Colorado 2026 Regular Session
Every one of the 437 bills that became Colorado session law in the 2026 Regular Session was screened against its plain-language summary and scored against Concourse's twelve solution modules. Every bill scoring plausible or better was then re-read against its Final Act text and Fiscal Note to confirm whether a real, funded software mandate exists — which is why the confirmed tiers below are much smaller than what the first pass flagged.
Explicit, budgeted software mandate with a named dollar figure and hard deadline.
The new Enterprise must stand up and operate an end-of-life pesticide program. Concretely it must: (1) register eligible pesticide products and assess/collect an ANNUAL pesticide registration product disposal fee (up to $50/product, inflation-adjusted) from ~18,000 registrants starting Nov 1, 2026, plus collect per-pound disposal fees (~$2/lb) from ~10,200 applicators; (2) schedule and run recurring pesticide disposal events at diverse geographic locations, allowing applicators to register for those events, and contract with third-party hazardous-waste firms to host/manage them; (3) track the volume/weight and types of products disposed; (4) conduct outreach/education to all registered applicators and businesses; and (5) submit an annual report to the General Assembly by April 1, 2028 (and each year thereafter) detailing fees collected and product types disposed. The fiscal note explicitly states the CDA will "develop a database for program participants to pay fees, register for disposal events, and track the volume of disposed products."
The bill creates a brand-new state complaint and enforcement process at CDE for Section 504/ADA disability-rights violations in public schools (distinct from the existing federally-funded IDEA process). CDE must: intake complaints from parents, students, and third-party attorneys/advocates; run intake screening/dismissal against statutory criteria; conduct investigations (assume ~60 complaints/yr, up to 25 full investigations); issue findings; determine and order remedies (corrective action plans, remedial measures, reinstatement of benefits, staff training); and monitor compliance for up to a year after a violation. The process is bound by hard deadlines: complaints resolved within 180 days of filing, 14-day complainant response windows, 60-day LEP grievance-exhaustion gate, and a 10-day referral window from the Civil Rights Division. The State Board must adopt rules by December 1, 2026 establishing procedures to withhold state funds from non-compliant LEPs, including written notice, corrective action, and appeal. The fiscal note explicitly states CDE requires $100,000 to create an electronic filing system for 504 and ADA complaints, and that CDE may contract with third parties to support implementation. LEPs (school districts) must also adopt local grievance processes and designate a compliance contact.
New CRS 44-30-1507.5 requires every internet sports betting operator to submit ALL transactional data and metrics for the prior calendar year to the Division of Gaming by Feb 1, 2028 and each Feb 1 thereafter. The Division must compile that data into a report on internet sports betting and publish it on its website by Jan 1, 2029 and every three years thereafter. Submitted data must be redacted to exclude personally identifiable information and is exempt from the Colorado Open Records Act. The fiscal note confirms DOR must stand up an entirely new database to ingest operator transactional data and produce the required reporting, plus hire a Statistical Analyst to collect, analyze, and report it. Other provisions (6-deposit-per-day cap, credit-card ban, push-notification ban, under-21 advertising limits) are enforcement/compliance rules but explicitly do not create new commission reporting requirements.
The bill creates the Strengthen Colorado Homes Enterprise inside DORA's Division of Insurance to run a resilient-roofing retrofit program funded by an annual fee (0.5% of prior-year premiums, dropping to ~0.24%) on insurers' multiperil homeowner's policies. Core operational needs: (1) Grant lifecycle management — the Enterprise Grant Program awards grants to homeowners for retrofitting property against extreme weather; the enterprise must develop eligibility policies, intake and process applications, perform audits on applications, award and disburse grants, and (per statute) at least 85% of fee revenue must flow to homeowner grants. The bill explicitly allows the enterprise to contract with a third-party administering entity to run the program — a direct software/BPO procurement hook. (2) Verification of grantee compliance — recipients must hold an insured residential property, obtain construction permits, comply with building codes, arrange inspections, install roofs meeting resilient-material standards, and use a licensed contractor; the enterprise must verify all of this per application. (3) Contractor training/certification — the board may fund resilient-roof installation training and certification programs (intake and outcome tracking). (4) Insurer rate filings — beginning Jan 1, 2027, insurers must submit annual filings to DOI on resilient-roof installations and discounts (structured intake). (5) Reporting — beginning July 1, 2028 and annually, the enterprise must report to the General Assembly on fees collected and grants awarded, and must publish a high-risk wildfire insurance study on the DOI website.
Real funded program or clear operational mandate that plausibly requires new software.
Repeals and reenacts Article 11.5 of Title 39, rebuilding the tax-lien-sale and treasurer's-deed process on the public-trustee foreclosure model. County treasurers must administer a deadline-driven, notice-heavy workflow: process applications for treasurer's deeds, assignments of certificates of purchase, intents to repurchase, notices of intent to redeem, certificates of redemption, deed issuance, withdrawals, rescissions, and set-asides; conduct public auctions (statute expressly authorizes conducting them "by means of the internet or other electronic medium," which requires "a computer software application, and an internet website"); post bidding rules online at least two weeks before sale; accept electronic funds transfer; mail first-class notices to owners; make and maintain a "correct record of all sales of tax liens"; and each odd-numbered year post the Legislative-Council CPI-adjusted maximum fee schedule on the county website. New/standardized fee schedule covers ~14 line items ($25-$300 each). Applies to any treasurer's deed issued on or after June 1, 2026 regardless of the original tax lien sale date.
The act (amending C.R.S. 13-1-132, 13-10-103, -111.5, -112, -113, -114.5) imposes several new operational requirements on municipal courts. (1) Remote public observation: every municipal court must make criminal proceedings, including proceedings for in-custody defendants charged with an incarcerable municipal violation, available for real-time public viewing/listening through an online platform and must post the observation links prominently on the court's website; the narrow remaining exceptions are limited to temporary/intermittent internet or staffing issues, and these rules override Chief Justice Directive 23-02. (2) 48-hour bond hearings: on notice of a municipal hold, the court must hold a hearing within 48 hours, coordinate defendant availability with the sheriff/jail administrator (audiovisual conferencing expressly permitted, telephonic when internet is unavailable), and document the length, reason, and abatement efforts for any delay. (3) Notices and information sharing: before the hearing the court must notify appointed indigent defense counsel of each in-custody person, notify the prosecuting attorney, ensure counsel gets pre-hearing access to the defendant, and ensure any pretrial services or assessing agency provides counsel and prosecutor all case information given to the court (arrest warrant, probable cause statement, criminal history). (4) Case tracking: courts must make diligent, documented efforts to timely resolve municipal matters for defendants in custody anywhere in Colorado and appoint indigent defense counsel. These map directly to case management, 48-hour hearing scheduling, automated notice generation, compliance/audit-ready record-keeping (Courts, Safety & Justice) and to livestreaming, captioning, and publicly posted/searchable proceeding links (Legislative & Public Meetings).
The Final Act amends C.R.S. 19-1-307. New subsection (2.2)(b) requires each COUNTY DEPARTMENT to "ESTABLISH, AND SUBMIT TO THE STATE DEPARTMENT UPON COMPLETION, A PROCESS THAT CLIENTS AND FORMER CLIENTS MAY USE TO OBTAIN ACCESS TO THEIR CASE RECORDS," and to submit any updated process to the state. The process must enforce differentiated, identity-verified access: (a) requests by an "authorized person" (the alleged abused/neglected child if now 18+ or emancipated, or the parent/legal guardian if still a minor); (b) requests by a designee acting under a valid, signed release of information; (c) parents/guardians/legal custodians. It must protect identifying information of children, families, informants, and reporters (redaction), since redisclosure of identifying info to unauthorized persons is a class 2 misdemeanor/petty offense. Criminal defendants may only obtain records after in-camera court review. This is a records-request intake, requester-authorization verification, and redaction workload landing on every county DHS office.
New CRS 8-83-507 requires covered private businesses (railroads, utilities, energy generation, advanced manufacturing operating in coal transition communities) to give a hiring preference to qualified coal transition workers starting Jan 1, 2027, and to REPORT ANNUALLY to the Just Transition Office (JTO) within CDLE: titles of positions filled by qualified coal transition workers, number of qualified workers hired, number of non-qualified hires, and recruitment efforts undertaken. The JTO executive director/designee must develop policies and procedures for implementation, and (per the fiscal note) must stand up a reporting system for affected businesses to submit this annual data. This is a state-level compliance data intake / employer reporting and employment-outcome tracking need. Section 3 separately grants public entities (including local governments) broader investment authority for coal-closure settlement funds, but that provision creates no system/software requirement.
Beginning December 31, 2027 (with a grace period to June 30, 2028 for jurisdictions actively updating their codes), every subject jurisdiction (local government over 2,000 pop.) must approve residential developments on qualifying properties through an ADMINISTRATIVE APPROVAL PROCESS — a staff-level review that approves, approves with conditions, or denies a development application based solely on compliance with objective standards, replacing discretionary/public-hearing review (CRS 29-35-103, 29-35-503, 29-35-504). This forces local governments to build or reconfigure a permit-intake and review workflow that: accepts development applications, applies objective site-design/height/density standards, and issues determinations without discretionary review. As part of the initial application, jurisdictions may request and must verify documentation that a nonprofit applicant meets one of seven "demonstrated history of affordable housing" criteria (29-35-503(2)) — a document-intake and verification step. The statute expressly preserves each jurisdiction's ability to run public notification and resident-feedback processes on these applications (29-35-503(3)(i)). Separately, DOLA must publish guidance by December 31, 2027 to help jurisdictions verify nonprofit status (29-35-506) — a one-time publication, not a data system.
A local licensing authority that adopts a massage-facility ordinance must: intake and review license applications and renewals; require and verify fingerprint-based criminal background checks (submitted at least 30 days before issuance/ownership transfer) for every operator, owner, and employee; deny, revoke, or suspend licenses on ordinance-defined grounds; conduct premises inspections; and, for a temporary suspension, schedule and hold a hearing within 15 days. The act removes the prior $150 fee cap and the pre-Aug-2022 fee exemption, letting jurisdictions set cost-based administrative fees (a fee over $500 is presumed unreasonable unless justified, inflation-adjusted from Jan 1, 2028), so localities can now recover the cost of running these programs.
The bill overhauls how governments qualify for Proposition 123 Statewide Affordable Housing Fund money and creates several new administrative processes for DOLA's Division of Housing. (1) FORMULA-BASED ELIGIBILITY: Beginning with the three-year cycle starting Jan 1, 2027, the Division must replace the flat 3%/year target with a computed "target increase number" (average annual new-housing permits over the past three years x years committed x a job-growth multiplier of 0.10, 0.15, or 0.20). The Division must establish and define numerical threshold ranges for "significantly lower / close to / significantly higher than" the statewide median annual job growth rate, pulling data from the State Demography Office per county. (2) COMPLEX UNIT-COUNTING/COMPLIANCE: The Division is responsible for determining compliance, counting units at time of permitting (not construction), and applying fractional-credit math (units count as 1.1, 1.15, or 1.2, or +0.1/+0.2 additional-unit amounts for donated land, multi-government funding, for-sale, deep-affordability, and property-tax-exempt units), plus honoring inter-governmental written agreements for shared credit. (3) TWO NEW WAIVER-REVIEW WORKFLOWS: a "good-faith effort waiver" (2024 cycle; documentation window on/after June 15, 2026 but before Nov 1, 2026) requiring narrative + documentation of zoning/land-use reforms, funding commitments, and process improvements; and an "adjustment waiver" (2027 cycle) requiring a detailed narrative backed by verifiable data (housing needs assessment, inventory of deed-restricted units recorded with the county clerk, comprehensive-plan growth projections, utility/infrastructure/environmental constraint documentation) plus a proposed revised annual increase. The Division decides both in its discretion. Local and tribal governments must file commitments by Nov 1, 2026 (and each year preceding a new cycle), must implement a system to expedite development approval for affordable-housing projects, and must assemble the data-heavy waiver applications.
OEDIT/the Commission must stand up an application intake and review workflow for local-government transit investment projects: intake, commissioning third-party analyst reports, prioritization against statutory criteria, a public hearing, and approve/approve-with-conditions/deny decisions with resolutions setting maximum annual and cumulative TIF dollar amounts. Hard caps: no more than 3 projects approved per calendar year and 6 total, and no more than $75M of sales-tax increment dedicated in any fiscal year. OEDIT must also publish a geospatial transit-and-housing-investment-zone map by Oct 30, 2026. DOR must track, collect, disburse, and report the increment (aggregate report by Sept 1 each year). Financing entities must file an annual report (increment received, how spent, projected revenue, construction status) plus an independent CPA audit, with repayment/offset on misuse; OEDIT must submit a biennial detailed report and an annual Nov 1 report to legislative committees. CHFA administers up to $350M in housing tax credits (~$50M blocks, ~$8.33M/yr rows 2027-2033) via allocation plan eligibility determination, allocation certificates, recapture, and compliance monitoring.
Each county/municipal jail must: (1) Document each strip search (reason + result) and file an ANNUAL report by Jan 31 to both the Jail Standards Advisory Committee and the Attorney General stating the number, reason, and result of every strip search conducted under the "reasonable belief"/"documented prior incident" grounds; the same data must be submitted to the Division of Criminal Justice for public availability. (2) Record all strip searches on body-worn cameras, tag footage with a "strip search" tag using the BWC vendor's tagging function, and store it at the most restrictive access level. (3) Enforce access controls: personnel may not access strip-search footage off-premises and must obtain written approval from the sheriff and document what footage they accessed and why before every access (the sheriff must also log their own access). (4) Adopt written policies on when strip searches are authorized, access restriction, and footage retention - implemented by each sheriff on or before Aug 1, 2026. (5) Develop sexual-assault-prevention policies, designate a PREA coordinator, and contract with a third-party auditor per Jail Standards Committee guidelines. (6) Honor whistleblower protections. The per-search documentation report (subsection 3) is repealed Jan 1, 2031.
This is a JBC budget-package transfer bill, not a program mandate. It moves $132.0M into the Capital Construction Fund and $7.7M into the IT Capital Account for FY2026-27. Two line items are explicitly earmarked "to be used for a RECORDS UTILIZATION UPGRADE FOR THE COLORADO STATE PATROL": $587,318 from the Motor Carrier Safety Fund (Sec. 3, C.R.S. 42-4-235(7)) and $1,976,782 from the Motorcycle Operator Safety Training Fund (Sec. 4, C.R.S. 43-5-504(5)) — roughly $2.56M combined dedicated to a CSP records-system upgrade. A further $1,748,863 from the Community Impact Cash Fund also flows into the IT Capital Account (not explicitly tied to CSP records). The bill itself only transfers money; the actual system procurement happens downstream through the state's capital IT process. The named project is a law-enforcement records utilization upgrade (motor-carrier / commercial-vehicle and motorcycle-safety records domain), a specialized RMS space.
The Secretary of State / Department of State must reengineer its business-entity filing registry and fraud-complaint workflows. Specifically DOS must: mark any filing as void and adjust an entity's status when a filing fee is unpaid (~3,550 non-payers/year, ~150 reaching the database with no void mechanism today); mark a business record with a notice that the entity has received a complaint or is under investigation; mark an entity as unauthorized/fraudulent upon an AG notice that its registered agent is fraudulent; mark a filing as fraudulent, redact the street/residence address, and disable the entity's filing ability when a filing falsely claims Secretary of State association; prohibit a fraudulent entity from serving as a registered agent; and do preliminary review on roughly 5,000 fraud complaints received annually that are not forwarded to the Attorney General. This is registry status-management, records-redaction, and complaint intake/investigation-tracking work on the statewide business filing system.
CDPHE must run the "Test and Fix Water for Kids" / School and Child Care Clean Drinking Water grant program through June 30, 2029, now expanded to high schools (grades 9-12 added to "eligible school"). It must intake and reimburse eligible schools, child care centers, and family child care homes for lead-testing and remediation costs by priority order (grant disbursement + grantee reporting), track completion of state-certified lab lead testing (high schools by May 31, 2027; child care/K-8 already required), and deliver compliance training. New licensing mandate: by July 1, 2027 CDPHE must adopt rules defining how a child care center demonstrates compliance with lead-in-water testing, and CDPHE is prohibited from issuing OR renewing a child care center license unless the center is in compliance - i.e., a compliance-verification gate wired into the licensing workflow. Program repeals June 30, 2029.
The act rewrites C.R.S. 17-1-119.7. CDOC must track the prison-bed vacancy rate monthly (facilities + state-funded private contract beds, with a new jail-backlog calculation). When the rate falls below 4% for 30 consecutive days, CDOC must within 48 hours notify 13 categories of recipients (Governor; JBC; House & Senate Judiciary Committees; Parole Board plus each contracted release/administrative hearing officer; Office of Community Corrections; each community corrections board and program; each elected DA; State Public Defender; Alternate Defense Counsel; chief judge of each judicial district; chief probation officer of each district; State Court Administrator; each county sheriff). Each recipient must acknowledge receipt in writing and confirm compliance. Notices to the Governor and Parole Board must be refreshed every 30 days with a population-reduction estimate, and a stand-down notice must go out when the rate exceeds 5% for 30 days. CDOC must also generate and update multiple time-sensitive eligibility lists (conditional-release and parole-eligible lists within 14 days of the trigger and every 30 days after; case-manager community-corrections eligibility reviews and referrals within 7 days; new-court-commit sentencing-court notices within 14 days of admission). The executive director must develop a comprehensive ongoing prison-population-management plan (new 17-1-103(1)(s)). New monthly budgeting reports (17-1-103.3) must, by the 5th of each month, itemize the local jail backlog by county and, when measures are in effect, CDOC's compliance with the measures including EACH notice sent, actions taken, and documented impact -- i.e., an audit-ready compliance-tracking, multi-party notification/acknowledgment, deadline, and recordkeeping workflow.
County treasurers must overhaul the mobile-home delinquent-tax workflow. Concretely they must: generate delinquency and sale notices in both English and Spanish (with county translation/interpretation contact info), deliver each notice by certified mail AND personal service to the mobile home, enforce a 60-day minimum notice-to-sale window, replace seizure/court/collection-agency enforcement with a tax-lien sale/strike-off process beginning July 1, 2026, notify the underlying landowner and give a mobile-home-owner association a right of first refusal before a lien sale, track a three-year redemption window (nine years for disabled owners), send a further notice 30 days before the redemption period closes, run a public auction of a certificate of option for a treasurer's certificate of ownership, disburse redemption money and any auction surplus, issue certificates of redemption/ownership, notify DOR of redemptions, and make abandonment determinations. This requires multi-year deadline tracking, dual-language dual-channel notice generation, lien-sale/auction case tracking, and fund-disbursement records per parcel.
Amends CRS 19-7-105 to extend the state's existing federal-survivor-benefits framework to federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for foster youth. Beginning on or before July 1, 2028, county DHS must: screen every child entering foster care for SSI eligibility (developmental screening referral within 45 days for children under 6; disability evaluation at initial medical intake for age 6+); initiate the SSI application within 45 days of receiving screening info and documentation when a child appears eligible and SSA is accepting applications; apply automatically for children on the Children's Habilitation Residential Program Waiver; conduct at least annual eligibility re-reviews for children initially found ineligible; document why a child identified as having a disability is deemed SSI-ineligible (for reporting under CRS 26-5-119 / 45 CFR 1355.44); when acting as representative payee/fiduciary, document ALL expenditures by need type and funding source in the state automated case management system (TRAILS) and provide an annual accounting of benefits and expenditures to the child and their legal representative; provide timely notices of applications, payee designations, and federal decisions; and reassess the representative payee when custody transfers. CDHS must adopt implementing rules by Jan 1, 2028 and provide ongoing technical assistance. Core software workflow: eligibility screening intake, 45-day deadline-tracked application processing, application status tracking through completion, expenditure/disbursement documentation, and audit-ready annual accounting/reporting.
Section 3 (new C.R.S. 23-5-152) requires EACH institution of higher education to: (1) establish written Title VI grievance procedures, publish them on a publicly accessible webpage, and inform students/employees of them at least annually; (2) designate a Title VI coordinator who must ensure compliance, respond to discrimination/harassment and disparate-impact complaints, enforce and review the grievance procedures, TRACK complaints to identify institutional issues, AGGREGATE data on alleged Title VI violations and make that de-identified data PUBLICLY AVAILABLE (no PII), and provide Title VI training to employees. Fiscal note also notes IHEs and school districts must share information/data with the Civil Rights Division and CDE to support investigations. This is a recurring complaint-intake, case-tracking, compliance, and public-data-publishing mandate replicated across every public higher-ed institution in the state.
Two greenfield regulatory programs. (1) DORA's new Behavior Analyst Licensing Board must build a full practitioner licensing system for ~2,000 analysts: application intake, verification of valid national certification with a certifying entity, fingerprint/CBI background-check integration, supervision requirement tracking, continuing-education and liability-insurance verification, fee collection, annual renewals, and complaint intake/investigation/disciplinary workflows (est. 300-400 complaints/year) with audit-ready records; plus rulemaking. (2) CDHS must extend its child-care facility licensing regime to ~500 ABA clinics: license applications, ~8,000 employee background checks, recurring on-site inspections (with CDPHE disease-control inspections), and a new rules/appeals process overseen by a review panel. HCPF adds a Medicaid technician-credentialing verification and 45-day grace-period workflow but requires no new appropriation.
The new Authority must run end-to-end grant and contract programs statewide for disability-support organizations: soliciting proposals from nonprofits, independent living centers, and county human/social services agencies; reviewing proposals against eligibility and evaluation criteria; awarding contracts or grants (up to 3-year terms) beginning July 1, 2027; embedding annual performance metrics that gate continued funding; collecting quarterly grantee expenditure reports; and establishing rules ensuring funds are used as specified. It runs three distinct funding programs (8-88-303 disability-benefits assistance, 8-88-304 pilot projects, 8-88-305 disabled-parking education grants), must handle conflict-of-interest disclosures on every contract/grant, comply with open meetings and open records, and file an annual financial/performance report to the Joint Budget Committee (first due Dec 1, 2027) itemizing every grant/contract award and administrative cost. Because the Authority is NOT an agency of state government and is expressly exempt from the state personnel system and not subject to state IT/OIT direction, it must procure its own commercial systems rather than inherit state platforms. Separately, CDOO must operate a market (potentially an online site) for the sale of uniquely valuable vehicle registration numbers, tracking 25% royalties and coordinating with DOR's DRIVES system.
