BY: SARA WILSON – MARCH 3, 2023
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and a group of Democratic lawmakers introduced a slate of new bills Thursday they say are meant to reduce health care costs in the state.

The bills would reduce premiums for Colorado Option plans, lower prescription drug costs and work to increase transparency for hospital profits.

“Saving people money on healthcare has been a top priority for me since Day One, and it’s a big challenge,” Polis, a Democrat, said. “We want to pound away on it every year, to find every cost driver and address it to make sure Coloradans stop having to overpay for prescription drugs, hospital care and the health care that they need.”

House Bill 23-1224 would work to improve the Colorado Option, the state-regulated plan offered by private insurers that passed last year. The bill would lower premiums by making it easier for consumers to shop for plans, requiring the development of a method for displaying the standardized plans.

“The Colorado Option is a marquee piece of legislation and a marquee law in our healthcare platform and I’m incredibly pleased with the progress we’ve made on it,” bill sponsor Sen. Dylan Roberts of Avon said. The bill is also backed by Democratic Reps. Iman Jodeh of Aurora and Kyle Brown of Louisville.

The bill also empowers the state’s insurance commissioner to hold carriers accountable for the cost reduction requirements within Colorado Option standardized plans.

Another bill, House Bill 23-1225, addresses the state’s prescription drug affordability board. It would allow the board to review any number of expensive prescription drugs instead of only a dozen as outlined in the legislation that created the board.

The board, which has not yet reviewed the costs of any drugs, has the authority to set an upper payment limit if it determines that a certain drug is unaffordable for Coloradans.

“There are thousands of medications on the market. Limiting it to 12 makes no sense,” bill sponsor state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis of Longmont said. The bill is also sponsored by Reps. Chris deGruy Kennedy of Lakewood and Ruby Dickson of Greenwood Village.

A third bill, House Bill 23-1227, would give more oversight power to the state’s Division of Insurance over pharmacy benefit managers. It would require PBMs to register with the state and require health insurers to pay a fee when filing a list with the insurance commissioner of the PBMs they use.

The bill specifies that the division has the power to enforce certain requirements over PBMs. PBMs are prohibited from, among other things, requiring patients to get medications through the mail, modifying a drug formulary during the plan year and not allowing pharmacists to tell patients about more affordable drug options. It is sponsored by Jodeh, Rep. David Ortiz of Centennial and Republican Sen. Perry Will of New Castle.

“In some cases, PBMs are coming between consumers, health insurance plans, pharmacies and manufacturers while making very, very large profits. PBMs can be a part of the plan to save Coloradans money on prescription drugs, but they have to follow the rules,” Jodeh, one of the bill sponsors, said.

Lawmakers highlighted other pieces of health care cost saving legislation:

• HB23-1226 would enhance current hospital financial transparency reporting in an effort to highlight what is driving up hospital costs in the state. It is sponsored by Republican Rep. Matt Soper of Delta, deGruy Kennedy, Roberts and Will.
• A yet to be introduced bill from Democratic Rep. Judy Amabile would require a minimum level of community investment by nonprofit hospitals.

Read more at ColoradoNewsLine.com

By Marianne Goodland (February 21, 2023)

The first of three bills attempting to deal once again with fentanyl won approval from a House panel on Tuesday.

House Bill 1167, which applies to the state’s Good Samaritan law, attempts to fix problems that the sponsor said came out of last year’s omnibus legislation on the deadly drug.

As amended by last year’s House Bill 1326, the law now says individuals are immune from arrest and prosecution if they report an overdose to law enforcement or first responders, stay on the scene and cooperate. 

But fentanyl was not included in the right place in the Good Samaritan law, and supporters of HB1167 say that could create felony charges for someone possessing drugs who are trying to do the right thing.

Right now, “people are very afraid to call” for fear of those charges, according to Lisa Raville of the Harm Reduction Action Center.

“We broke the Good Samaritan” law, bill sponsor Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy told Colorado Politics. “We created a new felony fentanyl possession law.”

That, he said, wasn’t intended.

