Colorado ban on sale, purchase of certain semiautomatic rifles clears Senate committee in first vote
In a near-midnight vote, a Colorado Senate committee late Tuesday gave initial approval to a bill that would ban the sale or purchase of semiautomatic firearms that accept detachable magazines.
The measure would cover a large swath of guns that are colloquially known as assault weapons. Senate Bill 3 passed the Senate’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on a party-line, 3-2 vote after eight hours of testimony in a packed room in the state Capitol.
The measure now heads to the full Senate, where its passage is virtually assured. Eighteen votes are needed to clear the 35-seat chamber, and 18 Democrats — not including a newly appointed senator who voted for the bill Tuesday night — have already signed on as co-sponsors.
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Push for nuclear energy in Colorado gains new support in legislature as technology advances
After years of attempts to open Colorado up to nuclear energy, a bill before the legislature this year is showing new promise for the effort.
In an annual ritual, Sen. Larry Liston, a Colorado Springs Republican, has regularly introduced legislation that would add nuclear energy to the state’s definition of clean energy sources. Only this year, in a marked break from prior bills, the proposal, House Bill 1040, has drawn bipartisan support — a key hurdle in a building where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1.
Nuclear technology has improved enough to minimize the concerns of yesteryear, Liston argues — and it could fill a critical gap as Colorado moves away from carbon-spewing fossil fuels.
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Colorado lawmakers target apartment “junk fees,” proposing to ban some and require transparency
Landlords and businesses would be required to advertise the full price of their services — including the cost of various hidden fees — under new legislation introduced in the Colorado House that’s part of a suite of measures backed by legislative Democrats seeking to curb costs in the state.
Lawmakers formally unveiled House Bill 1090 during a press conference late last week. The measure requires businesses across industries to display the total price of services, from apartment rentals to restaurant menus, in their advertisements.
Landlords would also be barred from charging so-called “junk fees” for services like pest control, common-area maintenance or to cover their property taxes — fees that have become ubiquitous in renters’ lease agreements.
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Ban on certain semiautomatic firearms, wage theft bill on docket in Colorado legislature this week
A proposal to ban the sale and manufacture of semiautomatic firearms that receive detachable magazines will receive its first public hearing this week in the Colorado legislature, along with a handful of other priority bills from the Democratic majority.
Senate Bill 3 is the latest effort to restrict the types of firearms available in Colorado and, sponsors hope, reduce gun violence in the state. The last big swing at restricting high-powered firearms — a 2024 bill that would have defined and banned the sale of assault weapons — fell at the end of the last legislative session. The new bill includes Sen. Tom Sullivan, a Centennial Democrat who opposed last year’s assault weapons ban, as a co-sponsor.
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Colorado’s 81-year-old labor law faces overhaul by Democrats as business groups fight to save “compromise”
Liza Nielsen applied to work at Starbucks because of the “promised magical benefits” the company offered, like tuition and health care reimbursement.
But when she started at the coffee giant’s Superior store in early 2021, her expectations curdled. She and her coworkers were consistently shorthanded, she said, and they had to fight for enough shifts to unlock the benefits that had attracted Nielsen to the job in the first place.
“It was a workplace built for burnout,” she said.
Nielsen and her coworkers organized to form a union, part of a growing and national wave of worker organizing at Starbucks. Amid anti-union tactics that federal labor regulators found ran afoul of federal law, Nielsen and her coworkers successfully formed a union with 99% of staff voting in support, she said. The group has since joined with other Starbucks workers in a national effort to craft a first union contract.
That process is still underway. But when it’s done, Nielsen said, unionized Starbucks employees in Colorado — like thousands of organized workers before them — will be alone in the United States in having to pass a second election before they can advance a key piece of their prospective contract: membership in the union and the collection of dues and fees.
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