Creates an entirely new state licensing regime for recovery residences (CRS 27-50 Part 10). The BHA must: adopt operating-standard and fee-schedule rules by May 1, 2027; accept and investigate annual license applications and renewals (acting within 30 days of a complete application); issue standard and 90-day provisional licenses; conduct facility inspections and manage written corrective-action plans; run fingerprint-based criminal-history checks routed through CBI/FBI and evaluate results; assess and collect licensing fees plus civil penalties ($50-$100/day unlicensed, up to $2,000/yr fines); and handle denial/suspension/revocation via Article 4 administrative hearings. It must maintain a publicly available list of licensed residences and publish investigation summaries, complaint outcomes, and deficiency citations while keeping confidential health-care info and incident reports exempt from disclosure (redaction of resident/provider identities). A mandatory occurrence-reporting workflow requires residences to report deaths, serious injuries, physical/sexual/verbal abuse, caretaker neglect, property misappropriation, and drug diversion; the BHA must investigate each report and prepare public findings. The Judicial Department must update its probation-placement approved-vendor/RFP list to reflect BHA licensure by Aug 1, 2027.
The act rewrites C.R.S. 42-4-110.5 governing automated vehicle identification systems (traffic cameras). Implementing governments (CDOT and local jurisdictions) must: (1) restructure vendor compensation so payment is based on equipment/service value, may be a flat monthly fee or flat hourly rate, and must NOT be tied to citation counts or revenue, and must exclude incentives/bonuses/escalators - applicable to contracts entered into or renewed on/after the effective date; (2) operate a new registered-owner dispute workflow - owners have 30 days to submit an affidavit plus documentation (bill of sale, police report, death certificate, etc.) to contest a notice of violation, and the government must review, dismiss qualifying notices, and provide proof of dismissal; (3) administer a revised tiered civil-penalty schedule ($40/$50/$120/$150 caps by speed band and zone, with escalations beginning Jan 1, 2035) and issue written warnings for first low-level violations; (4) publish an annual report on the agency website disclosing the number of citations and amount of revenue generated per AVIS corridor; and (5) meet expanded 30-day advance public-notification and signage requirements (website plus social media) before deploying a new system.
OIT must build and quarterly-update a structured list of ALL active state IT vendor contracts, each record carrying vendor name, contract value, expiration date, and data-classification/business-criticality tier, and expose it to agency IT leadership and JTC members (with agencies feeding their own contract data in). The CISO must also compile and submit two new annual reports to the JTC starting Nov 1, 2027: an IT security compliance report (compliance status, open State Auditor recommendations, remediation timelines, mitigation plans) and a statewide IT security risk report aggregating agency system evaluations. OIT must additionally publicly post technical IT standards and ensure ongoing-service contracts maintain annually-updated architecture diagrams. The act explicitly authorizes a one-time IT budget request "for the cost of building and implementing the list."
This is a supplemental appropriations act that adjusts FY2025-26 (SB25-206) and FY2024-25 (HB24-1430/SB25-112) funding for a named slate of state IT capital-construction projects. It does not create a new program or mandate; instead it funds specific enterprise system builds/reprocurements. Named projects that map to Concourse modules include: Dept. of Personnel Statewide Procurement System ($1,420,957) and Supplier Database (Contracts & Procurement); Judicial Courts & Probation Case Management System ($4,728,771) and Dept. of Personnel OAC Court Management System ($3,375,426), plus Public Safety Records Utilization Upgrade ($1,635,581), Colorado Gang Database ($250,000), and CCIC FBI System Compliance ($735,000) (Courts, Safety & Justice / records); Revenue MED Seed-to-Sale Tracking ($2,980,000) and Natural Resources Colorado Oil & Gas Information System ($2,000,535) (Permitting & Licensing); Human Services Reimagining Colorado's Benefits Eligibility System ($19,462,080) and HCPF Colorado Benefits Management System Reprocurement ($4,784,276) (Grants & Financial Aid); HCPF Social Health Information Exchange Project ($8,139,343) (Data & Integrations); and Education Statewide Facility Assessments ($1,470,000) plus Auraria Network Infrastructure Modernization ($3,457,666) (Asset & Facilities).
The Colorado Department of Revenue administers the state firearm-dealer permit program, and HB26-1126 layers several new operational workflows onto it. DOR must: (1) develop/approve online training courses with a 20-question exam and issue printable certificates valid one year, and track annual training compliance for dealers, responsible persons, employees, and contractors; (2) adopt security-measure rules by Jan 1, 2027 and then intake, review, provide feedback on, and store "comprehensive security plans" that every dealer must submit by Oct 1, 2027 (including resubmitted updated plans); (3) receive mandatory 48-hour theft/loss reports for firearms missing from dealer inventory; (4) run permit application/eligibility screening now extended to each "responsible person," plus renewals, on-site inspections, and record-keeping (records may be kept electronically, now covering transfers); and (5) operate a new graduated fine engine (up to $75,000 for a second/subsequent violation on or after Jan 1, 2027) governed by rules defining severity categories, fine ranges, and aggravating/mitigating factors, with fines routed to the Firearms Dealer Permit Cash Fund. Notably, the statute bars DOR from using dealer records to build a firearm-ownership registry.
Enacted law with several build/track/disburse mandates: (1) Creates the Court Security Authority, a brand-new stand-alone special-purpose authority governed by a 7-member board that must accept and evaluate grant applications, set an application schedule and rules, award grants to counties and the State Court Administrator, collect a new $10 court-security surcharge from courts (starting 7/1/2027), keep records of all proceedings, and file an annual report to the Chief Justice and Judiciary Committees beginning Jan 2028 (13-1-501 to 13-1-507). (2) Secretary of State SHALL redact addresses and other personal information from candidate disclosure statements and personal financial disclosure statements before posting them on its website, and may modify the disclosure forms (secs 9-10). (3) A protected-persons/elected-officials process: any state or local government official who receives a written request must take steps to reasonably ensure the person's personal information is not made available on the internet (redact/remove from internet-published records); private publishers must remove within 72 hours and notify (18-9-313, 18-9-313.7). (4) County sheriffs providing court security must maintain a single secure access point, use magnetometers in session, and verify and MAINTAIN A LOG of each armed individual entering a courthouse (verification, employing agency, entry/exit times) per Judicial Security Task Force standards (13-1-114). (5) Legislative Department may hire an Administrator of Legislative Safety (1.0 FTE) and establish a protection-request process.
New CRS 18-6-807 requires, beginning July 1, 2027, every peace officer responding to a domestic violence incident to administer a validated, evidence-based lethality assessment and include the completed assessment in the incident report (capturing whether an assessment was conducted, the risk/outcome level, and whether a victim referral was initiated). The Attorney General must develop and make available mandatory statewide officer training by June 1, 2027, with all officers trained by July 1, 2027. Beginning January 2028, the AG reports statewide totals (DV incidents, assessments conducted, high-risk victims identified, referrals made) via its SMART Act presentation. Critically, EACH law enforcement agency that uses a lethality assessment must annually report to the AG, in a prescribed manner: total DV incidents responded to, total assessments conducted, and total assessments resulting in a high-risk identification. The Department of Natural Resources will modify its law-enforcement records management system to track and generate the required data, and CSP will add fields to its incident-reporting documentation. Local agencies face "form and system updates" plus policy/procedure development.
For any peace-officer use of force resulting in death, the employing law enforcement agency must: (1) release all unedited body-cam/dash-cam/investigative video and audio to any requester upon request (within 21 days for non-fatal misconduct complaints; after the 21-day period for fatal incidents); (2) make reasonable efforts to identify the decedent's immediate family and proactively provide recordings to each identified member within 21 days of the incident unless they decline; (3) notify each known immediate family member and their designee about the investigation within 24 hours after the incident scene is cleared, including the names of all agencies on the multi-agency team and investigation status; (4) give family a 72-hour advance-review right before public disclosure; (5) maintain and post multi-agency investigation protocols on the agency website; and (6) after internal, multi-agency, and criminal-case completion, release death recordings to immediate family upon request. District attorneys must publish a written declination report on their website. This creates hard deadline-driven records-request intake, family-notification, and public-posting workflows for every qualifying incident.
The act elevates Colorado's disaster survivor portal from a discretionary option to a statutory mandate: Section 3 amends CRS 24-33.5-1106(4) to say the Office of Emergency Management SHALL (formerly "may"), with the Department of Local Affairs and the Colorado Energy Office, implement and maintain a portal where disaster survivors apply for approved state disaster individual assistance and access coordinated federal/state benefit programs, with explicit multi-language, hearing/sight, and physical-accessibility requirements. The act also authorizes OEM to share aggregated recovery data (portal data, mapping data, program performance metrics, federal disaster program data) with local/state agencies, volunteer organizations, federal partners, the press, and the public, and it creates a State Recovery Task Force (CRS 24-33.5-705.1) that compiles damage-assessment information and serves as the recovery clearinghouse across state agencies. Section 1 additionally requires a statewide preparedness "goal and system" and a single internet-accessible training and exercise calendar with identified points of contact.
The Act (new C.R.S. 8-14.4-101.5) directs the CDLE Division of Labor Standards and Statistics to, on or before Jan 15, 2027, "DEVELOP A PLATFORM ON THE DEPARTMENT'S WEBSITE WHERE USERS CAN PROVIDE INFORMATION ABOUT OCCURRENCES OF TEMPERATURE-RELATED INJURY OR ILLNESS OR TEMPERATURE-RELATED EMERGENCIES AT WORKSITES" - i.e., a public-facing incident-reporting portal. The Division must also ingest/integrate data from three external systems: CDPHE's syndromic surveillance program (heat tracking), the Division of Workers' Compensation (workers' comp claims, collected at least twice annually), and the Center for Improving Value in Health Care/CIVHC (at least twice annually). By July 1, 2028 the Division must develop a model Temperature-Related Injury and Illness Prevention Plan (TRIIPP) and publish it on the department website in a viewable/downloadable format, reviewed at least every five years. Net effect: a new resident/worker data-submission web platform plus recurring multi-agency data collection, aggregation, and public publishing.
CDPHE must inspect every local/county/private facility that detains noncitizens for civil immigration proceedings: annual inspections PLUS unannounced inspections at least once every three months, reviewing food safety, drinking water quality, confinement conditions, and standards of care. CDPHE must license these facilities, set and collect per-inspection fees (crediting a new Immigration Facility Inspection and Detention Cash Fund), and can revoke the license of a noncomplying facility. Facilities must submit a yearly report to CDPHE covering detainee health outcomes (pregnant individuals, chronic conditions, disabilities), dietary access, and facility temperature data. By Jan 15, 2027 and annually thereafter, CDPHE must submit a compliance report to the Attorney General AND publish it on a public-facing website. Separately, the Department of Law must develop and distribute a model policy on personal identifying information / data access for federal immigration enforcement by Sept 1, 2026, and the POST Board must establish peace-officer training standards on civil immigration detainer compliance, with all certified officers required to complete the training by Dec 31, 2027.
The act creates four concrete build mandates. (1) Performance-based state-county contracts (new C.R.S. 26-1-119.5): the three state departments must establish aligned minimum requirements by Feb 1, 2027 and execute a performance-based contract with EACH county department by July 1, 2027, consolidating all existing contracts/MOUs and embedding measurable outcomes, performance metrics, corrective-action protocols, sanctions, at-least-monthly compliance monitoring, quality-assurance/case reviews, audit findings, and a formal corrective-action-plan workflow (10-business-day notice/dispute cycles, 6-month monitoring periods). (2) A single shared online public dashboard (new C.R.S. 25.5-1-138): HCPF, with CDHS/CDEC, must stand up one dashboard beginning January 2027 and update it monthly, publishing county-level and statewide performance metrics (application/renewal timeliness, denials, procedural denials, pending counts, complaints/appeals) across Medicaid, CHP+, SNAP, CCCAP, TANF, and Adult Financial programs. (3) A Centralized Member Integrity Service (new C.R.S. 25.5-1-210): the state must contract with one county to run statewide fraud investigations, fraud recovery, fraud dispute-resolution conferences, state-level fraud hearings, intentional-program-violation waivers, and criminal court referrals across all six benefit programs, operational July 1, 2027 with full county transition by July 1, 2028; requires building out the state's county compliance database and CBMS functionality for fraud referrals, recoupment payments, tax-refund intercept, and case reviews. (4) A continuous-quality-improvement process (C.R.S. 26-1-144) by Sept 1, 2026 with annual JBC reporting, and a redesigned delivery model of no more than 12 county cohorts by July 1, 2028.
The Act expands the Cottage Foods Act to allow home producers to sell refrigerated/time-and-temperature-controlled foods (tamales, burritos, tortas, meat products) and creates a new statewide registration regime administered by CDPHE. Per amended C.R.S. 25-4-1614(8): every producer must ANNUALLY REGISTER with CDPHE before selling, indicating the food types they anticipate selling, and CDPHE "SHALL ISSUE A REGISTRATION NUMBER TO EACH PRODUCER." Subsection (8)(b) converts the prior optional local registry into a mandate: CDPHE "SHALL create AND MAINTAIN AN electronic registry of producers," must "UPDATE THE REGISTRY MONTHLY, SHARE THE REGISTRY WITH EACH COUNTY OR DISTRICT PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCY, AND MAKE THE REGISTRY AVAILABLE ON THE DEPARTMENT'S PUBLIC-FACING WEBSITE." CDPHE must also stand up a consumer-facing website (labels must carry a department-provided web address) where consumers can report foodborne illnesses, verify a producer's active registration, and report registration-status issues (new 25-4-1614(3)(a)(VI)). Additional CDPHE duties: approve food-safety training courses, annually inflation-adjust the $150,000 revenue cap, and run a fines/cost-recovery and inspection/enforcement workflow (fines up to $100/violation, cost recovery up to $1,000/instance, three-strikes suspension). A new Cottage Foods Cash Fund (25-4-1614.5) is created to finance the program.
CDPHE must stand up a producer-responsibility program for EV propulsion batteries. Concrete build/track/report obligations: (1) a registration system for propulsion battery providers (must register by July 1, 2027) and for secondary handlers (who must register via "a digital form provided by the department" before collecting batteries); (2) a fee-assessment process that determines each provider's program initiation fee tiered by market share, using Division of Motor Vehicles data as of April 26, 2026, collected in three payments (July 1 2027/2028/2029), plus an annual fee CDPHE must set by rule by June 1, 2029 (capped at $140,000/yr total, deposited to the Battery Stewardship Fund); (3) intake and assessment of education-and-outreach plans (due from providers by Jan 2, 2029); (4) annual reporting intake beginning June 1, 2030 from providers, remanufacturers, and repurposers on battery collection, management, and disposition — CDPHE must assess reports, keep proprietary data confidential, and publish aggregated non-proprietary data (open-data function); (5) an email survey of registered entities and disposal sites to measure orphaned batteries; and (6) enforcement of QR-code/labeling and landfill-ban notifications. The regulated population is small: the fiscal note counts only ~22 providers total (7 above 5% market share, 3 mid, 7 small, 5 exempt).
New C.R.S. 25.5-6-415 requires HCPF to build and maintain a statewide database of individual residential services and supports (IRSS) settings, including host homes, and their associated service provider agencies (PASAs). HCPF determines the data fields; at minimum each PASA must submit, for every setting it oversees: setting name/contact, address/location, current associated PASA(s) with contact info, and any PASAs contracted with in the prior five years. Cadence: beginning July 1, 2026 and quarterly thereafter PASAs submit data; beginning August 1, 2026 and quarterly thereafter HCPF must update the database within one month of receiving submissions. HCPF must control public-sharing rules consistent with privacy law (family-member-provided homes are shielded from public disclosure) and build searchability. The act also establishes a complaint process (referenced in the section title) and directs rulemaking. It further preempts local governments from imposing regulations on these settings beyond those applied to other residential property (a restriction on locals, not an implementation task for them).
Concrete budget is moving (appropriation, FTE, program dollars) even if not IT-specific.
The bill repeals and reenacts Colorado's AI Act (SB24-205) into the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, imposing duties on "developers and deployers" of automated decision-making technology (ADMT) used in covered domains that include "essential government services and public benefits." Deployers must: notify consumers before ADMT materially influences a consequential decision; within 30 calendar days of an adverse outcome provide a description of the decision, instructions to request more info, and notice of the right to human review; and retain records demonstrating compliance for at least 3 years. The Attorney General must adopt enforcement rules by Jan 1, 2027 and report enforcement actions to the General Assembly annually beginning Jan 2028; enforcement runs through the deceptive-trade-practices framework (60-day right to cure through Jan 1, 2030). State/local agencies are affected only insofar as they act as ADMT deployers in benefits/eligibility and similar covered domains; OIT is assumed to absorb government compliance cataloging within its existing base budget.
The bill overhauls Colorado's competency-to-proceed framework and creates three new court-supervised civil placement pathways (civil commitment, enhanced protective placement, protective placement) for defendants exiting the criminal system. This generates new case types and hearing workflows: restorability hearings, civil-commitment trials (91-day timelines), annual provider status reports to the court, review hearings, termination hearings, and appeals. CDHS must build and operate a new outpatient treatment facility by Oct 1, 2027 (including creating/managing its electronic record system), expand and maintain data systems to track court orders, petitions, placements and reporting, and modify/integrate its electronic health record system between its regional center and the Pueblo state hospital (CMHHIP). The Judicial Department must update its statewide court case management systems for the new case types, event/schedule codes, data transfers to CCIC and CICJIS, court-appointed-counsel integration, record sealing, and e-filing of mental health reports. The act mandates electronic filing of competency evaluations/orders, and requires CDHS to report placement data at its SMART Act hearing and publicly post it on its website by January 2031 (placement types repeal July 1, 2031).
The act codifies the pre-existing, informal Data Advisory Group (DAG) that CDHE already facilitates, making it a permanent advisory body (advisory-only, no binding authority) to the CCHE regarding collection, storage, reporting, access, and use of statewide institutional and student data (C.R.S. 23-1-145). Subject to available appropriations, the CCHE must consult the DAG to establish written policies covering: procedures for DAG recommendations; processes for sharing aggregated and de-identified statewide data; review timelines for draft reporting tied to funding/resource allocation, legislative reports, and strategic planning; and guidelines for data aggregation/suppression consistent with privacy laws and PII best practices. The DAG must meet at least quarterly and one DAG member is added to the CCHE advisory committee (on/after July 1, 2026). Notably, the bill is mostly a higher-ed housekeeping act: it also raises capital-construction review-exemption thresholds from $2M to $5M, tweaks CU building-maintenance and revenue-bond rules, and adds a 3-day fiscal-note-response sharing requirement. The data provisions codify governance/process, not any new system, warehouse, or reporting platform — CDHE's Data, Research, and Policy Division already manages student-level data for 40+ institutions.
The act creates an optional $5 Collision Prevention Fee assessed during motor vehicle registration, deposited into a new Collision Prevention Fund (75%, continuously appropriated to CDOT's Bridge & Tunnel Enterprise) and the Wildlife Cash Fund (25%, to CPW). Implementation work: (1) DOR/DMV must reprogram the state's DRIVES registration system to add the fee and a clearly-differentiated opt-out step (placed after the Keep Colorado Wild pass opt-out), plus post statutory notification language on the DMV and Bridge Enterprise public websites; (2) county clerks collect and remit the fee and receive educational materials by Dec 1, 2026; (3) CDOT's Bridge & Tunnel Enterprise must build accounting architecture for the fund, run payment-processing/procurement support, and perform project tracking and reporting for wildlife safe passage projects drawn from CDOT's ten-year priority pipeline; (4) those crossing structures (overpasses/underpasses) are explicitly subject to inspections, lifecycle asset management, and rehabilitation practices like conventional bridges. Fee collection begins Jan 1, 2027.
The act does not create any new build/track/license mandate. It is chiefly a funding swap: the State Treasurer transfers $5.1M/yr (July 1, 2026 through July 1, 2029) from the Nurse Home Visitor Program Fund into the COCAP Trust Fund, with offsetting General Fund appropriation swaps between home-visiting and child-maltreatment-prevention lines, to let CDEC draw down more federal Title IV-E reimbursement for the SafeCare program. It removes the July 1, 2027 repeal so the COCAP Trust Fund and board continue administering grants to entities (to reduce/prevent child abuse) indefinitely (~$1.2M/yr grant spend from FY2027-28). CDEC must report to the Joint Budget Committee by Nov 1, 2029 on additional federal reimbursement received under the Family First Prevention Services Act, and must contract for an independent evaluation of the trust fund (administrative costs, cost-effectiveness, grant impact) reported to health & human services committees by Nov 1, 2029. All of this is manual/pre-existing; no system, portal, or data platform is required by statute.
The bill adds driver-license point penalties and escalation tiers for repeat excessive-speeding violations (2nd in 12 months = +2 pts, 3rd+ in 24 months = +4 pts, 5th+ in 5 years = +8 pts), +4 points for 100+ mph, +6 points/8 total for improper passing in no-passing zones, and doubles hazardous-materials route-deviation fines. Repeat offenders subject to the new tiers become ineligible for penalty-assessment notices and are instead routed through the courts. DOR must track repeat-violation windows and assess escalated points; CDOT must prioritize no-passing signage in locations with rising crashes using its existing statewide crash-data listing (23 U.S.C. 148/405). Crucially, DOR implements all of this via a programming update to its EXISTING DRIVES system through the incumbent DRIVES vendor -- not by standing up any new system.
The Act formalizes the Division of Parks and Wildlife (CPW) as the state's lead coordinating entity for implementing Colorado's Outdoors Strategy. Operative duties are internal coordination, planning, and staffing — NOT a grant program or external system (an initial automated read hallucinated a competitive grant program with a grant database and Nov 1 annual reports; no such thing exists in the enrolled text or fiscal note). CPW SHALL: (1) "develop and maintain the organizational capacity" to execute the duties; (2) "develop and maintain a recurring internal coordination and reporting process, including by creating planning reports, to integrate data, priorities, and outcomes from wildlife, recreation, climate resilience, and regional outdoor partnership efforts"; the planning reports must "integrate and summarize key metrics, outcomes, opportunities, needs, performance indicators, and economic impacts" and "employ data-informed management strategies for planning and investment"; (3) update the planning reports "at least annually"; and (4) in 2027 and 2028, present an update on these efforts (including a description of the planning reports and money spent) during its SMART Act hearing. There is no licensing, no permitting, no grant disbursement to third parties, no public-facing portal, and no statutory mandate to procure software. The "planning reports" are internal documents, not a public data platform.
The bill extends the existing Colorado Open Educational Resources (OER) Council and Grant Program through November 1, 2031, and continues annual reporting through December 31, 2031. CDHE, working through the OER Council (expanded from 12 to 15 members: 4 library professionals, 2 instructional design experts, 1 academic technologist, 2 administrators), must: (1) run the OER Grant Program that disburses awards to public institutions of higher education, faculty, and staff (26 grants to 16 institutions in FY24-25); (2) submit an annual report to the commission, council, JBC, and legislative education committees on OER implementation, now including the share of courses that are zero-textbook-cost for students; and (3) maintain the online repository of OER materials via the Colorado Pressbook Network, plus deliver an annual conference, webinars, and trainings. All duties are supported by one existing FTE (Director of Open Education). No new procurement, system build, or IT modernization is mandated.