Fentanyl, used legitimately as a medical anesthetic, is a synthetic opioid that has become a dominant player in the illicit market, and it’s increasingly being mixed into other substances. It’s cheaper and produces a stronger, more fleeting “high,” according to experts. But its potency in small quantities makes it unlike any other substance that preceded it in the drug supply, spurring heated debate about how to address it.

On the one hand, advocates like Raville argue that further criminalization won’t improve the situation. On the other hand stands law enforcers and their allies, who say policymakers should treat fentanyl like “the deadly” substance it is.   

No one testified against deGruy Kennedy’s bill in the House Judiciary Committee.

Raville told the committee that people who use drugs are the “true first responders” in an overdose crisis if they have access to naloxone. They’re also the primary witnesses to overdoses but they have a lot of good reasons to not engage with 911 — and the biggest is fear of law enforcement, Raville said, adding last year’s bill eroded the Good Samaritan law.

“We need people to stay” on hand and cooperate, she said.

To highlight the fear people have about calling 911, Aubrey Wild with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless told the story of a man who was recently released from jail and overdosed. Someone called 911 with directions on where to find the man, who was passed out in an alley. He survived, but Wild said it shows the fear that people have of sticking around to wait for law enforcers or first responders or even taking life-saving action during an overdose related medical emergency.

Had the caller stayed with the man, the 911 dispatcher could have walked the caller through emergency assistance, Wild said.

Others haven’t been so lucky, she said.

Tessa Torgesen, who works with people who use drugs by distributing sterile syringes, safe injection supplies, fentanyl test strips and Narcan, said she is seeing firsthand how the weakening of the Good Samaritan law has harmed the progress made in overdose prevention — occurring at a time when overdose deaths are on the rise nationwide.

She recounted the story of a woman whose husband overdosed but didn’t call 911 for fear of being arrested because she possessed fentanyl and her husband was on probation for felony drug charges.

It’s more important now than ever for people who use drugs to feel safe calling 911, said Torgesen, whose own life was saved with Narcan.

The harm reduction community — whose members advocate for intervention programs and oppose tougher penalties for crimes — raised immediate concerns once the legislature adopted the fentanyl legislation last year, said Jose Esquibel, who is with the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention.

The law did not link the call Good Sam law to the new penalties for possession, he said, adding his group had to put out an alert to its coalition that the Good Sam law did not apply to fentanyl.

One group that stayed away from the hearing was the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, which is divided on the bill, according to Tim Lane.

However, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann spoke in favor of the measure and affirmative defense, the section that has caused some heartburn for district attorneys. 

Under HB 1167, a person who is charged with distribution of less than four grams of fentanyl but stays on the scene of an overdose has an affirmative defense that can be used if the dealer is prosecuted.

McCann said prosecutors don’t want drug dealers to avoid prosecution but that the intent is really around sharing drugs, not dealing them.

The bill focuses “on situations where people are providing drugs to a friend or a girlfriend, boyfriend, and they are using them together with the intention of consuming the drugs,” and then someone overdoses, she said.

In those kinds of situations, McCann said it’s unlikely a person would be prosecuted.

“It’s more important to come down on the side of saving lives, given the immediacy of an overdose situation,” McCann said. “Although I know there are some in the DA community who are not particularly enamored with this bill, I believe that it’s more important to allow us to save lives in these very difficult” and sad situations.

McCann added they still intend to prosecute those who are involved in widespread distribution.

Broadly speaking, advocates of tougher penalties to crime, particularly the distribution of fentanyl, argue that the state’s lenient approach is contributing to Colorado’s grim overdoses.

Last year, Deputy Chief Adrian Vasquez of the Colorado Springs police department told a House panel that any possession of fentanyl should be a felony, that there is no “relatively safe amount of fentanyl” and public policy should demonstrate its seriousness.

In pushing for the 2022 legislation, supporters of tougher penalties said even one pill can kill and argued there’s no middle ground when dealing with a substance as deadly as fentanyl. 

They said users often don’t know what they’re taking and fentanyl also puts first responders at risk.

Monday marked the one-year anniversary of the deaths of five people in a Commerce City apartment.

