Lawmakers meet for brief session

The Colorado General Assembly held an abbreviated start to its 2021 session, meeting for three days last week to work on time-sensitive legislation that can’t wait until Feb. 16.

That’s when the session is expected to resume. Lawmakers recessed on Jan. 15 for a little more than a month, in hopes that COVID-19 vaccines will be well underway and that the pandemic will have started to lessen by then.

Lawmakers who want vaccines started getting them last week, under the phased approach that allows them to receive vaccines to ensure continuity of government operations.

The three-day session between Jan. 13 and 15 saw seven bills passed and sent to the governor. Several of them fixed problems with laws from the 2020 regular session that ended in June and from the special session that took place at the end of November.

Gov. Jared Polis has also postponed his state of the state address until lawmakers return in February.

While lawmakers will be out of the Capitol until mid-February, they’ll be expected to work on interim activities during that time. It’s not a vacation, according to leaders.

Those activities include SMART Act hearings, which are when state agencies meet with their oversight committees. The Joint Budget Committee also will be meeting during the interim and is already in hearings for the 2021-22 state budget.

7 bills head to governor

Six of the seven bills adopted in last week’s session passed with bipartisan support.

House Bill 1001 aimed to allow remote participation in party committee meetings. Both the Republican and Democratic party will hold reorganization meetings in the coming weeks, in part to elect new party leaders, and the bill will allow party members to join in those meetings via the internet.

House Bill 1002, on tax liability, fixes two errors in a law that came out of the 2020 regular session. House Bill 20-1420 allowed certain businesses to deduct excess losses that stem from the pandemic. The original bill, however, incorrectly put in the wrong timelines for those deductions, when lawmakers had intended to allow those deductions to be taken for a five-year period.

The 2020 bill also made an error tied to the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit. The 2020 bill accidentally delayed a state credit for I-10 filers. Those are people who file tax returns but don’t have Social Security numbers, such as undocumented immigrants. The original bill delayed that credit until the 2021 tax filing year, when the intention was to allow it for 2020.

House Bill 1003 was on legislative proceedings during a disaster emergency. Its main intention was to allow remote participation by lawmakers in committee meetings while the disaster emergency is still ongoing. But the bill ran into trouble over another section, on allowing per diem for lawmakers who participate remotely.

Per diem is daily pay that lawmakers collect to cover expenses, such as housing in Denver during the session, a critical need for lawmakers who live a long way from Denver. It can also be used for other non-mileage expenses. Lawmakers who live further than 50 miles from Denver collect $219 per day during the session; those who live within 50 miles get $45 per day.

The rates also apply during the time that the General Assembly is in recess; rural lawmakers have pointed out that even though the Legislature may be in recess, they still have to pay for their Capitol-area housing, not a small expense.

Per diem is not automatically granted to lawmakers. It’s up to each lawmaker to claim it on a monthly basis.

That part of the bill ran into trouble in the state Senate, under objections from state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, who asked why per diem was being included in the bill when someone participating remotely — assuming the person is participating from home — has little or no expenses.

State Sen. Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City, said that per diem has evolved beyond expenses, given that there are no requirements for expenses receipts required when requesting it. But “I think it will be an important conversation for the Legislature going forward, and broader than what this bill proposes to do.”

Sonnenberg noted that mileage is handled separately but per diem was set up to cover meals and housing. “We should probably look into this,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, later agreed to remove that section from the bill. House Bill 3 was the only bill that did not get bipartisan support from the House and passed on a 41-23 party-line vote. It did, however, pass on a 31-2 vote in the state Senate.

House Bill 1004 allows for remote notarization of wills. The General Assembly last year passed a law allowing for remote notarization of other legal documents, but wills were left out.

Senate Bill 1 fixes a portion of a pandemic relief bill that came out of the special session. That measure, on pandemic relief for small businesses, carved out a section for minority-owned businesses. That earned the state a lawsuit from a Colorado Springs barber, a white man who claimed the bill did not justify the relief. Senate Bill 1 made the criteria for minority-owned businesses part of a longer list of criteria that small businesses can use to obtain those dollars.

Senate Bill 2 extended a moratorium deadline for “extraordinary” debt collection. That’s garnishment and other forms of collection stemming from court judgments. The deadline was due to expire on Feb. 1, but the bill pushed it out to June 1.

Senate Bill 3 fixes an error in the state’s occupational therapy practice act. That technical error caused the act — and by extension, the licenses that occupational therapists operate with — to expire last year.

All seven bills are now awaiting signature from the governor.