This is the CWCB's annual water projects appropriations bill. The CWCB implements everything; loans flow to local entities but they are recipients, not software implementers. Grant/disbursement work: Section 14 appropriates $37.7M from the Water Plan Implementation Fund for grant-making on state water plan projects "through the CWCB's application and guidelines process" (application intake, review, disbursement, grantee reporting); Section 8 transfers $2M to continue Fish & Wildlife Resources Fund mitigation grant-making; Section 15 funds the $550K statewide turf-replacement rebate program. The CWCB is also authorized to originate/manage two large loans from the Severance Tax Perpetual Base Fund - $151.5M to the City of Fort Collins (Halligan project) and $20.17M to the Lower Latham Reservoir Company (Jurgens reservoir) - with a mandated written loan-basis report to the General Assembly by Jan 15 of the following year. Data/monitoring systems (all continuation/O&M of existing programs): satellite-monitored stream gauges and lysimeters ($380K), Colorado Mesonet temperature/precipitation station database and website management ($200K), water forecasting partnership for remote-sensing/hydrologic modeling and volumetric supply forecasting ($2.5M), Colorado Decision Support System O&M for water-resources planning ($750K), and floodplain map modernization studies/maps ($500K).
The act adds subsections to C.R.S. 25.5-4-402.4 authorizing HCPF to expend money from the hospital provider fee cash fund to maximize reimbursement for physician services at Denver Health and Hospital Authority through a Medicaid state-directed payment program under 42 CFR 438.6(c). Mechanically, Denver Health initiates intergovernmental transfers into HCPF's HAS Cash Fund, HCPF draws federal match, and pays it back out to Denver Health as enhanced physician-service reimbursement. There is no new application intake, panel review, grantee-reporting, or public-facing disbursement system created; the payments flow through HCPF's existing Medicaid managed-care/SDP financing framework. Denver Health's only new obligations are healthcare-delivery conditions (expand physicians and eligible practitioners, support graduate medical education, increase breast/colorectal/depression screenings) that carry no software mandate.
The bill continues the PUC through Sept 1, 2033 and imposes a raft of new process/rulemaking obligations rather than any mandated software build. Application-processing: the PUC's window to act on filed applications is cut from 130 to 90 days, with failure to act constituting AUTOMATIC APPROVAL — creating hard deadline-tracking pressure on application workflows (this also covers TNC permits, whose fee cap rises from $111,250 to $161,250). Transparency/reporting: utilities must file an annual summary of anticipated regulatory filings that the PUC must POST on its website and convene informational meetings about; the PUC must also give the General Assembly new annual reports summarizing all major adjudicated cases and rulemakings. Quality-of-service: the PUC must make rules on minimum quality-of-service metrics and customer-experience factors by December 2027. Hearings: by March 2027 the PUC must adopt rules on in-person/virtual/hybrid hearing formats. Complaint intake: TNCs must give riders info on filing PUC complaints (rules within 18 months of effective date), PUC staff handling TNC complaints get trauma-informed training, and the PUC must set up an informal complaint process for prison-phone (penal communications) providers. TNC driver-impersonation checks using facial-recognition/other tech are the TNCs' obligation (private companies), and expanded contract/common-carrier background checks (500-700 drivers) are run by a private entity — not systems the PUC itself builds. A PUC "modernization study" is due to the General Assembly Nov 2026 and Nov 2027, and a contract/common-carrier regulatory study is due Jan 1, 2028.
The Department of State must (1) modify the statewide voter registration system so preregistered voters (those turning 18 within six months of the next election) can update their voter information, and (2) rebuild the statewide voter registration system to integrate GIS/geographic-information-system data and geocode every voter's address (new C.R.S. 1-2-202.5(7)), using a cloud geocoding service. New C.R.S. 1-7-120 requires each county to record wait-time data at every voter service and polling center, report results to the SOS, and — where waits exceed the threshold — submit a formal report with a remediation plan, after which the SOS holds a hearing. Counties must also adopt modifications to the SOS mail-ballot plan on a set timeline, conduct signature/eligibility protest and challenge hearings within statutory deadlines (hearing set within ~30 days, decision within ~90 days), and higher-ed institutions must communicate ballot drop-off locations and voting resources. Note: the bill repeals the requirement to redact voluntary ballot markings, removing a clerk redaction task rather than creating one.
The Final Act does three implementation things. (1) Inspections/licensing (C.R.S. 26.5-5-316): CDEC must, on or before July 1, 2026, begin phasing out reliance on contracted/third-party inspectors "where feasible" and prioritize its own in-house licensing specialists, and must establish standardized training, protocols, and supervision to promote consistent interpretation and application of licensing requirements and enforcement statewide. (2) Professional Development records (new 26.5-5-333): CDEC's Executive Director adopts rules requiring licensed facilities to maintain up-to-date employee records in the Professional Development Information System - but that system already exists and is administered by the Department under 26.5-1-106; the bill only adds a recordkeeping mandate and rulemaking, not a new build. (3) Local fee caps (26.5-5-310): local governments imposing requirements beyond state standards must prioritize inspection/permitting/licensing for providers they have disputed or delayed, and must limit associated fees to a reasonable maximum set by CDEC rule (health/sanitation fees exempted). It also creates a temporary Child Care Licensure Task Force (new 26.5-5-322.5) that contracts an independent third-party facilitator to study and recommend a streamlined licensure system, reporting by Jan 1, 2027, repealed July 1, 2028.
The Colorado Artist Company Act creates a new LLC subtype ("artist company," 51%+ artist-owned, with an optional "public benefit artist company" designation). Formation is by filing articles of organization with the Secretary of State; existing LLCs may elect to convert. The Department of State must update its online Business Filing application to support the new entity type: the fiscal note scopes this as adding ~10 documents/forms to both the existing and a new filing system, drafting forms and system requirements, ensuring form accessibility, and supporting testing. Notably, DOS assumes it will NOT modify its core articles-of-organization process and will instead let filers attach supplemental info that is explicitly non-searchable, non-machine-readable, and not electronically indexed. Artist companies still file the standard LLC periodic report (no changes assumed).
HB26-1410 is Colorado's omnibus general appropriations act funding the ordinary operating costs of the entire state government for FY beginning July 1, 2026. The enrolled text is a version dropdown (Final Act) split across ~43 PDFs: a Head Note plus Operating Agency Budgets for 23 departments, Capital Construction, and FY2025-26 Add-Ons. The Head Note is pure boilerplate (definitions, emergency-reserve funds, column conventions, controller contract-examination duty under 24-30-202) and mandates no specific system, license, or disbursement program. The only concrete IT content is in the Governor's Office budget: the Office of Information Technology (OIT) is appropriated a subtotal of $394,772,887 for FY2026-27, broken into Central Administration $67,561,751, Enterprise Solutions $220,942,837, Information Security $24,857,141, Colorado Benefits Management System $20,593,400, and Customer Service and Support $60,817,758. Nearly all of this is funded through the Information Technology Revolving Fund (Sec 24-37.5-103(3)(a), C.R.S.) — i.e., internal user-fee chargebacks to other agencies for OIT's existing shared services, not new-system procurement. No individual line item names a new software build, tracking, or licensing program a vendor could bid on.
Creates new CRS 24-17 Part 3 authorizing advance payments to nonprofit grantees, but only under a controlled workflow. Each administering agency must have (or develop, with State Controller approval) a process to dispense advance payments; disclose advance-payment eligibility, documentation, and approval steps in every grant solicitation/NOFO; and run each grantee through the State Controller's risk-assessment tool (high/medium/low) — advances allowed only for low-risk grantees. Grantees must submit itemized budgets, a spending timeline, a workplan, supporting documentation (invoices, contracts, payroll, financials), obtain insurance where required, minimize the lag between transfer and expenditure, file post-spend progress reports with proof of expenditure, and disclose internal controls. The agency controller reviews/sets the minimum amount and forwards each request to the State Controller for approval; unused advance funds must be reconciled and returned; denials require a written deficiency explanation. This is core grants-lifecycle work (intake, risk scoring, disbursement, milestone/progress reporting, reconciliation) — but the statute is permissive ("MAY advance"), not a mandate to disburse.
CDHS must bring the child-welfare fingerprint-based background check process in-house to meet FBI CJIS standards (the prior FBI grace period expires May 2026). Working with OIT, the state must build/maintain a system that submits prints to CBI (state check) then FBI (national check), returns only eligible/ineligible/inconclusive determinations, and restricts FBI results so only county departments or the state department (not private child-placement agencies) receive them. The bill also adds fingerprint checks as a requirement for kinship foster care home certification, extends checks to adults residing in the home and anyone with direct contact with a child, and applies licensing/disqualifying-conviction rules to kinship foster homes -- creating county-level caregiver certification and eligibility-tracking workflows.
HCPF must reconfigure the Cover All Coloradans state Medicaid-lookalike program: impose a $1,100 annual dental cap (eff. 7/1/2026); convert behavioral health to fee-for-service only, drop Accountable Care Collaborative participation and managed care, and eliminate long-term services/supports and home health (all eff. 1/1/2027); collapse children's benefits to a single Medicaid-like tier regardless of income; and enforce a hard 25,000-child enrollment cap for FY2026-27. The cap triggers when either enrollment exceeds 25,000 children OR quarterly expenditures exceed one-quarter of the appropriation plus 5%; upon a trigger, HCPF must cap enrollment beginning the first of the month following 60 days after the determination, adopt implementing rules, and submit a report to the Joint Budget Committee by 11/1/2026 detailing enrollment/utilization drivers and cost-reduction strategies. This requires ongoing enrollment monitoring, expenditure-threshold tracking, and eligibility/benefit-limit enforcement.
DOR must reprogram and test database fields, forms, and statistical reports in its GenTax system to eliminate/restrict/modify numerous tax expenditures (fuel tax bad-debt allowance; cigarette, tobacco, and nicotine vendor fees; space-flight sales tax exemption; IRC 280C wage deduction; enterprise zone health-insurance, R&D, and commercial-vehicle credits; water's-edge combined reporting) and to administer new/expanded items (Colorado Qualified Opportunity Fund income addback, expanded state EITC). It must also add DOR tax examiners to process returns, review documentation, and audit claims, contract a vendor every four years to review presumed tax-shelter jurisdictions, and produce new tax-statistic reports. OEDIT must update its Salesforce to reflect the enterprise zone credit changes. All work is confined to existing incumbent systems.
Amends C.R.S. 42-4-1301 to require a law enforcement officer, following lawful contact with a driver involved in a collision resulting in death or suspected serious bodily injury, to offer the driver a voluntary preliminary alcohol breath screening test using a CDPHE-approved device (subject to conditions: reasonable suspicion of fault, driver not seriously injured, no probable cause for express consent). Officers must deliver a scripted advisement (test is voluntary, results/refusal inadmissible in court, refusal doesn't affect license). If a device malfunctions, cannot produce a valid result, or is unavailable, the officer must document that the test could not be administered and the reason why -- verbally via body-worn camera and in any required incident report. This is a procedural mandate documented in existing incident reports/BWC, not a mandate to build a new tracking system or portal.
Amends C.R.S. 7-90-501 to require that, beginning July 1, 2027, any private-sector employer with 100+ workers that already files EEO-1 data federally must include that EEO-1 demographic workforce data (employees categorized by race, ethnicity, gender, and job category) in its periodic report filed with the Colorado Secretary of State. The obligation persists even if the federal EEO-1 requirement is repealed. CDOS must therefore collect, store, and process this new demographic data field within its existing business periodic-report filing flow. Implementation work is concrete: CDOS's Business and Licensing Division must update published filing guidance and handle stakeholder inquiries (0.5 FTE Technician I), and the IT Division must modify the CDOS business e-filing system to capture EEO-1 data. Note the data is collected via the SoS business-filing system, not as a labor/workforce program.
DOR must implement the act entirely through its existing GenTax tax-administration system. Specifically it must: (1) reprogram, test, and update GenTax database fields; (2) change tax forms and mail notices/postage to cover a new "expanded family affordability credit" (EFAC, a refundable per-child income tax credit starting tax year 2027) and new sales-tax deductions; (3) administer a narrowed downloadable/SaaS software sales-tax exemption effective Jan 1, 2027; (4) process, audit, and adjudicate protests for new July/Aug/Nov/Dec restaurant/bar/caterer/mobile-vendor monthly sales-tax deductions ($14,000/site cap) in 2027-2028, absorbing higher call-center volume; and (5) produce data/statistics reports (Office of Research and Analysis + annual SMART Act committee reports) on credit and deduction uptake. The refundable EFAC is disbursed via income tax returns (DOR encouraged to build 12 equal monthly refunds). No new external system or resident-facing portal is procured.
CDE must produce a single report to the Joint Budget Committee by Nov 1, 2026 on single-/multi-district online schools, online programs, supplemental online courses, and part-time enrichment programs. The report must compile instructional and financial models, enrollment counts, course-delivery methods, contractual/financial arrangements, academic quality/outcomes vs. other public-school students, a fiscal analysis of state payments vs. actual costs, and oversight/funding recommendations. To gather this, CDE may access data it already collects and collect additional data; local education providers must submit accurate survey responses, contracts, and financial documentation on request, plus student-level participation data for the statewide supplemental online/blended program. Separately, the act authorizes CDE to extend the current administering BOCES designation by up to two years before running a new five-year designation (i.e., it defers/avoids a procurement). Section 22-1-152 self-repeals July 1, 2027.
Unfunded or narrow mandate — a real but soft signal, not a lead-with.
The bill amends (rather than creates) the existing Proposition 123 Affordable Home Ownership Program administered by DOLA's Division of Housing. DOLA must: (1) administer down-payment assistance to first-time/first-generation homebuyers plus grants and now below-market-rate loans to nonprofits, local/tribal governments, CDFIs, community land trusts, and mobile-home-owner groups; (2) stand up a new WAIVER PROCESS letting eligible organizations exceed the maximum monthly-housing-cost limit -- each waiver request requires a housing needs assessment, a proposed max cost-to-income percentage, and evidence of at least six months of marketing to eligible buyers, which the Division reviews, may approve, may modify, or may re-set cost limits on; (3) track the AMI election (statewide vs. local, 120% cap) made at the start of each assistance agreement; and (4) by DECEMBER 31, 2026, issue guidance for when units may be rented and develop a process to return rented units to the for-sale market. These are genuinely grant/loan intake, eligibility-verification, and application-review workflows -- but they are incremental additions to an already-operating program, not a greenfield build.
CDPHE/HCPF, with the Nursing Home Innovations Grant Board, distribute grants from the Nursing Home Penalty Cash Fund to nursing facilities. The bill amends C.R.S. 25-1-107.5 to: (1) require grant distributions and board recommendations to align with the priorities, allowable uses, and grant-cycle processes established by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); (2) expand allowable grant purposes to include education and training of nursing facility staff; (3) remove the restriction barring government entities from applying (e.g., state/local-owned licensed nursing facilities like Veterans Community Living Centers may now apply); (4) authorize advance grant payments with grantee progress reporting to the board; and (5) shift the annual expenditure report to the Governor and legislative committees from October 1 to January 1 (continuing indefinitely). The board's core functions remain soliciting, reviewing, and recommending grants for 1-to-3-year cycles.
By December 31, 2026 the PUC must revise rules (C.R.S. 40-2-124(1.3)) and municipally owned utilities must revise interconnection standards (40-2-124(7)(c)) so that each utility: (1) posts and maintains on its website a public list of at least one approved meter collar adapter; (2) runs an approval process for customer-owned adapters not on the list, capped at 90 days per submission, with mandated written-denial notices explaining safety failures; (3) publishes in its tariffs / standards a customer request-and-install process capped at 30 days that is "not unduly burdensome"; and (4) facilitates installs by state-registered/licensed electricians and provides cost estimates on request. This is a deadline-driven intake/approval workflow (application -> review against UL 414 / NEC criteria -> approve or written denial, with SLAs) plus a public-facing published list -> maps to Permitting & Licensing (approval/tracking with statutory SLAs) and Community Engagement / public web publishing. Cooperative electric associations must comply with the PUC rules too.
The bill adds "critical infrastructure material" (commodity metals used in communication, transportation, housing, EV-charging, and public-utility infrastructure) to Colorado's existing commodity-metals theft statute and creates two new crimes: unlawful possession of critical infrastructure materials and failure to report stolen critical infrastructure materials (petty offense up to class 2 felony by dollar value). The compliance obligations - keeping a book/register of transactions, recording seller ID and verification method, collecting sworn affidavits of ownership, photographing sellers on transactions over $300 or involving critical infrastructure, subscribing to the ISRI scrap theft alert system, retaining photo/video records 180 days, and notifying law enforcement or municipal code enforcement by the next business day of discovered critical infrastructure material - all fall on private dealers, NOT on government. The only government-side workflow the bill creates is that a law enforcement agency or municipal code enforcement agency must respond to dealer notifications and make a determination on the legal status of set-aside material; dealer records must be produced for inspection upon request.
The enacted act adds a single new subsection (4) to C.R.S. 25-4-2203, permissively authorizing CDPHE's existing Health Disparities and Community Grant Program to award grants to entities that support the "human-animal bond" (the mutually beneficial relationship between a person and a pet animal in their care) as a social determinant of health. The authority is entirely contingent on the General Assembly making additional appropriations specifically for this purpose ("MAY award grants...SUBJECT TO ADDITIONAL APPROPRIATIONS"). There is no new agency to stand up, no new system mandated, and no new program built — it merely widens the eligible-use category of a grant program CDPHE already runs. Operationally, the only downstream work (per CDPHE) is updating grant documentation, developing guidance materials, and intaking/assessing a new pool of applicants if and when money is appropriated.
Amends C.R.S. 24-4-103.3 so each principal department must (a) set its own schedule to review all of its rules at least every five years, (b) assess each rule against expanded criteria — continuing need, cost-effectiveness, redundancy/coordination with similar rules, whether it is outdated/obsolete, whether funding levels are appropriate, and improvement opportunities within existing authority — and (c) report the results of that review as part of its departmental regulatory agenda, to be reviewed by the committee of reference during the committee's SMART Act hearing. Committees may recommend a program for sunset review or refer it to the Legislative Audit Committee for a state audit. Section 2 clarifies that the AG is not deemed in possession/control of other agencies' records for discovery purposes. This creates a recurring rule-inventory, review-tracking, and reporting obligation across every department, but adds no new IT system or dataset requirement.
Three concrete new processes: (1) Judicial Department trial courts must handle closed-circuit-television (CCTV) testimony for victim-survivors and remote testimony by forensic scientists - requiring written motions filed >=35 days before trial, a court hearing to determine emotional-distress criteria, and CCTV equipment "available for testimony" (existing courtroom AV, not new software). (2) The POST Board within the Department of Law must ensure a new two-hour trauma-informed-response training segment is available in annual in-service programs and monitor officer compliance (training may be interactive web-based; officers complete it at least once every five years); local agencies must ensure their officers receive it. (3) The renamed Colorado Sexual Assault Response Review Board gains added members and continues its statutory duties and annual report to the legislature. No new registry, database, disbursement, or system build is mandated.
The Act amends CRS 17-22.5-403, 17-22.5-403.7, and 17-34-102 to create new deadline-driven case processing for youthful/juvenile-offender-convicted-as-adult early parole (JYACAP graduates). New procedural mechanics: (1) an offender/inmate submits an early-parole application to the Governor's Office with notice and a copy to the State Board of Parole; (2) the Board must review the application and all supporting documents and make a recommendation to the Governor no later than 90 days after receipt; (3) the Governor must grant or deny within 60 days of receiving the Board's recommendation (and within 60 days of the effective date for any recommendations already pending) — a hard new clock; (4) a DEFAULT-DECISION TRIGGER: if the Governor does not advise the Board of a decision within that 60 days, the Board's recommendation becomes the final decision automatically. CDOC must add new specialized-program content on/after Jan 1, 2027 (victim-impact acknowledgment, offender-trauma acknowledgment, and identifying reintegration interventions) and must report in its annual SMART Act hearing the number of program participants granted early parole by the Governor OR the Board. So implementers must track application receipt dates, dual 90-day/60-day deadlines, victim-notice/hearing scheduling, the default-approval fallback, and program-completion/outcome data for annual reporting.
CDOC must update its inmate time-computation processes to reflect revised earned-time rules: the base earned-time cap rises from 12 to 14 days/month (with a 12-day cap for certain excluded offenses and a retained 10-day cap for juveniles convicted of class 1 felonies), achievement earned time per program milestone/phase rises from 120 to 150 days, a new "exceptional conduct" category (up to 120 days) is added, and the maximum share of a sentence reducible by earned time rises from 30% to 35%. Awards still require case-manager/community-parole-officer certification of program-compliant progress. Separately, the bill creates the CDOC Comprehensive Planning Working Group (chaired by the CDOC executive director) to produce a data-driven prison capacity-management plan; it must deliver an interim report in December 2026 and a final report on June 30, 2028, and the subsection repeals January 15, 2029.
The bill amends CRS 25-7-129 to expand the allowable uses of the EXISTING Community Impact Cash Fund so that CDPHE may award grants for municipal solid waste landfill methane emission reduction projects (compliance with Air Quality Control Commission Regulation Number 31) as environmental mitigation projects in disproportionately impacted communities. It directs the Environmental Justice Advisory Board to prioritize grant requests from local governments that own/operate landfills over requests from private entities, and requires grants to be used only as supplemental (not exclusive) funding. Critically, the bill creates NO new grant program, NO new registry, NO new monitoring/reporting/permitting workflow, and NO new IT mandate - it only clarifies funding availability under an already-operating grant program. The underlying methane-control regime (installation/operation of gas collection systems, monitoring, gas management) is imposed by pre-existing Regulation Number 31, not by this bill.
Adds Article 60 to Title 25 C.R.S. CDPHE must, on or before June 1, 2027, electronically notify all registered medical certifier users of the existing Colorado Vital Events System about the new epilepsy-related death certification recommendations (25-60-104(2)). CDPHE MAY (permissive, not required) provide online guidelines for clinicians and medical certifiers regarding epilepsy-related deaths including SUDEP (25-60-105(2)). Beginning July 1, 2027, death certification professionals (coroners, medical examiners, forensic pathologists) must self-educate on current recommendations and list epilepsy as a contributing/suspected cause on death certificates when SUDEP is known or suspected. No new system, registry, license, or reporting workflow is created; the notification runs through the existing Vital Events System, and local county coroner offices bear only a self-awareness obligation.
The bill amends C.R.S. 22-60.5-201 to create a new mandatory expedited licensing pathway. CDE must issue an initial teacher license within 30 days of receiving a complete application from a teacher licensed by an Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact state, provided the applicant (I) holds an unencumbered equivalent license from a compact state, (II) is not subject to disciplinary action/suspension/investigation/restriction, and (III) has completed a Colorado criminal history record check under 22-60.5-103. CDE must map the applicant's out-of-state license to the most closely corresponding Colorado endorsement areas and issue in those areas, and cannot require additional coursework/exams for initial issuance (only for renewal). The State Board must enter reciprocal agreements with each compact state, and CDE must publish an annual table showing how each reciprocal state's licenses correspond to Colorado endorsement areas. The subsection self-repeals once the compact commission begins issuing licenses. Effective August 12, 2026.