Police Chief Gregory Sadar, who also represents the state’s chiefs of police association, asked for an amendment to exempt manufacturers and dealers from the Good Samaritan law.

“Expanding the immunity to those who manufacture and distribute the drug is problematic for us,” Sadar said.

“We continue in Colorado to take a more and more permissive position towards drug use,” said Sadar, who added that it leads to the overdose crisis. “We want to make sure we take a position that incentivize people to call.”

“But it’s also a sad commentary,” he added, that people have to be incentivized to save their neighbors.

HB 1167 was amended at deGruy Kennedy’s behest to exempt the manufacturers, although that drew opposition from two committee Democrats. The bill passed on a 10-2 vote and now heads to the full House.

A second bill on fentanyl that intends to address the issue of “knowingly” possessing fentanyl, sponsored by House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, R-Wellington, was pulled from the committee’s schedule.

The third bill dealing with fentanyl is in the state Senate.

Sponsored by Sens. Kyle Mullica, D-Thornton and Byron Pelton, R-Sterling, Senate Bill 109 seeks to create a level 1 drug felony, along with mandatory sentencing, for controlled substance distribution that results in death. It’s similar to a provision in HB 1326, but SB 109 applies to more than just fentanyl.

The measure, which is supported by the Colorado District Attorney’s Council, is scheduled for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 6.

Read more at ColoradoPolitics.com

New bill would cover fentanyl users, drug sharers who try to stop an overdose

By Seth Klamann (Feb 3, 2023) 

A bill introduced in the Colorado House late Thursday would expand a state law that provides immunity to drug users who try to save someone from overdosing, after those same protections were inadvertently undermined by lawmakers during last year’s fight over fentanyl legislation.

The bill would fix that apparent oversight, made when legislators tightened penalties for fentanyl possession in 2022. But it would also expand those immunity protections, available under the state’s Good Samaritan law, to users who report an overdose of other illicit substances but were found to have shared drugs, and the measure would also provide an additional legal defense to some accused low-level dealers.

Supporters, like bill sponsor Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, cast the changes as common-sense solutions intended to save lives and work within the realities of drug use: At low levels, the lines between user and seller are often blurred, and calling for help should be encouraged whenever possible.

But law enforcement and district attorneys indicated they’re leery of some of the changes deGruy Kennedy, a Lakewood Democrat, is proposing.

Though representatives for those groups told The Denver Post late Thursday that they’re still examining the bill’s impact, law enforcement spent much of the last legislative session calling for tight penalties for anyone convicted of dealing fentanyl and other drugs, citing the state’s ongoing overdose crisis.

The diverging views of substance use and how to structure state laws to address it echo that bruising legislative fight, which pit public health experts against law enforcement groups and stretched across two contentious months. Ultimately, lawmakers last year lowered the threshold to charge users with felony, rather than misdemeanor, fentanyl possession.

Through that work, lawmakers essentially made a special carveout for fentanyl possession, distinct from Colorado’s broader felony drug framework. In turn, that cut some users out of the state’s Good Samaritan law, which deGruy Kennedy said was the result of lawmakers working on a large piece of legislation at the 11th hour last May.

The top Republican in the House, Minority Leader Mike Lynch, who was a vocal supporter of increasing penalties last year, was unavailable for comment Thursday.

“The bill will make sure that people that are calling in an overdose event to try to save a life, who stay on scene and fully cooperate with law enforcement, are not going to face harsh penalties for choosing to do the right thing,” deGruy Kennedy said.

That cleanup is largely noncontroversial for the constellation of law enforcement, district attorneys and harm-reduction advocates monitoring the bill. There’s more disagreement with how the measure would apply to drug sharing and to certain low-level drug dealers.

The bill would extend the Good Samaritan law to a person who reports an overdose to 911 and cooperates, but was subsequently found to have shared drugs with others. It wouldn’t give immunity to any drug dealers, but if someone who called 911 is suspected of selling small quantities of drugs, they could use that cooperation with first responders as a defense at any subsequent trial.

