: Support funding and policy that guarantees full language access and language justice in all spheres of life, including but not limited to language access in the child welfare system, professional licensing processes, and the early childhood care system.
OIL AND GAS
Forced Pooling: Support legislation to enhance protections for publicly held mineral rights.
Stripper Well Taxation: Support legislation to repeal the state severance tax exemption for oil and gas stripper wells.
TRANSPORTATION
Road User Safety Improvements: Support policy and funding initiatives to invest in transportation system infrastructure improvements that seek to prevent vehicular collisions with vulnerable road users.
Vehicle Miles Traveled Fees or Taxes: Support new, broad-based revenue sources to supplement and ultimately replace gasoline and diesel fuel taxes, including Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) fees and taxes.
Transit Use: Support tools such as tax credit incentives and grant programs to incentive provision of transit passes and increase the use of transit.
Railroad Safety Requirements: Support policy and funding initiatives to increase railroad safety as Colorado develops passenger rail service, including efforts to support the creation of railroad quiet zones.