The bill amends C.R.S. 22-60.5-103, 22-2-119.3, and 22-30.5-110.7 to change which misdemeanor convictions must be disclosed on the perjury-certified criminal-history forms for teacher-license applicants, educator-preparation-program students, and charter-school employees. Instead of disclosing all misdemeanors regardless of date, applicants must now disclose (1) any misdemeanor against an at-risk person or child regardless of date, (2) any other misdemeanor within the prior 7 years, and (3) any misdemeanor that is grounds for license denial under 22-60.5-107(2)(b) - and each conviction must be individually listed with the offense, conviction date, and court. CDE's Educator Licensing Division must update the certification forms/materials and reconfigure its educator licensing system to capture the new conditional disclosure logic and per-conviction fields.
The Final Act extends the safe-haven voluntary relinquishment window for infants from 72 hours to 30 days old (amending CRS 19-3-304.5, 18-6-401, 22-1-128, 22-25-103). The only new affirmative mandate is a single rulemaking directive: CDHS "shall adopt rules establishing a process for either parent of a child who was surrendered... to reunify with the child" (new subsection (5.5)). No new IT system, database, portal, licensing scheme, or disbursement program is created or required. The reunification process is a policy/rules process, not a technology build. Counties retain their existing duty to track and report relinquishment counts, file motions to terminate parental rights, and place children in foster care, but the bill adds no new tracking system.
Municipal jails must (1) comply with the state Jail Standards by July 1, 2027; (2) collect and report criminal-justice data to the state under Article 26 of Title 17 (17-26-118); (3) create and retain for 5 years written records of any restraint use on pregnant persons in labor/delivery/postpartum, make them available for public inspection with individually-identifying information redacted, and submit those records annually by February 15 (first due Feb 15, 2027) to the House/Senate judiciary committees; (4) have the city governing body personally examine the jail at least once a year and correct irregularities; and (5) support AG special assessments on request, with resulting reports routed to the keeper, oversight committee, city governing body, and governor. So the concrete deliverables are standards-compliance tracking, mandatory data collection/state reporting, retained-and-redacted incident records, and a documented annual inspection.
DORA's Board of Veterinary Medicine must adopt rules to expedite licensure/registration by endorsement for veterinarians and veterinary technicians. Concretely it must: (1) create and maintain four lists of other states' licensing requirements (states with substantially equivalent requirements and states with less stringent requirements), (2) run an endorsement application process that lets out-of-state licensees apply without duplicate documentation and lets out-of-state vet techs get credentialing-organization approval, and (3) adopt rules for a new veterinary drug donation program. Critically, the drug-donation record-keeping is imposed on the licensed veterinarians/shelters themselves (each must keep donated drugs separate and log donation date, donor name, drug, etc.) - the Act does NOT require the state to build any tracking system, registry, database, or portal to connect vets and shelters. The Board only adopts rules and reviews endorsement applications.
The bill amends the CPA certification statute (C.R.S. 12-100-108, -109, -114, -117). It replaces the old single "150 semester hour" education requirement with three alternative educational pathways (bachelor's + 2 years experience; bachelor's + 30 additional hours + 1 year; or post-baccalaureate + 1 year), adds a new exam-eligibility route for students in combined bachelor's/master's programs, and clarifies acceptable work-experience criteria that must be verified by a licensed CPA. It also broadens out-of-state practice privilege/mobility: any CPA in good standing in another state who passed the Uniform CPA exam and holds a bachelor's degree may practice in Colorado without obtaining a Colorado certificate. Critically, the Board is expressly PROHIBITED from requiring any notice, fee, or other submission as a condition of exercising those privileges. The Board's concrete obligations are limited to updating its rules and publications and revising how it evaluates the (already electronic) certificate applications against the new pathways; the mobility change actually removes a registration/verification touchpoint rather than creating one.
Adds C.R.S. 30-10-625: a county coroner who has a financial interest (ownership, employment, management, contractual, or other direct pecuniary interest) in a mortuary, funeral home, crematory, embalming service, or other death-care business subject to referral/investigation/oversight by the coroner's office must (1) disclose that interest in writing, (2) satisfy the disclosure by posting a notice of the financial interest on the coroner's website, and (3) recuse from any official action that would directly and specifically affect that business. Also raises the population threshold (from 150,000 to 300,000) above which a newly elected coroner must be a certified death investigator or forensic pathologist. The only concrete deliverable is a single written notice posted on a website plus a recusal practice; no registry, filing system, tracking database, or reporting workflow is mandated by statute.
The act makes it OPTIONAL (previously mandatory) for a local education provider (LEP) to create an Individualized Readiness Plan (IRP) for kindergarten students who demonstrate proficiency on the kindergarten reading assessment and on every domain of the school readiness assessment (cognition, physical/motor, social-emotional, language/comprehension, literacy, math). Two residual obligations remain: (1) If an LEP declines to create an IRP, it must send the parent/legal guardian a written notice containing the student's assessment results, an explanation that no IRP is required, and language telling them they may still request one (CRS 22-7-1014(1)(e), tied to the existing notice rule in 22-7-1013(7)(b)(I)(C)); an LEP must create the IRP on parent request. (2) The Colorado Department of Education's existing preschool-to-postsecondary progress report (CRS 22-7-1019(3)(a)) must now report kindergarten school-readiness levels statewide AND disaggregated by school district, school, grade level, free/reduced-lunch eligibility, gender, ethnicity, and any other characteristic CDE deems meaningful. Net effect is a REDUCTION in tracking/documentation workload for districts, not a new build-out.
The act makes mostly technical clarifications to foreclosure procedures that county public trustees and clerk-and-recorder offices administer. Concrete new tracking/recording obligations: (1) a lien assignee may redeem only if the assignment of lien is recorded with the county clerk and recorder at least 15 calendar days before the sale; a judgment-creditor lien must likewise be recorded 15+ days prior (secs. 38-38-302(1)(c.5), 38-38-306). (2) Unclaimed overbid/escrow holding period extended from 6 months to 2 years; after 2 years, unclaimed overbids >=$25 must be transferred to the STATE TREASURER as unclaimed property, interest earned must be paid to the county at least annually, and if overbids exceed $500 the public trustee must run a newspaper publication for 5 successive weeks and mail borrower notice (secs. 38-38-111, 38-13-214). (3) Sale-excess above the amount due must be paid to the trustee's office within 3 business days after the sale. (4) Amended-mailing-list handling: continue sale to >=65 days, mail notice >=45 days before the newly scheduled sale. (5) Salary/reimbursement mechanics: public trustee salary of $12,500 paid monthly from the county general fund via standard payroll, with quarterly reimbursement from fees or the special reserve account. (6) Public trustee must record deed-of-trust releases 'as soon as practicable.' The act also repeals the Procurement Code requirement for gubernatorially appointed trustees and removes the 'under oath' requirement on quarterly transaction reports to county commissioners. These are recording-deadline and records/escrow tracking tasks, not a new system build.
Two mandates. (1) New CRS 24-31-908: when a local police agency, CSP, or CBI takes a report of an alleged child sex offense and conducts a "minimal facts interview," the agency must notify a child advocacy center in the correct judicial district within one week, transmitting a defined data packet (child's name, guardian contact, alleged offender's name, approximate date, incident summary), document any extenuating circumstances that delay notice, and coordinate a forensic interview with the CAC per CRS 19-3-308.5. This is a hard 7-day compliance-deadline workflow with structured case data and inter-agency handoff. (2) Amended CRS 16-10-402: expands remote/closed-circuit-TV child-witness testimony eligibility from under-12 to under-18, requires trial courts to make on-the-record findings on the witness's ability to testify in the defendant's presence, and expands "closed-circuit television" to include other digital/wireless technologies.
The bill adds C.R.S. 25-1-124.3. By July 1, 2027, CDPHE must create a single standardized "Dementia Care Services Information Form" for dementia care facilities (licensed under 25-1.5-103), developed in consultation with the State Long-Term Care Ombudsman, with defined disclosure fields (staff dementia training, restraint guidelines, security/wandering procedures, placement/transfer/discharge criteria, family involvement, incident notification, medical staffing, a link to the federal CMS Care Compare site, payer sources, and fee model). CDPHE may review/update the form, must distribute the current version to every facility, and may adopt implementing rules (not to exceed national standards). The government's ongoing operational duty is limited: during each existing survey/inspection, CDPHE must require the facility to produce its current completed form and must issue a citation for non-compliance. Critically, the compliance burden falls on the private facilities, not the state: facilities complete the form, publish the current version on their OWN public-facing websites (by Oct 1, 2027), review it at least every five years, update after changes, and keep an on-site copy for inspection. CDPHE builds no portal, registry, or public database under this act - it creates one form template and adds a checklist item to existing inspections.
The act amends C.R.S. 42-4-1609 to require every coroner (or equivalent official) to electronically report all available toxicology results (blood alcohol concentrations, drug screening panels, and the date/time/source of sample collections) for each motor-vehicle-crash death to CDOT by the final business day of each calendar quarter, upon CDOT's request — replacing the current annual paper/monthly reporting. If complete results are not available by quarter-end, the report rolls to the next quarter. CDOT may only request personal identifying information necessary for federal (NHTSA) reporting. Section 2 amends C.R.S. 42-4-1606 to create a new duty for law enforcement officers to submit an amended crash report to CDOT within five days after receiving notification that a crash participant died within 30 days of the crash. The fiscal note states CDOT will build a web-based portal to receive the electronic toxicology reports in FY 2026-27.
The Act amends the existing Mobile Home Park Water Quality Act (originally HB23-1257) to expand CDPHE's Water Quality Control Division enforcement authority over mobile home park owners. The Division may now: (1) issue orders compelling park owners to comply with the resident-notice certification requirement when an owner fails to certify that residents were notified of test results (CRS 25-8-1002(3)(c)(IV)); (2) issue remediation orders requiring additional water testing and remediation plans (25-8-1003); (3) issue cease-and-desist orders for violations under 25-8-605; and (4) impose escalating civil penalties -- up to $10,000 per violation plus an additional up to $5,000 for each 30-day period the violation continues (25-8-1007(3)). Notably, a civil penalty is now a "final agency action" with NO administrative hearing available to contest it (judicial review only); only remediation orders under 25-8-1003(3)(d) allow a hearing request within 20 days. This creates a compliance/enforcement tracking workflow: logging test results and resident-notification certifications, tracking orders and cease-and-desist issuances, calculating 30-day escalating penalty periods, managing the 20-day hearing-request window, and maintaining audit-ready records for judicial review. The underlying program requires CDPHE to test water quality in ALL mobile home parks statewide by July 1, 2028.
Amends CRS 31-12-501 et seq. governing disconnection of agricultural/adjacent land from a statutory municipality. When an owner applies to a municipal governing body for a disconnection ordinance, the owner must now also serve notice and a copy of the application on the county board of commissioners, any affected special district board, AND any affected urban renewal authority (a newly added recipient). Any of those bodies may, within 30 days of notice, request a meeting with the owner and municipality to discuss negative service/urban-renewal-plan impacts; the meeting must occur within 30 days of the request, and failure to request is treated as acknowledgment of no adverse impact. The act also bars the alternate district-court petition route (31-12-601/602/603, 702/703/704) for tracts inside a URA area or special district, and requires petitions to include a new allegation (subsection (1)(g)) that the land is not within such boundaries. Courts must set a hearing 40-60 days out and the clerk must serve the petition/notice on the mayor at least 30 days before hearing. No new software system, registry, portal, or disbursement is mandated; the changes are added recipients and pleading content within an existing, rarely-used process.
Adds C.R.S. 16-3-313. The substantive compliance burden lands entirely on PRIVATE operators of covered platforms (1M+ monthly users, social-media-style): they must stand up an always-on staffed hotline, acknowledge warrant receipt within 8 hours, provide compliance status updates, post contact info on their homepage, and comply with search warrants within 72 hours. On the government side there is no new system to build: Colorado law enforcement agencies merely submit warrants and receive acknowledgments/status from the platforms; the AG or a district attorney may bring enforcement actions (injunction, restitution, disgorgement, civil penalties up to $5,000/violation) and trial courts may hear contempt matters. No agency is directed to build, track, license, or disburse anything, and no registry, portal, or reporting system is created for government.
The act adds C.R.S. 13-3-101(18), directing the State Court Administrator to develop a process for ANNUAL evaluation of the bond hearing officers who preside over weekend/holiday bond hearings. The evaluation must solicit input from attorneys, court staff, and other interested court users, and specifically requires input from (I) the elected District Attorney (or designee) and (II) the regional Public Defender (or designee) for each judicial district in which the officer presided. Input must be gathered from every judicial district where a weekend bond hearing officer presides. In practice this is a small, recurring multi-stakeholder feedback/evaluation workflow covering only 3 centralized bond hearing offices spanning ~16 judicial districts (per the fiscal note's Table 2). There is no new licensing, disbursement, or public-facing system mandated, and no statutory reporting deliverable beyond conducting the evaluations.
Beginning September 1, 2027, occupational therapists may perform dry needling if qualified and with written patient informed consent. DORA must establish all necessary requirements through rulemaking, conduct outreach, verify practitioner qualifications/competency, and process any disciplinary complaints. This is a scope-of-practice expansion layered onto DORA's existing OT licensing program rather than a new standalone licensing regime.
The act amends CRS 13-14.5 to broaden who may petition a court for an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO). It adds co-responders (crisis-response personnel who are not the responding law enforcement officer) to the "community member" definition, and creates a new "institutional petitioner" category (new subsection 6.5) covering entities that employ or contract with community members: school districts, private schools, the State Charter School Institute and individual charter schools, institutions of higher education, licensed hospitals/health-care facilities, and behavioral health/substance-use treatment facilities. It also lets respondents be persons under 18, and authorizes these new petitioners to disclose the respondent's protected health information as needed to file. No agency is directed to build, track, license, report, or disburse anything new; the ERPO intake/hearing process already exists in the courts. Effective April 6, 2026 (signed with safety clause, immediate effect).
The Final Act repeals and reenacts Part 8 of Article 31, Title 31, recodifying FPPA's disability/survivor benefits program. FPPA must: (1) receive and adjudicate disability retirement applications on association-approved forms (365-day filing window) and determine occupational vs. total disability and benefit amount [31-31-803, 31-31-810]; (2) replace the old three-independent-medical-exam rule with a board-appointed medical advisor review process; (3) run an administrative review/appeals process for benefit denials, including board-appointed hearing officers, with final decisions reviewable only under C.R.C.P. 106(a)(4) [31-31-810, survivor sections]; (4) provide and process a new STATEWIDE STANDARD HEALTH HISTORY FORM that every newly hired member must complete pre-employment to disclose preexisting conditions [31-31-803(4)(b)]; (5) administer rehabilitation/retraining programs for occupationally disabled members; and (6) disburse total (70% of base salary), permanent occupational (50%), temporary occupational, and survivor benefits with annual COLA/redetermination. The board adopts rules governing application processing, survivor benefits, and administrative review. Note: this is largely a reorganization/clarification of processes FPPA already runs, not a net-new mandate.
The act adds C.R.S. 35-1-122, prohibiting anyone from labeling produce as Colorado-grown when it is not, and from using the "Colorado Proud" designation or logo unless authorized by the Department of Agriculture. A violation is a deceptive trade practice under C.R.S. 6-1-105(1)(qqqq), enforceable only by the Attorney General or district attorneys (no private right of action). Critically, the act does NOT direct the Department of Agriculture to build any new certification, authorization, registration, or tracking system; the Colorado Proud authorization program already exists, and the bill merely attaches an enforcement penalty to unauthorized use. The Department's only new duty is to "refer violations to the Attorney General's office."
SB26-064 expands who may receive loans/grants from the existing Colorado Agricultural Future Loan Program (CRS 35-1.2-103) to add a new "eligible entity" class: Division-of-Conservation-certified entities, water conservancy/conservation/sanitation districts, irrigation districts, and ditch and reservoir companies (each needing a letter of support). CDA must (1) verify that applicants meet the eligible-business/eligible-entity/eligible-farmer definitions during application review, and (2) adopt rules adding a new prioritization criterion favoring eligible entities that seek loans to acquire and conserve agriculturally productive land for eventual transfer to a qualifying farmer or rancher. Operationally this is an eligibility-check and applicant-prioritization change layered onto the program's existing application intake, review, underwriting, disbursement, and annual reporting workflow. It applies to applications submitted on or after the effective date. This is fundamentally a scope tweak to a program CDA already runs, not a new system build.
The enrolled act is enabling authority plus tax-code amendments, not a new administrative program. Sections 1-3 let counties (C.R.S. 30-35-202) and municipalities (31-15-713, 31-15-801) sell/dispose of public buildings or real property, and enter long-term leases, by ordinance, for affordable/workforce housing development or housing identified in a housing needs assessment. Section 5 lets county commissioners appropriate general-fund property-tax money for workforce housing, housing programs, and housing authorities. Section 4 adjusts multijurisdictional housing authority ballot-question timing/voter-approval mechanics. Sections 6-8 expand the middle-income housing tax credit so a governmental/quasi-governmental entity may transfer credits to any taxpayer 'transferee' (not just an ownership-interest holder), with recapture obligations flowing to the transferee (effective 1/1/2027). Section 9 adds a sales/use-tax exemption for construction materials on county workforce-housing projects. No new system, registry, application-intake process, or reporting regime is mandated; property dispositions must occur by ordinance at a public meeting, and CHFA/Revenue continue administering the tax credit under existing processes.
The act mostly shifts statutory deadlines and thresholds rather than mandating new systems. Substantively: (1) the Property Tax Administrator (DPT) must prepare and publish standardized forms for ALL levels of property tax appeals, including a letter of authorization, plus guidelines/instructions for their use, and notarization is NOT required if alternative indicia of reliability and authenticity are available (opening the door to digital/e-signed forms); (2) several filings may now be submitted "in an electronic OR paper format" - county certification of tax levies to the administrator, division of local government, and dept of education (39-1-111); abatement/refund applications over the raised $20,000 threshold submitted to the administrator (39-1-113); and county abstracts of assessment filed with the administrator, now one copy instead of two (39-2-115). It also raises the assessor/county abatement-settlement threshold from $10,000 to $20,000, exempts same-reassessment-cycle matching-value abatements from administrator review, and moves numerous protest/appeal deadlines (e.g., real property protest June 8 to June 1; senior subclass and veteran-disability exemption dates to July 15/Aug 15; BAA appeal deadlines).
When a colorimetric field drug test is used, peace officers must issue a summons-and-complaint instead of arresting for a level 1 drug misdemeanor or municipal drug possession charge (amending CRS 18-18-403.5, 16-2-104, 16-3-105, and 16-5-206). Before accepting a plea in such cases, a trial judge must deliver a scripted advisement stating that colorimetric field tests have known error rates, are inadmissible in court, and that the defendant may plead not guilty and request accredited-lab testing. Because arrests are replaced by summonses, courts must issue and monitor additional standalone fingerprint orders (fingerprints normally taken at arrest). The bill does not mandate any data tracking or new system; it changes procedure only.
The act amends C.R.S. 42-6-109 to repeal the two remaining exceptions that had required a paper certificate of title (transactions where a party is outside Colorado, or where the purchaser pays entirely in cash), permitting an electronic certificate of title in ALL vehicle transactions. It preserves the ability of any party to request either paper or electronic title, and retains the DMV's voluntary ownership-transfer notification program (report filed electronically within 5 business days, with a perjury affidavit). Critically, the bill is permissive, not mandatory: it authorizes but does not require eTitling, builds no new system, sets no timeline, and imposes no new tracking, reporting, licensing, or disbursement duty. The fiscal note confirms the DMV is already independently migrating from paper to electronic titles; this bill merely removes a future statutory barrier.
The Final Act (C.R.S. 18-1.3-407, as amended) directs CDOC's Youthful Offender System to: evaluate every participant during intake for criminogenic risk/needs and physical, intellectual, developmental, mental, and behavioral health needs; have a trained evaluator produce a written report with recommendations; create an individualized plan addressing risk, therapeutic needs, education, vocational/life skills, and reentry (aligned to any IEP or Section 504 plan); assign a case manager who meets monthly with the participant, ensures delivery of treatment/services, and records progress throughout the program; review and modify each plan monthly with a multidisciplinary team; and manage phase transitions, transfers, sex-offender treatment compliance, and law-enforcement placement notifications. New reporting: beginning January 2027 (annually) CDOC must report, at its SMART Act hearing, counts of juveniles/young adults who completed a Division of Youth Services commitment before YOS, who successfully complete their YOS sentence, and who fail to complete due to new criminal charges; plus a January 2028 trauma-informed standard-of-care recommendations report published on the department website. This is a case-management/compliance-tracking and outcome-data-reporting profile.
The act amends C.R.S. 2-3-303(2)(h) to expand the Executive Committee of the Legislative Council's existing authority to adopt policies allowing legislators to participate electronically. Previously electronic participation was limited to interim committee meetings (and disaster emergencies); the bill extends it to any joint committee comprised of members from both chambers convened at any time during the year (excluding joint meetings of House and Senate committees of reference). It also clarifies that only members in interim committee meetings are deemed in attendance for compensation and are not entitled to expense reimbursement for electronic participation. No new system, portal, registry, or reporting deliverable is created — it merely authorizes internal policy-setting for existing remote-meeting operations run by legislative IT staff.
The Department of Revenue must, by rule, establish registration and remittance/payment procedures for the prepaid wireless 988 charge (and add "providers" using federally supported programs as new remitters), aligning them with the sales-tax procedures under Title 39, Article 26. Section 6 adds the 988 charge (40-17.5-104) to the list of returns/payments for which DOR's executive director may require mandatory electronic filing of returns and electronic funds transfer payment. Section 5 requires DOR's executive director to share the confidential documents, reports, and returns filed for the 988 charge, the 911 charge, and the telephone disability access charge with the PUC and the respective enterprises (988 Crisis Hotline Enterprise; Communication Services for People with Disabilities Enterprise), subject to confidentiality limits. In practice this is e-filing enablement plus a confidential interagency data-sharing/reporting flow between DOR and the PUC/enterprises.
CDPHE must recognize "remote psychiatric inpatient locations" of general hospitals as licensed under a main hospital's general hospital license (rather than as standalone psychiatric hospitals), verify each remote location meets the statutory criteria (federal provider-based status under 42 CFR 413.65, psychiatric hospital building/licensing rules, 17+ inpatient beds, within 35 miles of the main hospital in a rural area, Medicaid certification, and BHA designation under Article 65 of Title 27), and confirm those conditions at each license renewal. CDPHE must also assess a separate licensing fee for each remote location under a single general hospital license, take enforcement/deemed-status/accreditation actions against the main hospital's license, and be able to inspect remote locations for licensing and complaint investigations. Per the fiscal note, the concrete system work is limited to updating the existing state-run Colorado Health Facilities Interactive System to add the remote-location designation, plus promulgating rules and setting the fee.