“What we’re really talking about, in the vast majority of cases, are going to be buddies getting together to share drugs, which may involve splitting the cost of drugs that one of them purchased, which would trigger a distribution crime,” deGruy Kennedy said. “To be clear, they are culpable of a crime in that case, but what I want to assert is that they need to prioritize saving the life of the person overdosing as opposed to running from the police.”

A coalition of Colorado law enforcement groups is still examining the bill but has concerns about the distribution and sharing provisions, a representative said Thursday. Tom Raynes, the executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys Council, said prosecutors are in a similar position.

District attorneys for Denver, Adams and Broomfield counties — with whom deGruy Kennedy said he consulted in crafting the bill — were unavailable for comment late Thursday afternoon.

Experts in substance use, like the Harm Reduction Action Center’s Lisa Raville, have long maintained that sharing drugs and pooling money are common among substance users and don’t fit neatly into drug laws. Raville, whose Denver facility provides clean needles and smoking kits to substance users, praised the bill on Thursday.

She said the new fentanyl penalties enacted last year had discouraged many substance users from calling 911.

“It was very clear that folks were very concerned,” she said. “There was no good message, no one could feel confident in calling 911, so they simply weren’t. As the largest provider of harm reduction services in the state, I could not feel confident for them to call 911 either.”

Read more at DenverPost.com

By HANNAH METZGER hannah.metzger@coloradopolitics.com Dec 12, 2022

State Rep. Chris Kennedy has been appointed to serve as speaker pro tempore for the Colorado House of Representatives during the upcoming legislative session.

Incoming House Speaker Julie McCluskie picked Kennedy, D-Lakewood, and announced the appointment on Monday.

“Kennedy’s institutional knowledge, proven leadership and dedication to making Colorado a better place for everyone are exactly why he will make an excellent speaker pro tempore,” McCluskie said. “Kennedy has stepped up to fight for Coloradans, their families and the caucus values we all share. Chris will make a wonderful addition to our new leadership team and I could not be happier to have him take on this important role.”

As speaker pro tempore, Kennedy will preside over the House when the speaker is absent. Speaker pro tempore is one of the only leadership positions appointed by the speaker instead of being elected by the majority caucus.

Kennedy has served in the House since 2017, being reelected for his fourth and final term in November.

Secretary of State approves recount in Colorado’s House District 43 race
ELECTIONS
Secretary of State approves recount in Colorado’s House District 43 race
By HANNAH METZGER hannah.metzger@coloradopolitics.com

Kennedy ran for House speaker in November, losing out to McCluskie, D-Dillon, after being eliminated in the first of two rounds of voting. Kennedy has been angling for party leadership for years, serving as assistant majority leader during the 72nd General Assembly and losing the role of majority leader to Rep. Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo, in 2020.

Kennedy is the outgoing chair of the State, Civic, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. During the upcoming session, he will serve as vice chair of the Health and Insurance Committee and as a member of the Finance Committee.

“I am humbled and excited to take on the role of speaker pro tempore,” Kennedy said. “Throughout my years at the Capitol, I have taken on a variety of roles and responsibilities and I’m incredibly proud of everything we’ve achieved together for the people of Colorado. In this new role, I will have the honor of joining the most diverse leadership team in House history to help guide and support the work that lies ahead as we take on the state’s most significant challenges.”

The state’s 74th General Assembly is scheduled to convene on Jan. 9.

Read the story at ColoradoPolitics.com.

By Shaun Boyd (May 18, 2022) 

DENVER (CBS4) – At Tepeyac Community Health Center, “treating the whole the person” is not just some catchphrase, it’s a core function of the clinic located in Denver’s Globeville neighborhood. It has an equal number of doctors and therapists, and Clinic Director Dr. Pamela Valenza says they often tag-team.

“And then a behavioral health provider will then go into that room and meet with the patient in real time when they came in just to see their doctor,” Valenza said.

That seamless handoff, from medical to mental health provider, has become the model in health care and a new law will help expand it statewide. The law, signed on Wednesday by Gov. Jared Polis, provides $35 million in grants over the next two years and another $4 million the following two years to help create more so-called integrated care practices where patients can see a medical provider and mental health provider in the same visit.

