Peggy, Aurora's state legislative representative, told the Finance, Strategy & Intergovernmental Relations Committee on Jan. 17 that Colorado lawmakers face roughly a $670 million budget shortfall and that will shape the 2025 session.

“That's going to set the tone for a lot of issues this year. Anything that has any sort of fiscal note is going to be problematic,” Peggy said.

The committee heard a run-through of bills and topics the city's state lobbying team expects to matter to Aurora. Peggy identified the Senate majority leader's Labor Peace Act (Senate Bill 5) as an early high-profile proposal; she said the bill would change how unions are formed and remove Colorado's so-called second-vote requirement. She also flagged a proposal to spin off Pinnacle, the state's workers'compensation insurer of last resort, and said legislators are skeptical of a package that would let Pinnacle sell additional products and return roughly $100 million to the state over five years as part of that transaction.

On municipal and public-safety issues, Peggy told the committee she expects legislation on municipal court sentencing that would cap maximum municipal incarceration at the sentence for a comparable state crime, and she said modular-home legislation (referred to in staff materials as Senate Bill 2) would create a technical advisory committee within the Division of Housing to develop regional codes that could supersede local codes. Peggy also listed construction-defect reform proposals, RTD transit reforms focused on frequency and ridership (but not governance), and several local-government bills as items staff will track.

Mayor Mike Kauffman asked for clarification on a municipal court "failure to appear" proposal. Judge Day, who participates in FSIR discussions as the municipal-court representative, described a draft that would allow judges discretion to require a cash surety bond after multiple failures to appear; he said the draft currently ties that tool to a numeric trigger (five prior failures to appear in the draft language he described) and said some municipal judges are asking for clearer statutory language so municipal courts have toolkits comparable to other courts.

Committee members asked staff to collect data on local failure-to-appear occurrences and continue coordinating with the Colorado Municipal League and other jurisdictions. Peggy said the city lobby team will continue to refine positions and asked committee members to flag local priorities to inform the city's testimony.

Ending: The committee did not take a formal vote on specific state bills during the briefing; staff said they will return with recommended positions on bills as draft language stabilizes and asked members to expect frequent updates during the session.