Effective July 1, 2026, SB26-019 repeals Local Coordinating Organizations and transfers their duties to Early Childhood Councils, imposing new accountability machinery. CDEC must: enter a multi-year funding agreement/contract with each of ~35 ECCs (each containing a scope of work and accountability metrics, reviewed annually); build and run an at-least-annual performance review process (live by July 1, 2027) that triggers performance improvement plans and, on failure, agreement termination and re-designation of a new convening entity; adopt rules for ECC application, waivers, and termination; distribute and administer public early childhood/preschool funding to providers per the agreements; and report councils' accountability-metric progress at annual SMART Act hearings (Jan 2028+) plus a transition-cost report to the Joint Budget Committee by Jan 1, 2029. Each ECC must produce a community strategic plan, enter data-sharing agreements, and collect/report accountability metrics to CDEC (per the statewide early childhood data system, 26.5-1-111). The act explicitly requires CDEC to provide training/technical assistance for "required technology systems."
Every school, private club, public recreation facility, and athletic league sponsoring youth athletic activities must require each coach to complete a biennial (every-two-year) mental health education course covering a coach's impact on athlete mental health, a wellness framework, stress/anxiety/depression, trauma, substance abuse, and suicide prevention. Entities must ensure and verify that all coaches have completed the course. Additionally, when a youth athlete is removed from play for a suspected concussion, the coach or designated personnel must notify the athlete's parent/legal guardian and advise them to seek a licensed health-care provider evaluation. This creates a need to track coach training completion on a recurring cycle and to log/document parent notifications. There is no new state system, no central registry, and no licensing regime created.
When a peace officer has reasonable suspicion a domestic-violence crime occurred, they must determine whether a party is an active armed-forces member; if so, search the existing National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database for a military protection order (MPO), and if one exists, notify the law enforcement agency that entered it. Separately, a judge or magistrate must consider the existence of an MPO when deciding whether to issue a temporary civil protection order. No new registry, portal, or system is created — the bill layers a manual check/notification step onto existing NCIC infrastructure and existing protection-order hearings.
The act amends CRS 9-5 (accessible-housing building standards for publicly-funded and larger private projects). Local enforcement agencies must: (1) designate a board of appeals OR "other process" to hear and resolve appeals of enforcement orders/decisions on accessibility standards; (2) review and approve each developer/builder "implementation plan" — which specifies the number and type of accessible dwelling units and phasing — BEFORE issuing a building permit, and reject any plan that lets more than 30% of a project complete without its share of accessible units; (3) enforce a new threshold requiring at least 2% of units in projects of 50+ units to be accessible; and (4) issue any hardship exceptions/modifications in writing "as a matter of public record." These are permit-gating review, appeal-tracking, and public-record duties. However, both the appeals-board designation and the implementation-plan approval requirement ALREADY existed in prior statute — the bill mostly updates definitions (ICC A117.1 references, "accessible story," "Type C visitable unit") and adds the "or other process" flexibility, rather than creating a wholly new mandate.
The act amends C.R.S. 8-20-204 and 8-20.5-206 to do two things. First, it lets an underground storage tank owner/operator exceed the $2M-per-occurrence liability cap of the Petroleum Storage Tank Fund only if they obtain permission from BOTH the Director of the Division of Oil and Public Safety AND the Petroleum Storage Tank Committee, who then jointly set a new per-occurrence maximum. Second, it authorizes the Director to adopt a rule or issue policy guidance granting exceptions to specific ASTM fuel-standard requirements (classes I, II, III) to protect fuel access/consumer protection/pricing/supply. Both are narrow, discretionary, human-committee approval processes. The fiscal note's background shows fewer than 10 sites in 30 years have ever exceeded $2M, so the new permission workflow is expected to be exercised at most a handful of times per decade — effectively no recurring transactional volume.
CDPHE is authorized (permissively, "subject to available appropriations") to implement an additional standardized survey to Coloradans who have recently given birth, on top of its existing multi-year birthing-parent health survey. It must codify and staff the existing Maternal Health Task Force (subject to available grant funding), ensuring at least one advocate for populations with the worst maternal mortality outcomes serves on it, and must add maternal health outcomes for those populations to an existing CDPHE maternal health report. Separately, by January 1, 2027, health facilities must provide birthing parents a notice of the components of respectful labor and childbirth; DORA must fold cultural competence/equity into its existing CME rulemaking. No new standalone system, registry, licensing regime, or grant disbursement program is created or funded by the enacted bill.
The bill is a technical clean-up that primarily aligns statute with existing CDEC practice. Substantive changes: (1) requires preschool providers, licensed facilities, and CDEC to keep identifying records about individual children and their relatives confidential unless released to the person of interest; (2) clarifies that child care facilities approved by tribal government are exempt from state licensing requirements; (3) indefinitely continues the licensing exemption for informal in-home (family/friend/neighbor) child care that would otherwise have repealed Sept 1, 2026; (4) narrows the Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant Program age range (prenatal-6) and ends its annual report after 2027; (5) allows the General Fund or State Education Fund to fund the Universal Preschool Program beginning FY 2027-28; and (6) clarifies how counties determine family eligibility for benefits and handle ineligibility. No new statewide system, portal, disbursement engine, or licensing platform is mandated to be built.
Creates a new Pathways to Public Service Program in DPA (new CRS Part 24, Art. 30, Title 24). DPA must: partner with CDE/CDHE/CDLE/CCCS to align work-based learning; identify and develop targeted entry-level state positions and map qualifying secondary/postsecondary courses and credentials to them; adopt hiring policies recognizing work-based learning as valid qualifications; and collect data on individuals hired through the program (demographics, the educational/training pathway associated with each hire, and retention data). DPA must submit that data annually to the Colorado Workforce Development Council starting June 30, 2027 for inclusion in the Colorado Talent Pipeline Report; CDLE must establish data-sharing agreements with DPA. School participation is voluntary. The statute explicitly requires DPA to administer the program "using existing resources."
The act defines "child advocacy center" and "child advocacy center multidisciplinary team" (law enforcement, DA, county CPS, mental health/health providers, victim advocate, CAC staff) and permissively authorizes information sharing about child maltreatment cases between county departments and these teams, with a confidentiality requirement that shared information remain confidential, be withheld from public inspection, and be used only as necessary. It also grants civil/criminal immunity to good-faith team participants and CAC board members/staff/volunteers. Critically, the sharing is discretionary ("the county department MAY share"; team members "MAY share") — no agency is mandated to build a case-management or data-sharing platform, no registry, no reporting, no licensing, and no disbursement is created. DHS's only concrete duty is a minor rules update.
The bill is a narrow administrative restructuring of an existing program. It eliminates the Homeless Prevention Activities Program Advisory Committee and transfers its functions to DOLA's Division of Housing. The Division must now, on its own, administer the program, establish and enforce standards for homeless prevention activities programs, and ensure funds collected under CRS 39-22-1301 are allocated to nongovernmental agencies (directly or via coordination with units of local government) for direct client services. Notably, the bill creates NO new program, NO new disbursement mechanism, and NO new tracking/reporting mandate — the grant program already exists and continues to operate exactly as before; only the committee oversight layer is removed. Effective date August 12, 2026 (90 days after sine die), subject to referendum petition.
This is a narrow statutory-modernization bill. It amends three sections of Title 23 (23-31-311 and 23-31-313 C.R.S.) to update references to "Good Neighbor Authority" so Colorado law reflects the expanded federal authority under the 2024 EXPLORE Act (Pub.L. 118-234) and the underlying 16 U.S.C. secs. 2113a and 8571. Substantively it (1) broadens which federal counterparties the State Forest Service may partner with (adds U.S. Dept. of the Interior and U.S. Dept. of Agriculture / their agencies alongside USFS and BLM), and (2) expands the scope of the demonstration projects the Forest Service may "conduct, or contract with one or more entities to conduct" to include wildlife habitat and outdoor recreation opportunities, not just forest-health treatments. It authorizes but does not mandate any new program, and creates no new reporting, licensing, verification, or disbursement system. No new appropriation, FTE, or IT build is directed.
The act amends C.R.S. 29-4-703/29-4-712 to add "families of first responders working in Colorado whose qualifying income does not exceed 110% of CHFA's board-established income limits" as a new class of eligible mortgage borrowers (alongside low-/moderate-income families), and defines "first responder" (peace officer, firefighter, EMT) and "peace officer" (by reference to multiple statutory categories: deputy sheriff, emergency communications specialist, corrections officer, port-of-entry officer, wildlife officer). Per the fiscal note, CHFA must design the new loan product, secure any financing, communicate loan guidelines to participating lenders, and verify applicant eligibility (first-responder occupational status plus the 110%-of-limit income test). There is no new reporting, registry, or system-build mandate in the statutory text — verification is folded into CHFA's existing mortgage-origination process run through third-party lenders.
The act makes two narrow process changes to Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) cases. (1) When a defendant obtains their own examination report, the court must now forward a copy to CDHS (new court-to-agency document transmittal step). (2) It sets new burden-of-proof rules at unconditional release hearings for defendants already on conditional release (defendant must prove eligibility by preponderance of evidence), requires the court to order continued conditional release with modified terms and notify the DA if ineligible, clarifies that temporary removal can include community placement, and establishes new statutory tests for conditional/unconditional release for crimes committed on or after July 1, 2026. CDHS must update internal policies and manage community placements within existing appropriations. No new system, registry, or reporting platform is created.
Beginning July 1, 2026, trial courts must automatically treat any name-change petition filed by a petitioner under 18 as a "suppressed court record" — accessible only to judges, court staff, parties/attorneys, authorized Judicial Department staff, and holders of a valid court order or affidavit. Courts may use the record for administrative purposes but must never publish the minor's current or new name online, and minors are exempted from the public-notice/publication requirement. Courts must also operate a controlled disclosure workflow: grant access to a suppressed record when a requester submits an affidavit, under penalty of perjury, attesting they obtained verbal consent from a party. Courts must additionally process and grant retroactive suppression petitions for minor name-change records filed before July 1, 2026. Per the fiscal note, implementation requires updating IT systems, revising policies/procedures, and creating new forms.
The bill amends 25-7.5-103 to add one new financing pathway to the Clean Fleet Enterprise's EXISTING grant/rebate/revolving-loan authority: helping public and private fleet operators replace "aging heavy-duty diesel trucks" (model year 2009 or older) with "new heavy-duty trucks" (model year 2018 or later), available through Dec 31, 2031 (subsection repealed July 1, 2032). Program mechanics the enterprise must administer: (1) applicant intake and eligibility screening - it may NOT accept applications from fleets owning/leasing/operating more than 50 heavy-duty vehicles or from business entities with annual gross revenue over $100M, and must prioritize privately/independently owned or capital-constrained businesses and trucks model year 2006 or older; (2) a spending cap - no more than 20% of the fund's income per fiscal year may go to diesel-truck replacement; (3) decommissioning verification - at the transaction the purchaser surrenders the aging diesel truck to the seller, who must be an authorized dealer that certifies emissions/safety compliance of the new truck and decommissions the old one (cutting a 3-inch hole through the engine block and cutting the chassis rails in half, or similarly effective means); (4) an annual report to the Transportation Commission and legislative committees, posted on the enterprise website, including estimated pollution-reduction benefits, continuing indefinitely; and a new duty to ensure funded projects achieve "measurable results and outcomes." Notably the board is expressly exempted from the state Procurement Code for these activities.
Amends C.R.S. 38-53-104/106 to require professional land surveyors to submit monument records to the state licensure board in ELECTRONIC format (paper submission may no longer be required by the board). The board must adopt electronic form/technical specs and develop/support an electronic submission process. Amends C.R.S. 38-50-103(2)(b): counties change from 'shall maintain' to 'MAY maintain' copies of monument records in their record-keeping/indexing system, and MAY maintain them in electronic format. Also permits reference monuments where markers cannot be safely set in a traveled right-of-way (Sections 1-2, non-IT). Net: state-side electronic intake is mandated; county-side digital maintenance is now explicitly permissive, not required.
The act amends CRS 24-33.5-539 to require CBI and the CICJIS program (per section 16-20.5-103) to make specified protection-order data available to the DCJ so the DCJ's existing automated protection order notification system can relay it to protected persons and their families. It refines the data set the notification system must include (e.g., whether an extreme risk protection order was issued/served, and whether a restrained person was denied a firearm purchase/transfer via background check) and repeals one prior data element (3)(f). No new system is created — the notification system and CICJIS already exist; the bill only broadens interagency data availability into that established pipeline.
The bill lets a municipally owned utility that cannot meet its previously filed clean energy plan's emission goals submit a revised plan to CDPHE by Dec 31, 2026 (approved by its governing body), committing to an 80% GHG reduction vs. 2005 levels between Dec 31, 2029 and Dec 31, 2032. A utility filing a revised plan must: submit a detailed generation-and-transmission plan (resource types/amounts, sourcing, new transmission location/capacity); file annual progress reports with CDPHE AND post them to the utility's website from Jan 1, 2028 through Dec 31, 2033, covering progress acquiring resources, current emission reductions vs. 2005, and an updated demand forecast; fully phase out coal by Dec 31, 2032; pursue 95% GHG reduction by 2039; and offset excess cumulative emissions from the delayed timeline. CDPHE must publicly verify the revised plan; the Air Pollution Control Division's workload increases to review filings and receive the annual reports through 2033.
Two mandates. (1) CDPS must create a missing-persons-alert training program and the POST Board must embed it in the basic/reserve peace-officer curriculum and in expired-certification renewal training - but CDPS already owns the materials from prior bills and is not required to deliver/administer it. (2) Every institution of higher education must adopt and publish (on its website, reviewed every 3 years) a preliminary wellness assessment policy for missing students, execute the assessment (digital contact, residential verification, academic/social inquiry within a 6-hour window, then emergency-contact and law-enforcement escalation), and maintain contemporaneous written documentation - report receipt time and receiving employee, date/time/method/outcome of every contact attempt, participating staff, reasons for uncompleted steps, and hand-off time to police. Records must be retained a minimum of 3 years and produced to a law enforcement agency (and, after 30 days, the student's emergency contact) on request.
The Final Act adds C.R.S. 35-41-101(13): the Board and the Division of Brand Inspection must receive reports of lost or stolen livestock. On or before December 31, 2026, the Division must implement procedures that (1) facilitate efficient coordination with law enforcement, including ensuring stolen-livestock reports are relayed to relevant law enforcement within 24 hours of the Division receiving a report and suspecting theft upon review, and (2) ensure the public is notified of lost/stolen livestock reported to the Division. Procedures may vary by geographic region. The Division and Board must adopt rules establishing policies to coordinate with law enforcement and livestock owners. Notably, the act mandates "procedures" and "rules," not explicitly a software system.
Amends the existing town-abandonment statute. A registered elector (newly added), county attorney, or landowner may apply to the Secretary of State to declare a town abandoned; the bill removes the 5-year dormancy requirement for towns that own/operate critical water infrastructure, creating an expedited track. On receiving an application, DOS must post notice on its website and in at least two conspicuous locations in the town, setting a hearing at least 20 days out (the newspaper-publication requirement is eliminated), then investigate and issue a final determination. If a town is declared abandoned, the county transfers the water-system property to a water-delivery entity. Meanwhile CDPS may contract for temporary water-system O&M for up to six months post-determination (repealed July 1, 2027). The workflow footprint is small: one application, one notice, one hearing, one determination per (rare) case.
The Act (new Article 113, Title 11 CRS) requires bank/credit-union employees to report suspected financial exploitation of eligible adults (70+, or susceptible adults) to local law enforcement OR the county agency handling Adult Protective Services where the adult resides. Financial institutions may delay a suspect disbursement (notification within 2 business days; a determination within 90 days, extendable to a 180-day total pending investigation) and must provide relevant records to APS agencies and law enforcement upon referral or request. On the GOVERNMENT side there is no new build, registry, portal, license, or disbursement program: county APS departments and law enforcement simply receive, investigate, and (optionally) notify the institution of findings through their existing intake/case processes, and a court may extend a delay or order protective relief. Records shared with agencies are exempted from CORA public-records definitions.
The bill amends CRS 12-245-504 to create an alternative licensure path: for applicants applying on or after March 1, 2027, graduates of a master's/doctoral MFT program that did NOT include a practicum or internship may still be licensed if they complete 700 supervised clinical face-to-face client-contact hours in addition to the standard 1,500 hours (and telesupervision now counts). This is a modification to hours/eligibility criteria within DORA's EXISTING MFT licensing program, not a new registration or candidate-tracking pathway. DORA's only obligations are rulemaking and applicant outreach; the board continues to accept applications, verify supervised hours, and issue licenses as it already does. No new system, registry, or process is mandated.
RTD must: (1) by 12/31/2026 contract an independent third party for a comprehensive paratransit/disability-services study (complete by 6/30/2027) with quarterly progress updates to the board, analyzing rider-level and trip-level data, trip-denial/wait-time/on-time performance, and cost-per-trip/per-rider metrics; (2) by 12/31/2027 adopt and begin implementing an Accessible Transportation Service Plan defining measurable performance metrics for access, reliability, equity, and cost-effectiveness plus an implementation/reporting framework; (3) by 1/31/2027 and every 1/31 thereafter, report to a joint House/Senate transportation committee meeting on budget/external funding/financial performance, ridership, SB25-161 ten-year-plan and strategic-plan progress, climate-goal alignment, and ATS-plan implementation progress. The bill also restructures the board (15 elected members expire, replaced by 5 elected + 4 gubernatorial appointees beginning 1/1/2029) and mandates redistricting.
The Act does four governance things and mandates no new system: (1) redraws the district boundaries to a fixed list of ~31 named municipalities plus opt-in municipalities/metro districts (Sterling Ranch metro districts 1-7 named); (2) requires any board director appointed on/after July 1, 2026 to reside within the district; (3) grants the board power to divide the district into subdistricts (each with its own board, powers, and — if voters approve — its own taxes), per CRS 32-1-1101; and (4) rewrites the election mechanics so district/subdistrict tax, assessment, and multi-fiscal-year debt questions must go on the statewide general election or November odd-year ballot. For that, the district's designated election official must furnish ballot-issue notice to the Legislative Council's Director of Research for inclusion in the statewide ballot information booklet (Blue Book), certify ballot titles/content (in English and required minority languages) to the Secretary of State no later than 60 days before the election, and reimburse counties for election costs. These are process/coordination obligations — residency verification, subdistrict formation, board meetings/records for any new subdistrict boards, and a recurring ballot-certification workflow — not a directive to procure or build software.
The bill creates an OPTIONAL local program: a local permitting entity MAY designate "renewable energy reinvestment areas" on disturbed/eligible sites (brownfields, closed landfills, mined-out land, decommissioned oil & gas sites) to enable tax increment financing of eligible projects. To designate, the local government must compile and publicly post eligibility documentation, consult Colorado Parks & Wildlife on wildlife/habitat impacts, hold one or more public hearings (or fold the designation into a new/substantially-modified urban renewal or county revitalization plan), and conduct outreach and community meetings to disproportionately impacted communities consistent with the CRS 24-4-109 process. The Colorado Energy Office must, by September 1, 2027, publish and periodically update a process outline and consolidated technical resources on its website. Electric utilities (including municipally owned utilities) must acknowledge a local government or developer information request within 30 days and provide readily available interconnection/siting information.
Covered transit agencies must, by June 30, 2027: (1) display current system maps at all rail/bus/BRT stations and stops; (2) make fare rates, structures, and discount-program eligibility/application instructions available online and displayed in vehicles and at sheltered stops (a QR code linking to a website satisfies this); (3) translate all key transit information into any language spoken by 5%+ of any county served (20%+ requires substantially-similar formatting), satisfiable via a linked/QR-code website or an existing Title VI language access plan. Beginning January 31, 2028 and every January 31 thereafter (indefinitely), each covered agency must file an annual progress report to the Governor and a joint House/Senate transportation committee and post it on a publicly accessible website. Report content is data-heavy — ridership/unlinked trips, service performance indicators, paratransit metrics, APC data, fare product utilization tables, language access inventory, customer feedback/complaint categories — but agencies need only report data they ALREADY collect (marking anything else "not collected"); the bill explicitly requires no new data collection.
The bill amends the domestic relations statutes (C.R.S. 14-10-103, -124, -127.5, -128.1, -129) to redefine coercive control, domestic violence, and intimate relationship, and to impose new evidentiary and documentation duties on family courts. When abuse is alleged, courts must weigh admissible evidence and make findings on the record by a preponderance of the evidence whether a party committed domestic violence, child abuse/neglect, or sexual assault resulting in conception, then apply a presumption against mutual decision-making and impose enumerated safety conditions on parenting time. For orders to remediate a child's resistance to contact, the accused party must demonstrate accountability and sustained behavioral change, complete a qualifying (real-time, not self-directed) abuser intervention program, and provide periodic proof of treatment compliance to the court. These duties fall on judicial officers as changed case-record, findings-documentation, and compliance-tracking obligations; the bill creates no new registry, licensing system, disbursement program, or IT build, and does not direct any agency to procure software.
This is a fiscal/rate-cutting bill, not a systems-build bill. It caps monthly subsidy payments for the Adoption Assistance and Relative Guardianship Assistance programs (to 50-60% and 60-70% of foster care rates respectively, by age band) for contracts effective July 1, 2026 or later, and removes non-Medicaid case services (child care, tutoring, therapies) as reimbursable. The only new operational task: CDHS must create ONE standardized notice describing the reimbursement change, which counties may customize and must deliver to all affected families no later than June 15, 2026. No new eligibility system, tracking system, case-management workflow, or ongoing benefits-notification process is created or funded. Subsidy determinations already run through an existing county-level standardized assessment.
The act eliminates state financial assistance for non-certified kinship care homes (dropping from the prior 30%/scaling-to-50% of foster rate to $0), while the state continues reimbursing counties 90% of certified kinship foster care costs subject to appropriation. CDHS must create a single standardized notice telling non-certified providers when assistance ends and how to become certified (including provisional certification). Each county department must deliver that notice to all non-certified kinship homes currently receiving monthly payments no later than June 15, 2026. Downstream, counties will see increased workload processing certification applications from providers who seek to keep payments. There is no mandate to build any system, portal, database, or tracking tool - the deliverable is a one-time notice document plus manual county distribution and certification intake.
The act adds C.R.S. 25-4-2203(5) requiring CDPHE to internally evaluate the effectiveness of the Health Disparities and Community Grant Program each grant cycle (as a separate evaluation from the cancer/cardiovascular/pulmonary disease program), prepare a report after each evaluation, and make the report publicly available. Section 2 removes the requirement to select a third-party grant recipient to perform that evaluation. In effect, CDPHE must bring the grant-program performance evaluation and public reporting in-house — but the bill mandates only the evaluation-and-report activity, not any new system, dataset, or platform. Effective May 29, 2026 (safety clause, immediate).