“We know what best practice is. We just have to expand it to the rest of the state,” said Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, who co-sponsored the bill with Representative Chris Kennedy after a pilot program showed success.

In 2015, the state received federal grant money to facilitate the merger of about 350 primary care clinics and behavioral health practices. A federal study found more people got therapy and fewer were hospitalized as a result of integrated care. So, when Colorado received millions of dollars in COVID relief, Jaquez Lewis and Kennedy decided to expand the delivery model across the state.

“We believe this is such fundamental thing to creating a better more inclusive health care system,” said Kennedy.

Tepeyac Community Health Center is ahead of its time. Valenza says they began integrated care about 10 years ago.

“If you’re going to a health center that doesn’t have integrated care, what you get is a referral. And, if that patient might call, and they might have a 3-4 month waiting list.”

Many of Tepeyac’s patients, she says, couldn’t even get on the waitlists because they’re uninsured or underinsured. Even those with insurance have trouble accessing therapists.

Jaquez Lewis says the bill helps create true parity in health care.

“We will be able to integrate physical health care immediately with behavioral health care.”

While $39 million is a lot of money, Valenza says it will pay off in the long run.

“When we prevent hospitalizations, that person will be a more functioning person able to hold a job so it really has ripples across the socio-economic plane.”

The legislature allocated $450 million for behavioral health care during the 2022 session to, among other things, incentivize more people to become therapists and increase the number of residential treatment beds in the state.

This Thursday is Mental Health Action Day, and CBS News Colorado is streaming a Community Conversation on Mental Health. You can catch the special right after CBS4 News at 6 p.m. on May 19.

CBS News Colorado is partnering with MTV on “Mental Health is Health” seeking to improve mental health in our community by normalizing conversation about mental health, sharing resources, and highlighting groups taking action to help others thrive.

Read more at Denver.CBSLocal.com

House Bill 1244 targets emissions of 188 ‘air toxics’ overlooked by the EPA

By Chase Woodruff (May 9, 2022)

A coalition of environmental and community groups is urging Colorado lawmakers to back a “must pass” air pollution bill, as the clock winds down on the legislative session and a host of powerful corporate interests quietly mobilize against it.

The House of Representatives passed House Bill 22-1244 on a 41-24 vote Friday, with all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed. The bill would impose new rules on polluters and establish a new state program to address the emission of “air toxics,” a class of pollutants that advocates say are under-regulated at the federal level.

“Some of our most disproportionately impacted communities, my neighbors, are breathing in Colorado’s most polluted air,” said bill sponsor Rep. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, a Democrat from Denver, in a statement. “This bill improves the way we monitor air toxics in Colorado and takes a proactive approach to reduce these harmful emissions based on what is best for our health.

Following up on previous air toxics legislation passed in 2020 and 2021, HB-1244 aims to strengthen emissions reporting requirements for pollution sources, while directing the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to develop a new statewide monitoring program and convene a scientific advisory board to guide its new regulations.

The rules would apply to a class of 188 substances designated as “hazardous air pollutants” by the Environmental Protection Agency, many of which are emitted as a byproduct of a variety of industrial processes. Emissions of toxic chemicals like benzene and hydrogen cyanide, for example, have long caused concern for communities near the Suncor Energy oil refinery in Commerce City.

The HAP classification triggers some federal regulations, but not the more rigorous health-based emissions standards that the EPA applies to the six “criteria pollutants,” a group than includes ozone, particulate matter and carbon monoxide. Supporters of HB-1244 say that at least 15 states, including Texas and Kentucky, have taken steps to address air toxics in the absence of stricter federal rules.

“These are not greenhouse gases, these are not the EPA-regulated criteria pollutants,” State Rep. Chris Kennedy, a Democrat from Lakewood and a sponsor of HB-1244, said during a House floor debate on May 5. “They are the kinds of things that when they reach certain concentrations are likely to give people adverse health effects.”

