Five days ago, opponents of a bill to boost oversight of two key Colorado regulatory departments called it unfair to state workers and accused backers of trying to “weaponize audits.”
On Tuesday, following the addition of three amendments, Senate Bill 306 passed the Senate Finance Committee unanimously, with nary a complaint to be heard.
Now, with eight days left in the 2025 legislative session, the proposal — a key part of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s regulatory-reform agenda — must get through the logjam of bills in both the House and the Senate. But it will do so with a bipartisan blessing and a declaration from its sponsors that they heard concerns and worked them out.
“We got to a place where I think everybody’s happy — or not excessively angry,” Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, who is cosponsoring SB 306 with Republican Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer of Brighton, said just before the unanimous vote.
What regulatory actions the bill undertakes
SB 306 arose out of a December study commissioned by the Colorado Chamber that found Colorado is the sixth-most-regulated state in the country, having seen a 7.1% rise in rules between 2020 and 2023 and now subjecting businesses to 200,000 individual regulations. Business leaders also told the chamber for the second year in a row last year that overregulation is their biggest impediment to growing in the state, with many interstate companies saying they are unlikely to boost their workforce here in the future.
The bill, as introduced, sought to require the state auditor to undertake performance audits in 2026 and 2031 on the Air Pollution Control Division and in 2027 and 2032 on the Division of Labor Standards and Statistics within the Department of Labor & Employment.
Backers chose the two divisions because they are responsible for many significant new rules — APCD oversees air-quality regulation and DLSS areas like wage theft and paid-sick-leave violations — and do not get audited on a regular basis. Industry leaders also have raised concerns with the time it takes to get a permit from APCD — an average waiting period that rose from 165 days in 2019 to 459 in 2024, despite the division having added more than 100 employees during that time.
Labor and environmental groups objected strenuously, however, to the audits looking into the two divisions they consider to be the most vital to protecting the environment and workers’ rights. Noting the federal government cutbacks occurring under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the Sierra Club called it unfair to question the work of Colorado employees, and the Colorado AFL-CIO accused the bipartisan bill of being “pretty political.”
Specific questions to ask
Colorado Chamber of Commerce President/CEO Loren Furman and former Colorado Chamber regulatory affairs advisor Christy Woodward react to questions Thursday from the Seante Finance Committee.
Colorado Chamber President/CEO Loren Furman and former regulatory affairs advisor Christy Woodward shot back that it’s the duty of the Legislature to ensure that such powerful regulatory agencies are acting in the most “effective and efficient” manner. If anything, Furman was very surprised to learn that the divisions do not get the same regular oversight from the Office of the State Auditor that many smaller agencies do and said the audits could resolve whether they are properly staffed and funded.
After five days of discussions, Rodriguez and Kirkmeyer made two major changes to the bill. The first involved moving the focus of one of the audits from the DLSS to the Division of Unemployment Insurance, a substantial state agency that taxes every employer in the state and does the crucial work of overseeing unemployment benefits.
The second change was the addition of two amendments outlining the questions that auditors must investigate to determine if each of the divisions is operating in an effective and efficient manner. Those include:
- Whether the division complies with the statute and its statutory purpose;
- What the impact of the divisions’ processes are on the ability of stakeholders to access program benefits and whether any division processes may be unnecessary, unreasonable or responsible for causing delays;
- Whether each division’s staffing and funding levels are sufficient for it to efficiently and effectively fulfill its statutory duties and responsibilities related to program administration and enforcement, including assessing how funding or staffing changes made at the state level might impact local governments; and,
- Whether each division requested and was appropriated additional resources from the Legislature and whether that decision impacted program implementation and the timing of implementation.
Why sponsors want regulatory oversight
Furman said after the bill got unanimous backing that she believes the input that she and sponsors got from the bill’s former opponents not only allowed them to address lingering issues but gave the auditor a much clearer pathway on how to investigate the divisions.
“I think the changes improve the bill,” she said. “A lot of changes we have included in the language for the state to undertake the audits has agreement that will move this forward in a clear direction.”
Chamber leaders also had sought to introduce a bill that would have directed the state auditor to investigate new regulations approved over the past decade and determine whether they are fulfilling their statutory purpose without inhibiting business development. However, that idea, modeled after a recently completed five-year state review of all its tax credits and expenditures, likely won’t move forward this session.
Senate Bill 306 sponsors Robert Rodriguez and Barbara Kirkmeyer leave the table after the Senate Finance Committee approves the bill on Tuesday.
Kirkmeyer emphasized that using the auditor’s office to review implementation of laws passed by the General Assembly is simply good practice in ensuring the bills that get so much attention during debate aren’t misinterpreted once they go into effect. And such oversight is needed to ensure that Colorado, which is falling in national economic-competitiveness rankings as the cost of living and doing business in the state is rising, is not hurting its efforts through self-inflicted wounds.
“This is a good bill. We’re just doing performance audits,” Kirkmeyer told the committee. “And when we do that, we just want to make sure that the industries are appropriately regulated while protecting jobs and the economy.”
SB 306 heads next to debate before the full Senate.