The act amends CRS 24-33.5-703 and -706 governing the Disaster Emergency Fund (DEF). It requires: (1) CDPS to formally "close out" disasters — federally declared disasters within 3 years and state-only disasters within 8 years of the last recorded revenue/expenditure — by reporting to OSPB that all response work is complete; (2) OSPB to then remove the disaster's subaccount from the DEF and transfer any remaining balance back to the original source fund; (3) OSPB to cap the fund's annual unencumbered balance at $200M and, after Aug 12, 2026 and each June 30 thereafter, transfer any excess to the General Fund; and (4) OSPB to expand its existing quarterly report to the Joint Budget Committee to newly identify which disasters have been closed out and the amount of unencumbered money transferred back. These are tracking, closure-timeline, and periodic-reporting duties layered onto an existing quarterly reporting process.
CDHE must build a new "thriving institution" designation/recognition program under new C.R.S. 23-1-144. Concretely, CDHE must: (1) convene a 14-15 member Advisory Committee on Thriving Institution Outcomes by Jan 1, 2027 (meets at least once in 2027, then only as needed); (2) after consulting the committee, set outcome standards, measures, data sources, calculation methods, validity protections, performance thresholds, multi-tier recognition levels, and review periods; (3) establish the initial designations on or before Dec 31, 2027; (4) each year (2027 onward), after the annual public release of enrollment/retention/graduation data, identify institutions meeting the standards, notify each qualifying institution and give them 10 calendar days to accept recognition, post the names of designated institutions on CDHE's website, and notify the General Assembly (fiscal note specifies a Nov 15 annual SMART Act report). Crucially, the statute (subsec. (4)(a)) requires the standards to rely EXCLUSIVELY on existing state/federal data already collected or maintained by CDHE and to "NOT REQUIRE NEW DATA ELEMENTS, NEW DATA COLLECTION, DATA MATCHING, OR DATA-SHARING AGREEMENTS." Data must be aggregated to protect PII. Designation creates no entitlement to state funding and no disbursements.
The bill amends CRS 22-35-110 to allow off-campus courses (including four-year extended-studies programs) to count toward concurrent enrollment if they meet all Article 35 requirements plus the requirements of a federally recognized accrediting agency. CDE must expand its EXISTING annual student-count audits (assumed ~20 district audits/year, +15 hours each) to verify that off-campus courses qualify, confirm credit hours, and validate cooperative agreements and tuition payments between districts and institutions; it must also update eligibility guidance and cooperative-agreement templates and answer questions from families/schools/institutions. After July 1, 2028, no additional off-campus courses may be approved unless the General Assembly's appropriation is sufficient for CDE to perform the audit/oversight, indicated via a FY2028-29 Long Bill footnote. There is no statutory mandate to build a new system, portal, licensing platform, or data warehouse — the work is absorbed into existing audit workflows via added staff.
The Final Act does almost nothing operationally: it amends CRS 40-9.8-104(5) and repeals subsection (7), which removes the September 1, 2026 sunset so the Microgrids for Community Resilience Grant Program continues indefinitely. DOLA administers the program: cooperative electric associations and municipally owned utilities apply for grants to purchase microgrid resources for at-risk rural communities; DOLA reviews applications, disburses funds, and must submit an annual report (by December 1 each year) summarizing grants awarded. Per the fiscal note, however, all grant funding is already encumbered and no new money is appropriated. DOLA's remaining work is purely winding down existing grants and providing technical assistance to recipients (1.2-1.5 FTE), expected to end by FY2027-28 once federally funded grants close out.
The act (new C.R.S. 24-35-123) consolidates four fee-based administrative cost-recovery funds at the Department of Revenue — prepaid wireless 911 charge, oil & gas production fees (clean transit / wildlife & land remediation), enterprise per-ride fees, and retail delivery fees — into a single continuously-appropriated Cost Recovery Cash Fund, repealing the standalone funds effective July 1, 2027. The only ongoing operational obligation is a reporting mandate: on or before November 1, 2027, and every November 1 thereafter, DOR must submit an annual report to the Joint Budget Committee stating (a) the cost of collecting, administering, and enforcing each fee/charge funded by the pool, and (b) where readily available, details on the specific tasks driving the largest share of workload for the highest-cost fees. This requires DOR to track cost-of-collection and workload data per fee stream and roll it up into a recurring report — but it builds nothing resident-facing and licenses/disburses nothing new.
The bill creates a "bill of rights" for adults subject to guardianship (right to attend/participate in hearings, request review or termination). Two concrete process obligations: (1) The State Court Administrator's Office must submit a report to the Joint Budget/General Assembly on November 1, 2027 and November 1, 2028 on the bill's fiscal impact on the Judicial Department (C.R.S. 13-3-101(19)), and the statute explicitly directs the office to "USE EXISTING DATA SOURCES TO CREATE THE REPORT" - this subsection self-repeals January 1, 2029. (2) Guardians must, to the extent reasonably feasible, notify the court in writing and the ward at least 30 days before a permanent move to a nursing home/mental-health institution/restrictive facility, and immediately notify the court of the ward's death. No new registry, licensing, portal, or case-management system is mandated; guardianship case tracking already exists in the probate courts.
Continues the Colorado Securities Act (Division of Securities and Securities Board) 11 more years, to Sept 1, 2037. The substantive operational change is a redesigned enforcement workflow: the Securities Commissioner may now issue a PRELIMINARY cease-and-desist order or a SUMMARY license-suspension order, which becomes FINAL automatically unless the subject requests a hearing within 15 days. If a hearing is timely requested, it must be set within 45 days of the order and commenced within 45 days (extendable to 60), the board/ALJ must issue an initial decision within 10 days of the hearing, and the Commissioner must issue the final order within 10 calendar days of receiving that decision. This creates deadline-driven case tracking, notice/service logging, order-status management (preliminary vs. final vs. vacated), and audit-ready hearing records. The bill also clarifies (does not newly create) that investment advisers and investment adviser representatives with a Colorado place of business must be licensed, and makes deficiency letters confidential (exempt from CORA). The Division already licenses at scale (FY23-24: 1,873 broker-dealer firms, 254,030 sales reps, 16,119 IA reps, 135 offerings >$53B), so licensing systems already exist.
The Final Act is a straight DORA-recommended sunset continuation: it extends the vessel registration and regulation program run by DNR/Colorado Parks and Wildlife from its Sept 1, 2026 repeal date to Sept 1, 2036 (10 years). CPW continues to register boats operated on Colorado waters and issue hull registration numbers (71,147 vessels registered in FY24-25). The only substantive operational change is in 33-13-107: vessel liveries (rental/lease operators) must keep records of each renter's name and address, the vessel hull identification number, and departure/expected-return dates and times — and the retention period is extended from 30 days to 3 YEARS, with records subject to inspection by the division. Note: that record-keeping burden falls on private rental businesses, not on the government; the state's role is inspection. The act also updates definitions (excludes fishing aids, air mattresses, beach/water toys, inner tubes, and seaplanes-on-water) and adds a "vessel livery" definition. No new system, registry, or reporting duty is created for the state.
The bill primarily DELAYS three federally-driven CCCAP provisions by two years (to Aug 1, 2028): the 7%-of-gross-income cap on family copayments, enrollment-based advance weekly payments to providers, and use of grants/contracts to serve underserved populations. The only net-new mandate is a reporting expansion: beginning November 1, 2026, CDEC must add to its existing annual CCCAP report information on the amount of CCCAP allocations spent by CDEC AND by counties on administration, broken into direct and indirect expenses. This requires CDEC to collect and roll up county-level administrative cost data it does not fully capture today. The delayed advance-payment and underserved-populations provisions, if they eventually take effect in 2028 and only if federally funded, would require enrollment-based reimbursement systems.
Sunset bill that continues the Colorado Medical Board (and the Medical Practice Act) for nine years, until September 1, 2035, implementing DORA's 2025 sunset report. Beyond continuation, it creates/changes several licensing items the Board must operationalize: (1) a NEW "administrative license" under new C.R.S. 12-240-119.5 that, on and after January 1, 2027, the Board MAY issue to physicians limited to non-clinical administrative activities (protocol design, quality management, patient-safety protocols, research, non-patient-care teaching). The Board "shall adopt any rules necessary to administer the administrative license," and these licenses are subject to renewal, reinstatement, and reactivation requirements under 12-240-130, must verify no patient contact/prescribing, and require proof of medical liability insurance under 13-64-302. (2) A new exemption (12-240-107(3)(z)) removing natural medicine facilitators licensed under Article 170 from Medical Practice Act licensure — requiring intake logic to route/exempt those applicants. (3) A changed renewal period for the distinguished foreign teaching physician license (12-240-111). These require new/modified application, renewal, verification, and category-tracking workflows within the Board's existing licensing system.
The act (amending CRS 42-4-615 and 42-4-110.5, adding 42-4-119) creates several new administrative workflows. Local governments (county/city and county/municipality) MUST: (1) compile a list of schools for which they determine school zones; (2) assess all roadways within 1,000 ft of each school as a school zone and install/relocate appropriate signage; (3) increase any existing sub-200-ft zone up to a 200-ft minimum. They MAY (permissive): reduce zone size but only after holding a public hearing; designate "school streets" (10 mph, closable to vehicles) with required signage; and install automated vehicle identification systems (AVIS) along designated "safe routes to school." CDOT must run a written-approval process for any state-highway segment designated as a school zone, and for any local roadway connecting to a state highway designated as a school street. Net effect is a signage-inventory/work-order workload for locals plus a designation-approval intake process for CDOT.
For agricultural-to-other change-of-use water right decrees in Water Division 2 issued on/after Jan 1, 2027, the water court must embed site-specific revegetation/dryland-farming success criteria and an objective evaluation methodology into each decree, appoint a neutral third-party expert (paid by the water right owner), and oversee an annual field-review/status-report cycle. Each year within 90 days before Nov 1 the expert conducts a field review; status reports (stating percent of field successfully established) go to the water right owner by Dec 1, then to the water court, the Division of Water Resources, and the parties within 20 days, with a 60-day comment/rebuttal window. The court tracks multi-year compliance, can limit the percentage of water available for the new use for sustained failure, and orders financial assurance (performance bonds) to the local land use authority. This is post-decree compliance tracking, recurring annual report intake, and audit-ready recordkeeping - but confined to a small number of cases in one water division, with no new registry, portal, or system mandated.
The Act continues the Colorado Podiatry Board through September 1, 2035, and adds new C.R.S. 12-290-125. Each licensed podiatrist must develop a written medical-records security plan (covering storage/disposal, disposition if the licensee dies/retires/ceases practice, and patient access methods). The compliance touchpoint on government systems is narrow: "UPON INITIAL LICENSURE... AND UPON RENEWAL OF A LICENSE, AN APPLICANT OR LICENSEE... SHALL ATTEST TO THE BOARD THAT THE APPLICANT OR LICENSEE HAS DEVELOPED A PLAN IN COMPLIANCE WITH THIS SECTION." This is a self-attestation only — the board does NOT collect, store, or verify the actual plan; noncompliance is grounds for discipline. The board "MAY ADOPT RULES AS NECESSARY." So the only system change DORA needs is adding an attestation checkbox/field to the existing licensure and renewal workflow.
When a school district considers a capital-construction ballot question (bonds, special mill levy, or additional mill levy), the district board must run a hard-deadline, fully documented solicitation-and-response workflow for every charter school it authorizes: (1) maintain at least one charter-school seat on any capital planning/long-range committee and notify charters of the meeting schedule; (2) issue a WRITTEN solicitation to each charter school for capital-needs proposals no later than 120 days before approving the ballot question, stating a response deadline no earlier than 45 days out; (3) let charters present proposals at a public board/committee meeting no later than 45 days before approval; (4) review every proposal; (5) via the superintendent, notify each submitting charter in writing no later than 30 days before approval of the board's include/omit decision; (6) if a charter is excluded, the notice must state specific, merits-based reasons AND give the charter an opportunity to respond; and (7) no later than 30 days after selecting projects, POST on the board's website a public document that outlines the process used and gives detailed per-project reasoning for prioritizing or excluding every capital project considered. This is a recurring, auditable intake/notification/deadline-tracking + public-posting workflow tied to election calendars.
The act is a pure planning mandate. It creates a Transition Advisory Committee in the Governor's Office (24-38-302) to produce a transition plan, due to the Joint Budget Committee and legislative committees on or before Nov 30, 2026, recommending how to merge Colorado's workforce development, adult education, apprenticeship, and employment programs (currently 20+ divisions across 7 state entities delivering 110 programs) into a reorganized Department of Higher Education effective July 1, 2028. The plan MUST address "governance models," "technology and staffing needs of the Department of Higher Education," and "data collection and analysis systems necessary or beneficial" for the department (24-38-303(2)(a)). The committee only studies and recommends; the act itself builds, tracks, licenses, and disburses nothing. It is repealed June 30, 2027. No new IT system, database, or program platform is created or funded by this bill.
DOR must (1) enforce a new mandate that first-time DUI/DUI-per-se/excess-BAC offenders hold an interlock-restricted license for a consecutive 9 months after reinstatement before obtaining any other license (compliance/eligibility tracking in the DRIVES license system, applicable to revocations on or after the effective date), and (2) administer eligibility for the ignition-interlock financial assistance program by rule (proof of public-assistance enrollment, income at/below 150% of federal poverty level, or discretionary-income criteria) and post program eligibility and application instructions on its website. Notably, the bill removes the requirement that the First-Time Drunk Driving Offender Account (HUTF) fund the assistance program and instead pushes the actual subsidy onto certified interlock manufacturers, who must provide free/discounted installation, removal, and lease rates and give written consumer notice — so the state is NOT building a new grant intake/disbursement pipeline; disbursement moves to private vendors.
The bill continues the existing PACFA facility-licensing program (dog/cat/rabbit breeders, boarders, groomers, shelters, sellers, etc.) run by the Commissioner of Agriculture, pushing the sunset repeal from Sept 1, 2026 to Sept 1, 2034. Substantive changes: (1) repeals the $700 statutory cap on license fees, letting CDA set fees by rule based on direct/indirect regulatory cost; (2) prohibits importing a pet animal into a licensed facility unless it has a valid certificate of veterinary health plus rabies proof, or an inspection by an accredited veterinarian shortly before arrival in Colorado (enforced by existing PACFA inspectors, not a new verification system); (3) directs the Commissioner to establish a process for any interested person to petition for issuance, amendment, or repeal of a rule (35-80-109); (4) raises the max civil penalty from $1,000 to $2,500; (5) restructures the advisory committee. None of these create a statutory mandate to build new licensing software, portals, or databases — the program continues operating with its existing systems and staff.
The bill amends an existing loan program rather than standing up a new one. It (a) lowers the private-capital match ratio from 4:1 to 1:1; (b) repeals the COVID-specific purpose, deferral conditions, and county-based geographic allocation, replacing the latter with statewide distribution; (c) directs that the program "shall track the distribution of capital to counties" and maintain/support targets for businesses in rural counties and businesses owned by women, minorities, or veterans; and (d) requires the State Treasurer to transfer $5.0 million from the Small Business Recovery and Resiliency Fund to the Colorado Startup Loan Program Fund on June 30, 2026. The oversight board sets eligibility, allocation formulas, and loan terms. All loan intake, disbursement, and servicing is performed by the contracted loan program manager, not by state-built systems.
The Act amends CRS 39-22-531 to extend the Job Growth Incentive Tax Credit award window from tax year 2026 to 2035 (commission may approve/certify projects through 2034), and to extend the existing annual electronic report the commission sends DOR listing taxpayers receiving/disallowed credits from Sept 1, 2024 through Sept 1, 2042 (repeal moved from 2042 to 2059). Operationally the commission continues to: take initial credit applications, process annual per-year applications with documentation of jobs created/retained, verify eligibility, issue tax certificates for the credit amount, and report annually to DOR. Critically, none of this is new work — the Act extends an already-built and already-staffed process. No new system, portal, or capability is mandated.
The act formalizes a multi-step county code-enforcement workflow for nuisance/zoning violations (CRS 30-15-401, 30-15-402, 30-28-124, 30-28-209). Counties that choose to enforce must: issue written violation notices describing enforcement authority and potential liens with a cure period; apply for administrative entry and seizure warrants from county/district courts (supported by sworn affidavit, evidence the owner was noticed, and property/rubbish descriptions); execute warrants within 30 days (extended from 10) and submit proof of execution plus a written inventory of impounded property to the court; assess abatement costs plus a 10% inspection/incidental fee; file verified complaints and schedule hearings within 30 days; effect personal or alternative (post-and-mail via assessor records) service at least 10 days before hearing; track default judgments; impose graduated civil penalties ($100–$2,650/day, with escalating presumptive maximums of $500 / $1,000 / $2,650 by violation count and 8 statutory aggravation factors the court must document); and record resulting liens with the clerk and recorder and certify nonpayment to the treasurer for tax-style collection. This is a genuine case-management, inspection-tracking, deadline/compliance, and audit-ready records workload — but participation is permissive ("may adopt ordinances / may enforce"), not mandated.
The substantive mandates in this act fall entirely on private-sector operators of conversational AI services (age estimation, disclosures, minor-safety protocols, suicide/self-harm referral protocols, and false-representation bans), not on any government agency. The only government-facing obligation: beginning July 1, 2027, operators must file an annual report with the Attorney General's Office (C.R.S. 6-1-1708(6)) covering crisis-referral counts, self-harm detection/response protocols, and any additional metrics the AG defines. The Department of Law must collect those annual reports, review them, and post the data on its public website (excluding user identifiers/PII). This implies, at most, a lightweight report-intake, review, and open-data publishing workflow at the AG's office. Effective date August 12, 2026; operator duties begin January 1, 2027; first reports due July 1, 2027.
The PUC must conduct rulemaking to amend its ten-year transmission plan rules, requiring rate-regulated utilities to file three new categories of information: (1) cost-reduction/financing strategies including potential use of CETA bonds, (2) an evaluation of the use of CETA bonds, and (3) an evaluation of advanced transmission technologies (advanced conductors and grid-enhancing tech), including technical feasibility, cost-effectiveness analysis, and deployment timetables. The PUC reviews these expanded utility filings; municipal utilities also file additional transmission information with the PUC. CETA must engage/coordinate with formal subregional transmission planning organizations, adds the PUC director as a nonvoting ex officio board member, and its annual report to the General Assembly moves from Dec 1 to Jan 31 with an added description of prior-year activities and accomplishments. There is no new licensing, disbursement, permitting portal, or system build mandated by the act.
The act amends C.R.S. 24-4.1-109 (Colorado Crime Victim Compensation Act) to add new categories of compensable losses for enrolled members of a federally recognized tribe / Indigenous victims: expenses for traditional Native American healing ceremonies and practices (traditional counseling/healing from an elder or spiritual healer, ceremonial practices such as sweat lodge and smudging, ceremonial burials including clothing for the deceased, meals, and traditional giveaway/gifting expenses, child care during burial ceremonies, and reimbursement of honoraria for ceremonial services), plus reasonable travel expenses tied to those ceremonies. Judicial-district victim compensation boards must fold these new claim types into their compensation determinations — meaning new claim categories, eligibility checks (verification of tribal enrollment / Indigenous status per C.R.S. 24-33.5-2601), and disbursement/reimbursement handling. No new system, portal, tracking, or reporting requirement is mandated by the text.
New C.R.S. 8-41-213 requires that, before any work begins under a building or construction permit for a project costing more than $1 million, the applicant file a signed declaration under penalty of perjury with the permitting agency attesting that everyone working under the permit (including subcontractors) maintains workers' comp coverage for the duration of the work. Permitting agencies must collect and retain these declarations as part of permit issuance; the Division of Workers' Compensation makes the standardized form available online and accepts complaints alleging noncompliance. Excludes permits from the Division of Professions and Occupations (DORA) and special districts.
Creates a new annual permit letting a licensed spirits manufacturer serve/sell wholesaler-acquired alcohol beverages for on-premise consumption at its licensed premises and one approved sales room. The permit is dual-stage: the manufacturer first applies to the LOCAL licensing authority (subject to CRS 44-3-301/311/312/313), then, once approved locally, applies to the STATE licensing authority (LED). LED "shall determine the form and manner" of both applications and may adopt implementing rules. Compliance conditions to be tracked/verified: (a) proceeds from wholesaler-acquired beverages must not exceed 50% of the manufacturer's gross annual alcohol-beverage revenue; (b) sandwiches and light snacks must be available; (c) on-premise consumption only (no off-premise/takeout/delivery); (d) a separate permit per location; (e) one-year permit term with renewals, tied to the local permit's expiration; (f) revocation/suspension handling under CRS 44-3-306/601. New local fee schedule added: $500 annual license fee, up to $1,000 initial application fee, up to $100 renewal (up to $500 if expired). A no-permit alternative lets manufacturers use common alcohol modifiers (vermouth, amaros, liqueurs) to make cocktails without any permit.
The Final Act (1) lets the Limited Gaming Control Commission delegate additional licensing duties to the Division of Gaming and lets the division director approve optional wagers and minor modifications to poker, blackjack, craps, and roulette (new games still need full commission approval); (2) codifies into statute (C.R.S. 44-30-1703) the division's existing duty to operate a voluntary self-exclusion program for sports betting and gaming, keeping an exclusion list of persons who request exclusion, with confidential records; (3) expands division criminal investigators' inspection authority to any place where unlicensed gaming/sports betting is suspected and extends peace-officer status to a director's designee; (4) refines license definitions/categories (major/minor business license, key occupational license, out-of-state advance-deposit wagering license) and background-check/suitability procedures; and (5) requires confirmed Commission members to file updated financial disclosures annually. Nearly all of this modifies who approves what and codifies practices already handled by existing division rules and systems — it does not mandate building any new system.
The act repeals a provision added by SB26-016 and adds C.R.S. 30-20-125, which merely prohibits disposing of preproduction plastic materials at a location that "has not been issued a certificate of designation pursuant to section 30-20-105." It references the EXISTING solid-waste-disposal-site certificate-of-designation process (issued by local governing bodies) and does not create any new certification, registration, tracking, reporting, or disbursement requirement. No new system, portal, database, or workflow is mandated.
The bill amends C.R.S. 40-10.1-605 to shift transportation network company (TNC) refusal-to-transport reporting from annual to MONTHLY (quarterly for school-contract TNCs). The government-side (PUC) obligation is narrow but concrete: under new subsection (9)(d), the PUC must (1) aggregate and anonymize the data in TNCs' monthly reports, (2) compile it into aggregated, anonymized monthly reports that include the annual number of refusals plus the number of investigations and remediations made, and (3) make those aggregated, anonymized monthly reports available to the public. The PUC also gains expanded enforcement workload: it may assess civil penalties (raised from $550 to $1,300 max) per TNC violation, and must weigh a TNC's good-faith remediation efforts and its total violations over the preceding 12 months when deciding penalties. NOTE: the software-heavy mandates fall on the PRIVATE TNCs (Uber/Lyft), not the government — TNCs must build the in-app/digital-platform consumer complaint mechanism (accessible and easily navigable), mandate driver service-animal education, adopt/post an anti-discrimination policy, and file the monthly reports. The only genuine government build is the PUC's monthly data aggregation/anonymization and public publication pipeline.