The legislation would direct CDPHE staff to work with Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission to identify up to five “priority” pollutants by the end of 2024, and adopt health-based emissions standards the following year. The priority list would then be updated at least once every five years thereafter.

“Coloradans are concerned about the sad state of our air quality and expect legislative action to clean it up,” Kelly Nordini, CEO of environmental group Conservation Colorado, said in a statement. “A key step is passing a bill that requires monitoring air toxics, develops health-based standards, and then requires companies to use technology to cut pollution and it’s Conservation Colorado’s top priority.”

Powerful opposition

More than 50 corporations and industry groups have registered to lobby against HB-1244, according to disclosure reports filed with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office.

An inquiry to Suncor was returned by a representative of FTI Consulting, a major fossil-fuel industry communications firm, who declined to comment. Records show Suncor has also retained a team of lobbyists from powerhouse Denver law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, led by Doug Friednash, a Denver Post columnist and former chief of staff to then-Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Most of Colorado’s major electric and natural gas utilities have also lobbied against the bill, including Xcel Energy, Black Hills Energy and the Platte River Power Authority.

An Xcel spokesperson pointed to the company’s recent settlement agreement on coal plant retirements, saying that while that agreement prioritized “customer cost protections and service reliability,” HB-1244 “does not address these critical objectives.”

Debate over HB-1244 on the House floor last week featured the adoption of a flurry of amendments proposed by the bill’s sponsors, including several negotiated with Republican lawmakers like Rep. Matt Soper, who represents several coal-dependent communities on the Western Slope.

The amendments included a new exemption for the state’s remaining coal plants, all of which are scheduled to close by 2031, and language specifying that emissions controls must be both “technically and economically feasible.”

“I hope that what you’re seeing with all these amendments that we’ve run is that there has been a tremendous amount of stakeholding,” Kennedy told his colleagues on the House floor.

With the General Assembly set to adjourn on Wednesday and an array of powerful business groups opposed, however, HB-1244 could face an uphill battle for swift Senate passage. Following its final approval by the House on Friday, the bill was introduced in the Senate and assigned to the State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee.

“We heard from impacted community members in regards to this bill, and that’s, in fact, who brought this policy forward,” said Gonzales-Gutierrez. “HB-1244 did not come to us from business, but it did come to us from communities that have been impacted by hazardous pollutants for generations.”

Read more at ColoradoNewsLine.com

With air quality worsening, Colorado’s top environmental officials seek millions more to fight pollution

The EPA is expected to label the state as a severe violator of the Clean Air Act later this year

By Noelle Phillips (April 10, 2022)

With the threat of missing another benchmark for improving air quality hovering like a blanket of summer smog, Colorado’s top environmental officials are asking the legislature for $47 million to hire more people and build better technology for monitoring unhealthy air, especially along the northern Front Range.

Colorado’s Air Pollution Control Division expects the Environmental Protection Agency later this year to classify the state as a severe violator of federal air quality laws after the state recorded its worst-ever ozone levels during the summer of 2021, division director Michael Ogletree said in an interview with The Denver Post.

In 2019, the EPA declared Colorado a serious violator, forcing more enforcement of air pollution controls, and a move to the severe classification would further increase those enforcements to reign in the state’s worsening ozone problem.

“We’ve heard from folks that we will be reclassified to severe in the near future,” Ogletree said. “We’re preparing for that.

A change in its status with the EPA would force lower emissions thresholds for manufacturers and other industrial facilities, meaning more work for the Air Pollution Control Division, which already is operating with a short staff, Ogletree said.

The division needs the $47 million requested from the legislature to prepare for the incoming workload, and the larger budget would help put more programs in place to control greenhouse gas and other emissions that deteriorate the Front Range’s air quality and harms people’s health.

A more strict classification also would impact the state’s oil and gas industry.

Gov. Jared Polis asked for the money in the budget he proposed to the legislature.

As the Front Range population grows so does the number of gasoline-powered cars and trucks on the road. Those vehicles are the No. 1 source of nitrous oxide emissions, which is a major contributor to the region’s ozone problem. Emissions from power plants and oil and gas production facilities contribute by releasing volatile organic compounds into the air while bigger and more frequent wildfires in the West also add to the problem.

