Welcome to the third (and short) week of the 2025 Colorado legislative session. A handful of early bills are set to hit the House floor in the next few days as lawmakers settle in for more marathon oversight hearings and the first contentious committee hearing of the year.
That hearing is for Senate Bill 5, which would eliminate a unique provision of Colorado law. It requires unions to pass a second election (after the first vote that formally creates the union) before workers can negotiate a key piece of their union contract with employers. The hearing is set for Tuesday at 2 p.m. in front of the Senate’s Business, Labor and Technology Committee in the Capitol.
The bill is a priority for labor groups and Democratic lawmakers, and most Democrats in both the House and the Senate have already signed on to support it. But it’s opposed by business groups and by Gov. Jared Polis, who has said he’s skeptical of the proposal and wants legislators and unions to negotiate with groups like the Colorado and Denver Metro chambers of commerce.
Supporters expect the bill to clear its first Senate vote Tuesday, which would then send the measure to the Senate floor.
The House and Senate’s calendars are generally reliable, though they also often shift for a variety of reasons. It’s always a good idea to double check the calendar online. You can also tune in to legislative hearings online or watch livestreams of House and Senate floor work on the Colorado Channel.
Here’s what else is happening this week:
A parade of oversight hearings
The first few weeks of every legislative session are typically dominated by SMART Act hearings — basically government oversight meetings in which state agencies present to committees and face some grilling or prodding by lawmakers.
That process started after the session began and continues this week. On Tuesday, the legislature’s joint health committees will hold SMART Act hearings for the Behavioral Health Administration and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, among other health-related agencies.
The same committee will hear from the Department of Human Services and the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing — which oversees Medicaid — on Wednesday.
That will likely be interesting, given concerns around cuts to Medicaid amid the state budget crunch and the new Trump administration. Both the Tuesday and Wednesday hearings will begin once the House and Senate conclude floor work, which will likely be mid- to late-morning.
The legislature’s education committees will hold oversight hearings on Thursday for the departments of education, higher education and early childhood. The joint military and state affairs committees will hold hearings for the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and the Department of State, also on Thursday.
First floor work
The House has four bills it’s scheduled to hear on second readings this week. As a reminder, a bill first must pass at least one committee, then clear two votes in its first chamber before switching to the other chamber and restarting the process. The first chamber vote, called second reading, is a voice vote.
Those first four bills include a measure to approve the use of a psilocybin medication, alongside three other pieces of health-related legislation. All are scheduled for a House vote Tuesday; if they’re delayed, they will likely roll over to later in the week.
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