Adds C.R.S. 29-11.7-106. By September 1, 2026, each law enforcement agency in the state must register for the U.S. ATF National Electronic Tracing System (eTrace) and opt in to its collective data-sharing feature (agencies with a preexisting eTrace relationship, or that route through Colorado State Patrol or CBI, are exempt). When an agency recovers or confiscates a firearm connected to a crime, it must transmit the relevant firearm information to the National Tracing Center's eTrace system as soon as practicable and no later than 90 days after recovery. Voluntarily relinquished firearms and those determined not connected to a criminal investigation are excluded. This is a submit-to-a-federal-system reporting/compliance mandate, not a build-your-own-system mandate.
CDOC must (1) stand up a Risk Assessment Quality Review Team and implement policies/practices for a "cadenced" system of recurring reviews by Aug 31, 2026 - including systematic reviews of completed Community Supervision Tool (CST) risk assessments at each risk level, periodic fidelity reviews of each assessor's work, and ongoing assessor training to correct the documented ~98% error rate; (2) beginning January 2027 and every January thereafter (indefinitely), report during its SMART Act hearing the total assessments reviewed, the number found inaccurate/inconsistent enough to produce a wrong supervision level, and remediation measures taken; and (3) treat "risk assessment outputs" (total score + resulting parole supervision level) as disclosable criminal justice records under the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act, voiding any contract clause that blocks their disclosure to open-records requesters. In practice this creates a new compliance-verification/audit workflow (tracking reviews, error rates, fidelity checks, training completion) plus a records-disclosure workflow.
The Final Act amends CRS 24-36-402/404 to let non-insurance entities contract with the Treasury to buy insurance premium tax credits that remain unsold after the existing insurance-company auction/application process. Such a purchased credit may be transferred once to an insurance company. Treasury's concrete new duties: (1) let non-insurance entities enter purchase contracts for leftover credits after the auction; (2) receive written notices of transfer/assumption "in accordance with procedures adopted by the department"; and (3) upon receiving a transfer notice, issue a NEW tax credit certificate to both the transferor and the transferee. This adds a one-time transfer-tracking and certificate-reissuance step on top of Treasury's existing credit auction/verification workflow. No new IT system, registry, or portal is mandated by the text.
The Act amends C.R.S. 22-7-1209 to (1) change the READ Act independent third-party evaluation from annual to BIENNIAL beginning the 2026-27 school year; (2) keep the requirement that local education providers submit READ Act data to CDE annually (unchanged); and (3) add ONE new duty: CDE "shall annually post a report on its website that summarizes the data from the local education providers and includes any department input on proposed program changes." No new data-collection system, dashboard platform, or interagency integration is mandated by the text - the underlying data is already collected annually. The only genuinely new build is an annual public summary report posted to CDE's existing website.
The act changes the funding mechanism for the Colorado National Guard Tuition Waiver Program from 100% state reimbursement to a 50/50 cost share. DMVA must now: (1) reimburse each designated institution for 50% of the tuition it waives; (2) adopt rules for a process to certify member eligibility on request, communicate eligibility to institutions, and process the 50% reimbursement; (3) calculate base member enrollment (3-year fall-semester average) per institution, set community-college enrollment caps, and prorate/distribute funds when appropriations fall short. Institutions must sequence private/state/federal financial aid first and waive only the remaining balance. Notably, DMVA already runs a reimbursement workflow today (it paid 100% and distributed ~$1.8M in FY2025-26) - the bill changes the percentage and adds aid-sequencing, not a net-new claims system.
The act amends C.R.S. 2-3-208, 13-100-104, and 24-37-302 to create a new annual "base budget" submission process. Every state agency must submit its base budget for the upcoming fiscal year to the JBC and OSPB on or before September 1 (starting September 1, 2026, and each September 1 thereafter), in a format "agreed upon by the state agencies and OSPB in coordination with JBC staff." "Base budget" is defined as prior-year appropriations plus out-year costs/savings and prior-year budget adjustments not yet appropriated. The judicial branch's Office of Administrative Services must submit a single consolidated base budget aggregating its included agencies. Separately, OSPB (in collaboration with the DPA executive director) must provide agencies its common-policy calculations as soon as practicable before the November 1 budget request. No new IT system, portal, or software platform is mandated by the text; the submission "format" is left to interagency agreement rather than a built system.
The entire operative text is a single new subsection (C.R.S. 29-5-502(4)) authorizing DFPC to seek, accept, and expend gifts, grants, or donations from private or public sources to pay contributions into the pre-existing Firefighter Behavioral Health Benefits Trust (created in SB22-002). There is no new program to build, no application intake, no panel review, no grantee reporting, and no disbursement workflow mandated. DFPC simply gains authority to route additional private funding toward contributions it already makes to an existing multi-employer health benefits trust. No new system, license, tracking, or verification requirement is created by the act.
Two software-shaped hooks, both soft. (1) ECMC + Colorado Geological Survey must facilitate collection of geothermal resource data (bottom-hole temperatures, thermal gradients, subsurface permeability, etc.) and organize it "in a searchable format that is made available at no cost to the public" — an open-data publishing/warehousing use case — plus deliver a recommendations report to the General Assembly by Nov 15, 2026. But the data collection is drafted almost entirely as "MAY," is explicitly "contingent on available appropriations or gifts, grants, or donations," and may be contracted to third parties. (2) The PUC must review investor-owned utilities' small- and large-scale geothermal project applications and approve/deny within 120 days (180 for good cause), including CPCN and cost-recovery requests. Critically, the PUC handles this "as part of existing electric resource planning" — no new intake/permitting system. Local governments get new authority (not a mandate) to sign thermal energy service agreements and issue revenue bonds.
The operative mandates land on large private utilities, not government. By Aug 15, 2026 a utility with >500,000 customers must convene an interconnection acceleration working group (with PUC staff, the Utility Consumer Advocate, trade associations, and developers); by Dec 15, 2026 file a notice/report with the PUC on the group's recommendations; and by Jan 1, 2027 make commission filings to implement recommendations requiring PUC approval. The utility must also build a third-party contractor approval-list process, inspect third-party interconnection work, and maintain accurate GIS mapping of as-built work. The PUC's own new role is limited to reviewing/approving fixed bill-credit adjustment mechanisms and the third-party study processes, plus evaluating facility size limits in a future renewable energy standard compliance plan. Nothing here creates a new government-operated licensing, permitting, or disbursement system for Concourse to supply.
The act amends CRS 26.5-5-309, -313, and -314 to require CDEC to accept alternate/substitute compliance documentation for school-district-based, school-age child care centers rather than imposing duplicative CDEC-specific requirements. Specifically, CDEC must: (1) accept a copy of a satisfactory fire or radon inspection report of the school property completed within the prior 12 months in lieu of a duplicate inspection; (2) accept documented evidence of compliance with substantially similar CDE staff-training and minimum-square-footage requirements (unless CDE monitoring fails to meet federal grants-in-aid minimums, in which case CDEC must require the federal minimum); (3) accept playground-safety certification from any licensed/certified inspector or entity, including a public health agency; and (4) review the materials-waiver process (26.5-5-313) and the appeals process (26.5-5-314(5)) at least annually. In practice this means CDEC's licensing intake must ingest and track alternate proof-of-compliance documents and log/report on an annual waiver-and-appeals review. It is fundamentally a burden-REDUCTION measure, not a new system mandate.
The bill is overwhelmingly deregulatory. Section 2 reroutes the missing-children list: instead of CBI distributing it to every school district, CBI now provides it to CDE, and CDE must compare CBI's list against CDE's comprehensive statewide enrollment records and notify CBI if it finds a missing student or last-known school of enrollment. Per the fiscal note this is a twice-yearly comparison of up to ~500 names, explicitly absorbable within current resources with no new system. The remaining sections REMOVE obligations: repeals the pencil-and-paper assessment policy requirement (Sec. 3); lets small school districts and single-authorizer charter networks of 1,200 or fewer students file a single consolidated improvement/accreditation plan instead of multiple (Sec. 4); confirms waiver-holders need not report licensed-personnel performance evaluations to CDE; and prohibits CDE from presenting voluntary data collections as mandatory or conditioning benefits on them (Sec. 5). Net effect is fewer filings and reports flowing into CDE, not more.
The HIAE gains new financing/administration duties, none of which imply a new software system: (1) issue up to $100M in revenue bonds on/after Jan 1, 2027, set terms, manage bond obligations/repayment and prioritize debt service over program funding (handled by bond counsel, trustees, and underwriters, not govtech); (2) administer a premium tax-credit-for-contributions program under new CRS 10-16-1216 in which insurers declare intent to contribute, the Commissioner issues allocation notices (cap $9M/yr), tracks contributions/dates, applies pro-rata reduction logic, and posts allocation status on the Division website - but this simply migrates an almost identical credit program the enterprise has run since 2013 (CRS 10-22-110); (3) reallocate assessed fee revenue across reinsurance, on-exchange subsidies, OmniSalud, admin, and Hyde-compliance buckets by statutory percentages starting CY2027; (4) commission a third-party feasibility study by July 1, 2027; and (5) file recurring reports/briefings to the Joint Budget Committee (after each Sept/Mar/Jun revenue forecast starting Sept 2026; in-person briefing by Jan 15, 2027) plus stakeholder-input requirements with English/Spanish translation.
The Final Act's core state duty is a one-time REPORT, not a system build: DOLA must submit and present, as part of its January 2027 SMART Act hearing (C.R.S. 24-32-3902), a proposal for developing a statewide homelessness prevention/resolution strategy, including a timeline, estimated budget, and process, plus components such as identifying gaps/barriers to operational services, cataloging state agency housing resources and utilization rates, collaboration and funding/policy recommendations, recommendations (with Continuum of Care orgs) to improve the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), data reporting, and coordinated entry systems, and updates on regional navigation campuses. Separately (permissive, not mandated): local governments MAY form multijurisdictional homelessness response authorities (C.R.S. 29-1-204.7) — new political subdivisions with a governing board (subject to open-meetings/records and local budget/audit law), that must file budgets with DOLA's Division of Local Government, can contract/employ/issue bonds, levy voter-approved sales taxes, and seek/accept/expend gifts and grants to fund regional homelessness strategies. Counties MAY also redirect real estate documentary fee revenue (C.R.S. 39-13-102(6)) to a county government or housing authority for affordable housing.
Creates C.R.S. 40-3-122 requiring investor-owned electric/gas utilities to establish a Percentage-of-Income Payment Plan (PIPP) program: application intake with 30-day approve/deny, income-eligibility verification (including third-party referrals from DHS/CEO), fixed-credit and affordable-percentage calculations by customer/heating type, arrearage credit tracking, website publication of program terms, a separately itemized PIPP charge on customer bills, and annual reporting to the PUC of charge revenue, contributions, admin costs, and credits provided. The PUC's only new duties are (1) adopting rules to implement/enforce the program and setting the PIPP charge amount and eligibility criteria by rule, and (2) incorporating utility-submitted annual PIPP data into the Commission's existing annual reporting requirements (40-3-122(7)(f)(II)). Every operational build/track/verify/disburse obligation falls on the private utilities, not on a government agency.
Under new C.R.S. 22-32.5-112, by July 1, 2027 every institute charter school, district charter school, and local board of education must adopt and implement an "ACCESS" (Achieving Community Commitment to Equitable School Success) policy that directs resources and supports to at-risk students, and post that policy on the school's or district's website. Schools already under a performance/improvement/priority-improvement/turnaround plan that directs resources to at-risk students are deemed compliant and simply post that existing plan online. The mandate is limited to policy adoption plus public website posting — there is no data reporting, verification, licensing, or accountability-system build in the enacted text (accountability language present in the title was not carried into operative provisions).
Three loosely-related state obligations. (1) CDPHE must convert health-facility licenses (hospitals, nursing/hospice/assisted-living, clinics, dialysis, ASCs, etc.) from annual to biennial renewal, promulgating rules and re-cadencing renewals so half of facilities renew each year (Sec. 5 & 18, C.R.S. 25-3-102 / 25-1.5-103). (2) HCPF/the state department must develop a single statewide UNIFORM APPLICATION and uniform screening questionnaire for hospital discounted care, post them in all required languages on a publicly accessible website, maintain an updated public archive of all manuals and subregulatory issuances (with rationale and statutory citations for each change), run a patient complaint-intake process by phone/mail/online with a 30-day review, and conduct periodic compliance reviews of facilities with corrective-action-plan tracking (Secs. 6-11). (3) The state board sets the content/format of the annual hospital transparency report by rule with a Dec. 1 draft-review cycle. Note: most substantive mandates fall on private hospitals, not on state systems.
The act modifies the Colorado Works (TANF) program (Title 26, Article 2, C.R.S.) with three deregulatory changes: (1) makes 60-month lifetime-limit good-cause benefit extensions permissive for counties rather than mandatory ("require" changed to "permit"); (2) suspends the annual cost-of-living adjustment on basic cash assistance grants for FY2026-27 and FY2027-28 (COLA resumes FY2028-29); and (3) eliminates the statutory minimum reserve floors for the Colorado Long-Term Works Reserve and statewide county TANF reserves, removing the mandatory General Fund/Unclaimed Property Trust Fund backfill trigger. Critically, Section 4 REPEALS the Works Allocation Committee's obligation to review reserve balances at least quarterly, submit written reserve-level reports (statewide and by county) to the Joint Budget Committee, and establish a county mitigation fund. CDHS's only new duty is minor rulemaking (state board adopts rules), explicitly to be done within existing resources. No new system, portal, tracking mechanism, disbursement workflow, or reporting artifact is created; the net effect removes reporting and monitoring requirements.
The Final Act amends the Workers' Compensation Act (Title 8, articles 40-47) to redefine "filing," "mailed/mailing," and "service/served" to include electronic means via the Division's electronic filing system, replacing prior references to certified/registered/first-class US mail throughout claims, notices of injury, admissions/denials of liability, and independent medical examiner (IME) selection workflows. It also allows electronic rejection of documents for technical errors and diverts certain penalties/death benefits from the Subsequent Injury Fund to the Colorado Uninsured Employer Fund. Critically, the fiscal note confirms the underlying technology (electronic data filing system for claim info, proof-of-coverage system, and internal claim management system) has ALREADY been built and upgraded by CDLE; the bill merely conforms statute to systems already in operation.
HCPF must convene a multi-agency steering committee (by 7/1/2026, monthly meetings through 7/1/2027) and transition Qualified Residential Treatment Program (QRTP) and Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility (PRTF) services into the statewide Medicaid managed care system for youth in county child-welfare custody, initiating the transition by 7/1/2027. It must develop a policy/recommendations package by 4/1/2027 (covering roles, utilization management, care coordination, discharge planning, and — per clause (2)(j) — 'data, reporting, and transparency needs'), submit three narrative quarterly reports to the Joint Budget Committee (10/1/2026, 12/31/2026, 3/1/2027), and an outcomes report by 7/1/2028. No IT system, portal, or software procurement is mandated or authorized; the data/reporting item is a study/recommendation topic for the committee, not a build requirement.
Beginning in 2027, the CWDC (in CDLE) and the CCOA (in CDHS) must meet twice a year, invite community/advocacy participants, and collaborate to promote older-adult (55+) workforce development. They must REVIEW data collected through EXISTING resources and platforms, merely "discuss and determine whether additional data should be collected," provide a data overview to CDLE/CDHS on or before Dec 1, 2027 and annually, and beginning in 2028 jointly submit an annual report to the General Assembly (summarized during SMART Act hearings). The bill also requires the CWDC and the Commission on Higher Education to seat at least one member aged 55+. No new data system, portal, registry, license, or disbursement is created or mandated; the act explicitly relies on existing platforms and a twice-yearly-meeting-plus-report cadence.
The act expands Colorado's biliteracy diploma endorsement and creates a new bilingualism endorsement. Local education providers (LEPs) may grant these endorsements to graduating students who demonstrate proficiency via coursework, GPA, AP/IB scores, nationally recognized tests, or an approved body of evidence. Critically, if a student's home LEP does not offer an endorsement, the student may obtain it from another LEP or a state institution of higher education; the home LEP must first be asked, may enter an inter-provider agreement, the issuing entity must send verification of completion back to both the student and the home LEP, and may charge a fee that the home LEP must pay. This implies cross-provider enrollment/eligibility tracking, endorsement-completion verification records exchanged between institutions, and inter-agency fee billing. CDE continues to review online applications verifying programs use approved coursework/assessments (per existing SB17-123 framework). All provisions are permissive ("may"), not mandatory.
Contingent on voter approval at the Nov 3, 2026 election, the bill lets the state retain TABOR-surplus revenue equal to state K-12 funding, deposits it in a new Children's Account, and creates a "positive factor" that raises school funding ~2%/year for ten years (FY2026-27 through FY2034-35). CDE annually calculates each district's New Formula District/Statewide Total Program and distributes the positive factor "in the same form and manner" as existing total-program payments. Districts may spend the positive factor ONLY on: increased teacher pay, teacher retention, smaller class sizes, and access to career/technical courses. The one genuine software hook: new C.R.S. 22-44-304(1)(g) requires that, commencing Aug 1, 2027, EACH local education provider post its actual positive-factor expenditures "in a format that can be downloaded and sorted, for free public access." The State Auditor must annually report how much excess revenue was retained and how it was spent (C.R.S. 24-77-304).
The act adds C.R.S. 25.5-5-428 and amends 27-50-404 to require two state agencies to each publish and maintain an "easily accessible" public list on their websites. HCPF must list secure transportation providers that have contracts with managed care entities; the BHA must list secure transportation providers that contract with Behavioral Health Administrative Services Organizations. Each list must include provider contact information (an active phone number or website). That is the entire operative mandate — a single web-published provider directory per agency. There is no application intake, licensing, verification, disbursement, case management, or data-warehousing requirement, and no reporting workflow beyond keeping the list current.
New CRS 10-16-112.7 requires any carrier, PBM, private utilization review organization, behavioral health administrative services organization, or managed care entity that uses an AI system for utilization review to file written disclosures with the Division of Insurance (DORA), DHS, or HCPF identifying: the review functions the AI performs, where in the process it is used, the human-oversight process and reviewer qualifications (a licensed clinician must approve any medical-necessity denial), and the process for maintaining audit information. The regulated entities (not the state) must produce and retain documentation, audit logs, and model-governance records to demonstrate compliance, and periodically review AI performance. DORA must promulgate rules and stand up a process to intake and review these disclosure filings. The bill also bars public and private payers (including Medicaid/CHP+) from paying for AI-delivered psychotherapy. Note: the state does NOT have to build any registry, database, or new system - the compliance/recordkeeping burden falls on private insurers.
The bill (effective Jan 1, 2027) layers new obligations onto an existing state program rather than standing up a new system. Landlords selling a park must, within statutory deadlines (14 calendar days for requests to the Division/AG/local governments/homeowner groups under new 38-12-217(14.5); 7 calendar days for offer responses and due-diligence packages under (5)), disclose extensive documentation: purchase-price basis, infrastructure age, 3 years of inspection/maintenance records, rent rolls "with personal identifying information redacted," operating income/expenses, beneficial-owner disclosures, and unredacted purchase-and-sale agreements. Municipal and county clerks are newly designated recipients of certified-mail notices of sale/closure/change-of-use (38-12-217(2)(a)(II)). DOLA's Division of Housing continues to administer and rule-set the annual per-home registration fee, with a new $17 cap on the portion a landlord may pass to residents. The government role is intake, review, redaction, and deadline-tracking of landlord filings/complaints - not building or disbursing anything new.
Implements 2025 sunset-report recommendations for DORA's Division of Professions and Occupations via narrow statutory tweaks to existing licensing processes. The Final Act: (1) lets a regulator delegate defined "administrative/ministerial tasks" to a designee (with delegated tasks by non-director regulators ratified at the next board/commission meeting; excludes disciplinary actions, show-cause hearings, and injunction applications); (2) extends the window for a licensee receiving a letter of admonition to request a hearing from 20 to 25 days; (3) authorizes DPO to send correspondence to licensees electronically; (4) converts the $1-per-renewal legal-defense excise tax into a $2 fee; and (5) allows engineer-interns, professional engineers, land surveyor-interns, and land surveyors to qualify for licensure by endorsement under certain conditions. No new system, portal, tracking database, or reporting deliverable is mandated -- these are procedural/definitional changes that DPO absorbs within its existing licensing operations (DPO already runs a cash-funded operation of ~$24.0M / 240.2 FTE serving ~340,000 regulated individuals and businesses).
Amends CRS 17-27-108 to require the Department of Public Safety (Division of Criminal Justice) to add a dedicated community-corrections budget request to its annual JBC budget submission (per 2-3-208). That request must compile and report structured data by judicial district: projected need for all placement types, factors driving need, how the requested appropriation/allocation relates to projected need, planned per-diem reimbursement rate changes, and a detailed projected allocation of appropriations — expected number of standard residential beds, nonresidential slots, and specialized beds (by type) with per-diem rates for each, by community corrections program, split by General Fund vs. non-General Fund sources (e.g., Correctional Treatment Cash Fund), plus fixed payments and community corrections board allocations. Also adds new statutory definitions (distribution of offender populations, program availability, projected need). Beginning January 2027 and every January thereafter, CDPS must present, as part of its SMART Act hearing (2-7-203), the identified differences between current offender-population distribution, program availability, and projected need. This is a recurring, data-heavy compilation/reporting mandate drawing on population projections, bed/slot inventories, per-diem rates, and DOC/court referral data across all judicial districts.
The compliance burden falls almost entirely on private transportation network companies (Uber/Lyft), not on government. TNCs must: procure recurring private criminal-history checks every 6 months for 35,000+ drivers; build opt-in audio/video ride recording into their platforms; enforce rating-integrity and biometric-consent rules; maintain a 3-year crash registry; and file an annual safety/discrimination incident report (by Feb 1, 2027 and each year after) to the PUC, Attorney General, and General Assembly. The PUC's own duties are narrow: adopt rules on deactivation-info sharing and (by June 1, 2028) recording access/storage; receive the annual TNC reports and the redacted crash reports; make those reports available to the public; review them for incident trends; and assess civil penalties up to $1,500/violation.
A 70-page omnibus bill implementing the Department of Law's 2026 SMART Act recommendations. It amends the Colorado Consumer Protection Act (rewriting deceptive-trade-practice definitions, repealing dozens of subsections), creates three advisory councils (Debt Collection; CCPA; Consumer Credit) that meet twice yearly and sunset in 2032, lets the AG request executive JBC sessions on litigation budget impacts, expands recoverable Medicaid-fraud enforcement costs (creating a False Medicaid Claims Recovery Fund), and requires the consumer-credit administrator to adopt rules on medical-debt interest by Dec 31, 2026. The "data-sharing" the triage flagged is Sec. 14 (6-1-116(4)): it merely PERMITS a state licensing authority to enter an interagency agreement with the AG to REFER consumer complaints and share information subject to approval by the department head - a discretionary referral pathway, not a mandate to build a data platform. Sec. 8 (6-1-104) references a pre-existing, permissive statewide complaint reporting system on AG-provided forms. No new system, database, portal, license, or disbursement platform is mandated.