During the summer of 2021, ozone levels at all 16 of the state’s measuring stations exceeded 78 parts per billion, above the federal health standard of 70 ppb. And scientists expect the Front Range’s air quality to continue to deteriorate unless immediate action is taken.

The governor also is working with Democrats to create more laws that would address the worsening air quality. Multiple bills are pending this year that would spend almost $125 million to buy a fleet of electric school buses, replace old diesel trucks with newer ones that produce fewer harmful emissions, make electric bicycles more accessible and allow for free public transit fares during the worst summer ozone days.

Already, the state has implemented new laws and regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality. But many of those things take years to make a difference, and Polis’s administration hopes this year’s asks will have a more immediate impact, said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

“The thing that’s probably hard for the public to understand is we’ve had so much go on in the last few years with these laws and regulations, but the state hasn’t seen the full benefit of these actions yet,” Hunsaker Ryan said.

The Air Pollution Control Division is operating with a permitting system that was created in the 1990s and complex air permit applications are still filled out on paper, she and Ogletree said. They want to move everything to a digital format and create online dashboards where people can check the state’s various pollution levels in near real-time.

“We can provide transparency to the community and everyone who is interested,” Hunsaker Ryan said.

The division employs 185 people, and if the budget request was approved, it would pay for an additional 106 full-time equivalent positions, Ogletree said.

One reason the Polis administration wants a huge infusion of money for its air pollution division is a change in how the division is funded. The division is financially supported through fees levied on industry, and, in the past, the division had to ask the legislature to increase fees, Hunsaker Ryan said.

“That always was a tough thing to do and it just didn’t happen,” she said. “Politically, it was a tough thing to do to go the legislature and get fees raised on industry.”

In 2019, the legislature allowed the Air Quality Control Commission to set the fees, but the commission didn’t want to place a sharp increase on industry right from the start, Hunsaker Ryan said. The budget request would give the division what it needs for two years to boost its staffing and technology.

“This is the way we intend to solve the problem of long-term underinvestment,” she said.

So far, Colorado’s efforts to improve air quality are earning support from environmental advocacy groups.

The Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, a public interest group that promotes energy efficiency in six western states, including Colorado, is urging the legislature to approve the package of air quality measures to combat drought, wildfires and other climate disasters.

Even though the organization supports the legislation, there are parts it disagrees with. For example, one bill would replace aging diesel trucks with newer models, but the groupwants all diesel trucks off the roads, said Matt Frommer, the group’s senior transportation association.

“It seems like we are going backwards to create a new program for diesel trucks when we need to go all-in on electric trucks,” Frommer said. “We don’t have time to waste.”

2022 Air Quality Legislation

SB22-193

A big bill that would:

• Create a $25 million fund to provide grants to industrial and manufacturing facilities and local governments for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. Among the projects that would qualify are efforts that would use hydrogen fuel, electric vehicles and projects to reduce carbon and methane emissions. The grant program would dissolve on Sept. 1, 2029.
• Create a $12 million fund to increase public access to electric bicycles through grants and rebates. The program would be repealed on Sept. 1, 2028.
• Spend $15 million to decommission the oldest diesel trucks operating in Colorado and replace them with newer, more fuel-efficient models. The grant money would be available for public and private entities through July 1, 2032.
• Spend $65 million to buy electric school buses in Colorado through Sept. 1, 2034
• Provides $7 million to the state health department for aerial surveillance of pollutants
• Provides $750,000 to the state health department provide free RTD passes for employees
• Caps annual fees for industry at $1 million this year and allows those caps to rise annually until they reach a $5 million maximum on July 1, 2024.

SB22-180

This bill would set aside $14 million to provide free public transportation, largely through RTD, for one month each year when ozone pollution is at its highest levels. It also would provide $30 million to expand Bustang, the state’s regional bus service.

