The Colorado legislature has a lot to do this year, and some of it will directly impact Eagle County
County has hired a person to keep an eye on the Legislature
Ali Longwell/Vail Daily
In the realm of county government, state policy decisions tend to roll downhill like snowballs.
Eagle County this year has hired a policy specialist to watch the Colorado legislature with the intent of influencing some policy changes in this year’s 120-day session.
Eagle County Commissioner Matt Scherr noted that county officials have recently adopted a proactive approach. That approach really came to the fore in 2023 when Gov. Jared Polis sent the legislature a sweeping land use reform bill. That bill was fiercely opposed by mountain communities, including Eagle County.
The state’s mountain towns and counties managed to kill that bill, which was viewed as a an “invasive” imposition on those communities’ efforts to bring more workforce housing to their areas.
That’s when “a whole lot of us started to pay more attention,” Scherr said.
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An old truism states, “If you aren’t at the table, you’re on the menu,” Scherr noted.
Scherr praised the county’s representatives in Denver, State Rep. Meghan Lukens and State Sen. Dylan Roberts, both Democrats. But he said hiring a person to keep an eye on the legislature is one way of ensuring the county has a seat at the table. Another way is working through Colorado Counties Incorporated, the state’s oldest organization representing counties at the state level.
Exercising some influence
The counties’ organization brings between eight and 10 issues per session to the legislature. Eagle County worked to get one of those issues on the organization’s agenda.
That issue is the relative ease with which large property owners, particularly large hotels in small communities, can appeal property valuations. That appeal process, intended to aid small property owners, inadvertently makes it easy for those large property owners to save millions, at great expense to local governments, Scherr said.
“The impacts from (those appeals) aren’t felt around the state as they are in small communities,” Scherr said, adding that the large, monied interests are almost certain to put pressure on legislators from larger communities to leave the system as it is.
While Eagle County has its interests, the legislature has plenty of other issues to contend with in the session that opens Jan. 8.
In a Jan. 2 interview, Roberts said he and other legislators have plenty to wrestle with in the session that begins Jan. 8.
Roberts said the state budget will “color everything” that happens in this session. The state’s economy is sound, according to state forecasters. But between inflation, expanding spending on Medicaid and the spending limits imposed by the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights constitutional amendment, which limits the growth of state spending, the state is looking at making roughly $750 million in cuts to this year’s budget. Roberts said that works out to a cut of somewhere between 7 and 10% off the 2024 budget.
That will happen, given the constitutional mandate to pass a balanced budget, Roberts said. And legislators will do their best to protect “key needs” including education, transportation and other state services.
Shoshone water buy on track
The good news, Roberts said, is that the state’s commitment of $20 million to purchase the Shoshone water rights was appropriated in 2024. Roberts noted that between the state, the Colorado River District and other local governments, there’s roughly $59 million in commitments for the water rights purchase. The remainder of the $99 million purchase price is expected to come from federal funding.
Roberts said he’s also working on legislation to make rental cars available with proper winter tires to people traveling into the mountains. Roberts also said he’s working to try to authorize vendors on the mountain corridor that, for a fee, will install either chains or “auto sock” devices on cars during snowstorms.
In addition, Roberts said he and other legislators are working on affordability issues for the state’s chronic housing affordability problems. A bill he’s sponsoring would offer loans at below-market rates to developers building homes for income-qualified owners.
Roberts and other legislators also are working to reform the state’s construction-defect laws. Insurance costs and the risk of litigation are part of the reason construction costs have risen so much in the state, he said.