CDOC must furnish a $100 "release allowance" (gate money) to every individual discharged from custody and track/report on it. By September 15, 2027, and each September 15 thereafter, CDOC must publish a report on its website (and deliver to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, plus present at its annual SMART Act hearing) containing: (a) number of individuals released in the prior fiscal year, (b) number and percentage who received the release allowance, (c) total dollars disbursed, and (d) any administrative/policy limitations on eligibility or disbursement. Separately, CDOC must operate the Colorado Offender Identification Program on an opt-out basis: confirm opt-out status 180 days before release, annually review records for every offender scheduled for release within the next five years to check for a valid state ID (including the offender ID bank), assist participants in obtaining a state ID / birth certificate / Social Security card, waive fees during the process, and file a second annual September 15 report on ID-issuance rates, ineligibility reasons, and barriers. Implementation touches release-data tracking, disbursement records, ID enrollment/opt-out workflow, and cross-agency data sharing with Revenue and CDPHE.
DORA regulates death-care professions under the Mortuary Science Code. The bill: (1) adds cremationists and natural reductionists as regulated categories throughout the code; (2) creates two new credential types DORA must issue/administer — an "associate license" (provisional, non-extendable/non-reinstatable practice credential) and a "license by endorsement" for funeral directors, cremationists, mortuary science practitioners, embalmers, and natural reductionists who meet the Occupational Credential Portability Program requirements; (3) requires funeral establishments to have a physical location and excludes brokers from registration; (4) expands class 1 misdemeanor violations and enforcement (letters of admonition, supervision/competency requirements); and (5) extends the sunset of cremation/mortuary science regulation from 2029 to 2031. On death records: licensed individuals who initiate, complete, respond to, or file a certificate of death must use the existing state electronic death registration system and now must provide their license number — this modifies an existing system (25-2-110) rather than mandating a new build.
The bill continues the Division of Real Estate and the Real Estate Commission for 11 years (extending the repeal date from Sept 1, 2026 to Sept 1, 2037) and makes incremental changes to the broker/subdivision-developer licensing program. Operationally, DORA must: (1) extend the waiting period to reapply for a license from one year to two years after revocation (a licensing-workflow rule change); (2) stand up a new fee-collection process to charge continuing-education course providers a per-submission fee (approx. $25) for CE course approvals; (3) authorize and administer electronic (email) correspondence to licensees, including developing protocols to ensure the security of electronic correspondence and define when it may be used; (4) allow a broker to license under a previously-used legal name; and (5) handle subpoena service and confidential-information disclosure changes. These map to configuration/rule updates in an existing licensing system rather than a net-new build.
HB26-1328 (new C.R.S. 25.5-1-802 through 806) reclassifies Medicaid NEMT as a medical service and builds a new oversight structure administered by HCPF through a contracted statewide transportation broker, phased in region by region. The broker (not HCPF) must operate technology systems for scheduling, real-time eligibility verification against HCPF's eligibility system, trip assignment, provider payment/claims, and customer support (25.5-1-804(2)(a)), provide free dispatch/telematics software to providers that auto-records GPS, times, routes, mileage, driver and vehicle (25.5-1-802(10)(k)), and support same-day/next-day booking. HCPF must promulgate rules for driver/vehicle/provider credentialing (non-credentialed trips are non-reimbursable), video dash-cam retention policies, billing/claim standards, and a complaint process; audit providers (as appropriations allow) and brokers (at least annually, possibly via third-party contractors) per 25.5-1-806; and submit savings reports to the JBC on Nov 1, 2026 and Nov 1, 2027. The broker must also stand up an unpaid, volunteer Transportation Community Advisory Board that meets quarterly with public agendas/minutes.
The act amends CRS 24-4-105 to permit (not require) state agencies to serve adjudicatory-hearing notices, initial decisions, and final decisions by electronic means "upon the documented request or consent of the person to be notified/party to be served," as an alternative to personal service or first-class mail. Practically this implies agencies need to capture and store a documented consent/request per party, deliver notices/decisions electronically, and track the electronic delivery date (which triggers the 30-day answer deadline and the effective date of decisions). No specific system, portal, registry, or reporting obligation is named, and no agency is directed to build anything — it simply adds electronic service as a lawful option.
The bill rewrites Colorado's higher-ed funding formula (CRS 23-18-302/303.5/306), renaming "performance funding" to "results-informed funding" and revising its eight metrics: crediting all students who earn 18 credits and transfer (not just community-college transfers), excluding co-located degree partnership students from the 150%-time graduation rate, switching "Pell-eligible" to "Pell-recipient," excluding concurrent-enrollment students from the resident Pell share, and adding part-time students to retention. CCHE, working with CDHE and the governing boards, must calculate each board's funding using rate-of-change math over four years of reported data. Critically, the bill mandates the metrics be sourced from CDHE's EXISTING student-unit record database ("SURDS") and requires CDHE to "ensure that the governing boards collect and report the data in a consistent manner." No new system is created or authorized — the work rides on internal data systems already in place. Sections 1-3 take effect Aug 1, 2026, applying to FY 2027-28 budgets.
The bill authorizes HCPF to use statistical sampling and extrapolation to recover Medicaid overpayments, rather than reviewing every claim. Specifically, for pediatric behavioral therapy and nonemergency medical transportation (NEMT) providers, HCPF audits a sample of claims from Jan 1, 2022-Dec 31, 2023, computes a statistical error rate, and extrapolates it across all of that provider's claims in the period; if a provider shows an error pattern exceeding 10 percent, the rate can be extended to claims through Dec 31, 2025. The bill establishes a defined procedure with provider notification requirements, an appeals process, and a mandatory review of the sampling/extrapolation methodology by the State Auditor each time it is used. The Final Act text also constrains how audit work is contracted (moving away from contingency-fee arrangements). This is fundamentally a Medicaid recovery-audit revenue mechanism, not a software-procurement mandate.
HCPF must stand up several new recurring data-collection and reporting flows. (1) Transportation providers/NEMT: each transportation broker must report to HCPF annually (by Dec 1, 2026 and each Dec 1 after) rides requested/completed/canceled, total cost of completed rides by procedure code, call volume and average member hold time, substantiated grievances, and providers terminated/on corrective-action or performance-improvement plans; HCPF must fold this into its annual SMART Act presentation starting Jan 1, 2027. (2) Community engagement compliance (federal Title XIX): State Board must adopt implementing rules by Jan 1, 2027, and beginning Mar 1, 2027 and monthly thereafter HCPF must publish on its website Medicaid applications/renewals approved and denied, ex parte (auto) renewals, 90-day reenrollment rate after denial, and any federally required data. (3) HCBS provider agencies serving >30 members must submit direct-care-cost-to-administrative-cost-ratio data (wages, benefits, payroll taxes, retention/training/operational costs, base-wage attestation) by Sept 30, 2027, and HCPF must report to the legislature by Dec 31, 2027. Also: 6-month notice plus a stakeholder meeting before any new multiple-procedure payment reduction for outpatient therapy; broadened reimbursement to any licensed/authorized MAT provider in jail settings; and qualified-noncitizen eligibility alignment.
The bill's primary effect is deregulatory: it removes the fixed requirement that CBI's InstaCheck (firearms background check) unit stay open at least 12 hours every calendar day and instead lets the CBI Director set operating hours that "best meet business needs," while continuously reviewing the unit's business-needs statistics to set those hours. CBI must still accept background-check submissions every day except Thanksgiving/Christmas and immediately queue requests. The one genuinely new obligation is a narrow annual report: on or before January 15 each year, CBI must report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees detailing (I) average background-check processing times, (II) any significant changes to operating hours, (III) system outages/disruptions that prevented submissions from being accepted, and (IV) steps taken to improve access and efficiency. There is no new portal, licensing system, disbursement mechanism, or public-facing platform mandated.
The bill (1) requires the Attorney General to submit a proposal to the POST Board by December 31, 2030, to update basic, reserve, and refresher law enforcement training academy programs (with a resubmission cycle if rejected); (2) expands the POST Board from 24 to 28 members and changes its composition (adds university police, community-college academy, law-enforcement academy, and reserve-officer representatives); (3) adds a minimum age of 21 as a basic certification requirement; (4) bars persons with revoked certifications from serving on the board or being approved as skills instructors / academy instructors (after Sept 1, 2026); and (5) makes training academy full-time instructors eligible to attend grant-funded POST certification classes. No new IT system, database, registry, or tracking/reporting platform is mandated by the Act. Existing POST certification, examination, and academy-approval processes continue but with tweaked eligibility rules; the Department of Law already provides annual analysis of POST training programs.
Three state processes with modest system needs: (1) BHA must create a process to solicit, review, and select up to 5 ibogaine research pilot sites based on a review committee's recommendations, assist sites with federal investigational-new-drug applications, and administer program/site reporting requirements plus an Ibogaine Research Pilot Program Cash Fund fed by gifts/grants/donations - an application-intake + panel-review + grantee-reporting workflow. (2) DOR must stand up a new "limited regulated natural medicine sales license" (co-located sales inside healing centers), set application fees, and enforce a statutory license-prioritization order (pilot participants, then Colorado-resident applicants, then priority-review-status applicants). (3) DORA adopts rules for medical prescreening, monitoring, oversight, and aftercare. All are new application/tracking/verification processes but at very low volume - the pilot is capped at 5 sites and DOR estimates only ~20 new sales-license applicants.
Counties electing commissioners by district must convene independent, party-balanced redistricting commissions (no sitting commissioners, no advisory committees) to develop and approve either one final map or at least three candidate maps for the board to adopt. Each commission must adopt a composite formula that measures each proposed district's competitiveness as a percentage, hold public hearings, and produce records supporting its plan. The act also creates a court-challenge process: any qualified elector may sue in district court to challenge an adopted plan, naming the board and commission as defendants. Districts are redrawn once per decade following the decennial census; the next cycle runs off the 2030 U.S. Census.
The BHA licenses behavioral health entities and currently must receive a fire-safety certificate of compliance from the Division of Fire Prevention and Control (DFPC) before issuing or renewing a license. HB26-1116 modifies this: (1) telehealth-only applicants are exempted from the certificate requirement, and (2) outpatient-only applicants may satisfy it via an inspection by a local fire department employing a certified inspector, rather than DFPC. The BHA must take action on a complete license application within 30 days of receiving all required documentation. The bill also extends the post-discharge follow-up window for mental health holds from 48 to 72 hours (excluding weekends/holidays), a facility operational change with no BHA system component. Effective August 12, 2026 (assuming no referendum petition).
By July 2029, CDPHE's Air Quality Control Division must propose a final rule limiting nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide emissions for covered coal-fired electric generating units (utility-owned, in Colorado, emitting 200+ tons of NOx/SO2 in 2024) that continue operating on or after Dec 31, 2034. Owners/operators of covered units must submit QUARTERLY emission reports to the Air Quality Control Division demonstrating compliance; the Division must review those reports and report to the General Assembly on plants still operating. Units under a federal continuance order must report to the PUC every 90 days on operating cost and electrical output. Utilities must include compliance cost in electric resource plans filed with the PUC. Crucially, the reporting/compliance burden falls on private and municipal utilities, not on a government agency building a new system — CDPHE's role is limited to rulemaking and periodic report review within existing resources.
Covered "testing entities" — now including any person, business, or state/local government agency offering exams or courses for secondary/postsecondary education or professional/trade licensing, certification, or credentialing — must offer those exams/courses in a place and manner accessible to individuals with disabilities, or offer alternative accessible arrangements, and must grant an individual's request for a testing accommodation on a licensing exam. There is no requirement to build a system, report to a state authority, or license/register anything; compliance is a legal duty enforced via private lawsuit (the bill was prompted by Dunn v. National Board of Medical Examiners). No agency is directed to procure or deploy software.
The act amends C.R.S. 38-30.7-106 governing light-mitigating (aircraft-detection) technology at wind facilities. It expands the federal approvals an owner/operator must obtain from just the FAA to the FAA, FCC, and any other applicable federal agency, and it retools the local extension-of-time process. The local government governing body must (1) receive and process owner/operator requests for extensions of time to install the technology, (2) grant extensions of AT LEAST 24 months (up from a cap of up to 24 months), and (3) MANDATORILY grant an extension whenever the operator shows commercially reasonable efforts were constrained by technology availability/circumstances outside their control OR when final FAA/FCC/other federal approval is delayed. During any granted extension the local board may not impose penalties. Applies to applications and extension requests pending on/after the effective date. No new state agency role; implementation is entirely at the local land-use/permitting level, effectively a tracking task tied to federal approval timelines.
The bill amends the Uniform Antitrust Pre-Merger Notification Act (C.R.S. 6-4.5). Filers of a Hart-Scott-Rodino pre-merger notification must file a complete electronic copy with the Attorney General within one business day. The AG must (1) provide a "secure means to receive and store" the submitted materials (C.R.S. 6-4.5-103(d)); (2) keep filings confidential; (3) support interstate sharing with other states' AGs that have equivalent confidentiality laws and provide written assurances (6-4.5-104/105); (4) give the filer 5 business days' notice before any disclosure (up from 2); and (5) destroy or return all submitted materials no later than 120 days after the later of the transaction close or conclusion of related legal proceedings (6-4.5-105(e)). It also adds a written-notice + 3-business-day cure period before the AG may seek the up-to-$10,000/day civil penalty. This is a records intake, confidential secure storage, deadline-tracked retention/destruction, and interstate data-sharing workflow concentrated entirely in the Department of Law.
Almost every operative provision is conditional on voter approval of ballot Initiative 175 at the November 2026 election. If the initiative is withdrawn/not filed, the bill only directs CDOT to contract a neutral facilitator and run a transportation-funding working group that meets biweekly (June-Nov 2026), files reports (Sept 7 and Nov 13, 2026), and self-repeals July 1, 2027 — no lasting system need. If Initiative 175 passes: (1) it creates the Support Road Transportation Fund, which the State Treasurer must apportion monthly (60% state highway / 23% counties / 17% municipalities) with monthly reconciliation of state, county, and municipal accounts using estimates the Dept. of Revenue supplies by the 7th working day of each month; (2) it creates the Road Enterprise authorized to impose permit fees on oversize/overweight vehicles and longer vehicle combinations starting Jan 1, 2027 — but the statute explicitly assigns collection, administration, and enforcement of those fees to CDOT/DOR through the EXISTING excess-size/weight permit statutes (CRS 42-4-505 and 42-4-510) and the existing DRIVES system, not a new platform; and (3) it adjusts numerous fuel-tax and registration-fee rates that DOR implements via rate-field changes in DRIVES. No new permitting portal, licensing platform, procurement system, or open-data build is mandated — the work lands inside entrenched state systems (DRIVES, CDOT finance software, Treasury accounting).
The act makes a single, narrow amendment to CRS 12-20-202(3)(b)(I): it adds "another country" to the existing list of jurisdictions (other states, U.S. territories, federal government) whose credential holders can apply to Colorado's existing Occupational Credential Portability Program. It does NOT create a new pathway or system — it extends an already-operating program run by DORA's Division of Professions and Occupations to internationally trained applicants and grants DORA additional authority to determine credential equivalency. Individual professional boards must update rules and application materials, process additional endorsement applications, verify foreign credential equivalency, and route applicants through existing fingerprint-based background checks. Covers ~30 licensed professions (physicians, nurses, CPAs, engineers, architects, cosmetologists, therapists, etc.). Applies to applications filed on or after the effective date.
The act reorganizes how HCPF/CHASE distributes hospital incentive payments: it ends the Hospital Transformation Program and reshapes the existing Hospital Quality Incentive Payment (HQIP) Program. Before implementation, the CHASE board must approve the reimbursement percentage, program structure, performance measures, and scoring methodology; new measures must remain fixed for up to three years before modification/replacement (with exceptions), and any modifications require prior board approval. Performance-based payments are computed annually and capped at 7% of prior-year hospital reimbursements, rising to no more than 9% only once the board formally approves an HQIP program. Metrics must align with nationally recognized standards (CMS, AHRQ, NQF) and must minimize administrative burden by avoiding duplicative reporting and leveraging existing data sources. The board continues an existing annual (Jan 15) written report to legislative committees describing program structure and results. No new IT system, portal, registry, or procurement is mandated; this operates within CHASE's existing enterprise/reporting machinery.
CDHS must stand up a new competitive grant program: develop program guidelines and award criteria with the Advisory Council; intake grant applications from eligible entities (local governments, school districts/local education providers, higher-ed institutions, tribes, nonprofits), each including a community economic-mobility needs assessment, partnership proposal, and comprehensive proposal; review and score applications; route a recommended award list to the Council for approve/disapprove within 20 days; award four-year grants (with 1-2 year extension option) and disburse from a cash fund; approve subcontractor/formal-partnership arrangements; develop performance indicators; collect annual grantee performance reports (individuals served, demographics, services delivered) beginning Oct 1, 2028; and submit an annual summarized report to the legislature and Governor by Dec 31, 2028 and each year thereafter. Grantees themselves may also build "shared data systems that track student progress," but that is a permitted grantee use of funds, not a CDHS-built system.
Creates a time-limited (three-year window) post-conviction relief process. Inmates who are at least 60 years old and have served at least 20 years may petition the trial court for resentencing (with exclusions for sex offenses, human trafficking, LWOP, victims under 12, and offenses against first responders unless the prosecution agrees). District attorneys may also petition for otherwise-ineligible individuals and request court-appointed counsel. Courts must intake and docket the new petition type, schedule and hold evidentiary and resentencing hearings under statutory timelines, apply the petitioner's burden of proof, and issue modified sentences (ranging from at least 25 years up to the original sentence, including up to 5 years parole or alternative/stipulated sentences). CDOC must maintain eligibility/sentencing records and support cases. The Judicial Department is statutorily required to report the number of petitions filed and the number of sentences imposed.
Amends the Victim Rights Act to add new victim rights and tracking obligations that touch court and DA case workflows. (1) New "critical stages" requiring victim notification: receipt by a DA of notice that a crime-lab employee engaged in wrongful action (16-12-307), evidentiary hearings on post-conviction petitions for relief (16-12-312), and restitution assessment hearings (18-1.3-603). DAs must notify victims by personal service or registered mail, as soon as practicable but no later than 91 days after receiving crime-lab notice or before trial. (2) A new right for victims to be referred to by an abbreviation, pseudonym, initials, or preferred name during hearings, which the Judicial Department must capture in its case management database and DA offices must reflect in the ACTION system. (3) DAs must additionally inform victims of the crime-lab-misconduct notice, the post-conviction evidentiary hearing, and the right to request a preferred name. (4) Clarifies that a child's or at-risk adult's lawful representative/designee cannot be the defendant or alleged offender. Effective August 12, 2026.
Two mandates. (1) License-plate transfer: DOR must reprogram the existing statewide DRIVES vehicle-services system (new C.R.S. 42-3-115(5)(a)) to let owners transfer any regular numbered plate between two vehicles they own, effective Jan 1, 2028. (2) New C.R.S. 42-1-238 requires DOR to develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive contingency / continuity-of-operations plan for disruptions in vehicle licensing operations by Dec 31, 2027 (repealed July 1, 2029). The plan must identify critical licensing functions and resources; establish backup, recovery, and reconstitution procedures for systems and services; designate contingency roles; identify alternate processing sites; and be tested and reviewed/enhanced annually. It must be built through consultation with, and unanimous acceptance by, a 10-year-old county clerks association and OIT; OIT must provide network and equipment support. DOR must adopt implementing rules.
DOR must, via rulemaking by July 1, 2027, calculate two new quarterly "average market rate" categories (fresh frozen indoor and fresh frozen outdoor unprocessed retail marijuana) used to compute the 15% excise tax on affiliated cultivator transfers. New CRS 39-28.8-201.5 additionally requires DOR to publish, for each average-market-rate category, a general description of the methodology and data sources used to calculate the rate, while shielding confidential/proprietary information. DOR already performs this quarterly calculation and publishes rates on its existing "Average Market Rate" web page; the bill adds two categories plus a methodology-disclosure obligation.
Creates the Retail Theft Prevention Advisory Board and Retail Theft Prevention Grant Program in the Division of Criminal Justice (CRS 24-33.5-540). The advisory board must: set grant application deadlines/award dates/criteria and frequency of review; review applications and award grants to eligible entities; collect and analyze data on organized felony-level retail theft and gift-card fraud trends, losses, prosecutions and outcomes; and develop policy recommendations. Eligible entities apply to the board under rules adopted by the Division; the board reviews and disburses awards. Grant funds may be used to develop or invest in technology, data-sharing systems, and analytics tools to analyze retail-theft/gift-card-fraud metrics, plus investigation/prosecution, training, and prevention. The Division must report annually (recipients, grant amounts, grantee outcome/performance metrics, case counts and case outcomes from DAs/AG) at its SMART Act hearing beginning January 2028. Board appointments by Sept 1, 2026; first meeting by Nov 1, 2026. Program repeals Nov 1, 2029.
The bill continues the existing Barber and Cosmetology Act (which regulates ~71,060 licensed individuals and ~580 registered businesses) from its September 1, 2026 repeal date to September 1, 2033. It makes only housekeeping changes: repeals the six-member advisory committee, updates definitions of barbering/cosmetology/esthetician/hairstyling, and adds new exemptions (mortuary science professionals, cosmetic tattoo/microblading artists, electrologists, theatrical/film hair-and-makeup, at-home color prep, nonprofit free haircuts, correctional-facility services, makeup application, and nail polishing). DORA's Division of Professions and Occupations continues to license practitioners, administer examinations (which the director now revises without the committee), process renewals, and pursue discipline. No new licensing category, system, portal, or reporting mandate is created; DORA operates existing licensing infrastructure unchanged.
The Final Act continues the Office of Combative Sports and Commission (renaming the statute the "Colorado Combative Sports Safety Act") until September 1, 2037, and broadens regulation from boxing to all combative sports (kickboxing, MMA, Muay Thai, martial arts, and others the commission designates by rule). Concrete new duties: (1) the office director must "gather data related to ensuring the health and safety of participants" and provide it to the commission (new 12-110-110(3)(a)(IV)), and the commission must review/consider that safety data when adopting health-and-safety rules (new 12-110-107(1.1)); (2) the commission must identify by rule which combative sports are covered (12-110-107(1.5)); (3) DORA continues issuing licenses/permits for participants, corners, officials, promoters, judges, and referees (FY23-24 volume: 1,744 licensees and 41 event permits); (4) a new disciplinary ground allows action against a licensee/applicant who fails to respond to a complaint letter within the specified time (12-110-111(1)(i)); and (5) a new prohibition bars promoters/matchmakers from holding a financial interest in a participant's management. Statute repeal date extended from 9/1/2026 to 9/1/2037.
Bills with no plausible software angle, or that were screened out after a full fiscal-note read. Useful for spot-checking what got dropped.