HB22-1244

A proposal that would give the state’s Air Quality Control Commission the authority to adopt rules that are more stringent than the federal Clean Air Act. The commission would be asked to regulate toxic air contaminants and companies that are sources of air pollution would have to submit annual reports that list the amount of contaminants they release. The bill also would develop a statewide air quality monitoring system and it would create a toxic air contaminant advisory board to determine which emissions would be monitored and regulated.

Read more at DenverPost.com

By Theresa Trujillo & Jessica Barnette (March 25, 2022) 

What if you found out you and your family might have been breathing in an invisible poison for years?

It sounds like a science fiction plot. But it’s a question that we and thousands of other Coloradans have been asking ourselves. Even for us, as professionals in health fields, trying to answer it leads to a bunch of scary unknowns.

Both of our communities, Pueblo and Lakewood, are near industrial facilities that emit pollutants known as “air toxics.” These pollutants — including chemicals like benzene, hydrogen cyanide, chromium, and ethylene oxide — can cause cancer or serious health impacts such as breathing difficulty, nausea, birth defects, or even death. And they’re more common in Colorado than you might realize.

Perhaps the scariest part: Colorado doesn’t currently have health-based standards that limit how much of these toxic substances industries can emit. The federal government has identified over 187 hazardous air pollutants, but in many communities, there is little or no monitoring of how much is in our air. We’ve been placing too much trust in industries that have a record of prioritizing profit over our health to be transparent and protect us from air toxics. This approach has failed, and the harm falls most on those living close to industrial pollution, who disproportionately tend to be people living on lower incomes, people of color, and the workers at these facilities themselves.

So we are thrilled to see a bill at the Colorado statehouse that would make significant strides towards monitoring and limiting toxic air pollution. We applaud the sponsors Reps. Chris Kennedy and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, and Sen. Julie Gonzales, who are leading the fight for House Bill 22-1244, “Public Protections From Toxic Air Contaminants.”

The harm falls most on those living close to industrial pollution, who disproportionately tend to be people living on lower incomes, people of color, and the workers at these facilities themselves.

The bill directs our state’s air quality experts to identify the pollutants that pose a risk, and establish health-based standards for the amount of toxics in our air. It also provides resources for monitoring air toxics around Colorado, and empowers communities to set up their own EPA-quality air monitoring systems and send the data to the state.

One of us, Theresa Trujillo, has been fighting this toxic pollution in Pueblo for years. Theresa and her family have seen how the city they’ve lived in for generations is treated as the dumping ground for the industrial pollution that the rest of the state doesn’t want in their backyards. As a health equity advocate, Theresa is deeply concerned about the higher rates of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer in Pueblo, particularly in communities of color. We should do everything we can to stop air toxics from compounding the health disparities we already see.

Another pernicious thing about toxic air pollution is that it can slip by unnoticed. One of us, Jessica Barnette, didn’t know until she started researching this bill that a medical facility in her own community was emitting potentially dangerous levels of a chemical linked to cancer.

At least 15 other states, including Texas, Oregon, California and Kentucky, have already taken up this issue and adopted comprehensive state and local-level strategies to address air toxics.

HB22-1244 would ensure Colorado doesn’t remain one of the shrinking number of states that leave their most impacted residents in the dark about their health.

Contrary to opponents’ alarmist claims, this bill isn’t going to spell economic downfall for industries. In fact, it fosters collaboration between state agencies and industry to implement advanced technologies that help cut air toxics emissions and better protect their neighbors.

The presence of toxic air pollution threatens other economic drivers like tourism and recreation.

Most importantly, poor air quality costs Coloradans millions of dollars a year in additional health care costs, insurance premiums and missed work due to health complications. When it comes down to it, no amount of industry profit or short-term economic gains are worth sacrificing the health and well-being of Coloradans.

Like an invisible poison in science fiction, toxic air pollutants can easily disappear out of sight, out of mind. But Colorado families deserve better than simply accepting toxic pollution in our air.

We have an obligation to our children and to future generations to start cleaning up the mess we’ve made, and to stop making these messes to begin with. We hope our legislators will choose a legacy of clean air and health equity for all Coloradans instead of profit for a few.

Read more at Coloradonewsline.com