Two-and-a-half weeks till closing time, and there’s plenty of business left to conduct in this building.

All eyes will be watching transportation-funding House Bill 1242. It’s being heard Tuesday in the Senate Finance committee. It’s one of the big-deal top-priority bills of the session, and it seems doomed. Will there be amendments? Will someone have found a new revenue stream to replace the sales tax hike? Will the parties working the bill feel like they can put their cards on the table at this point? Will the bill be killed only to be reincarnated into something more attractive in the coming days?

Related: Have parties come to an agreement on big-deal top-priority hospital provider fee budget-rescue proposal, Senate Bill 267? That bill is being heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee, also on Tuesday. It’s a bill that could perhaps save hospitals and fix roads in the state, if they do it right…

Schedule below subject to change — often on a moment’s notice.

Tuesday

On the big bills, see above.

On gas-patch drilling politics: The House Appropriations Committee will consider Lafayette Democratic Rep. Mike Foote’s “forced pooling” House Bill 1336.

Wednesday

Senate State Affairs will hear House Bill 1232, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Jessie Danielson and Republican Sen. Kevin Priola. It would move along the process by which electric utilities could begin setting up car-charging infrastructure in their service areas. Fueling stations by Xcel Energy.

House Bill 1327, sponsored by always-fired-up-ready-to-go Joe Salazar, a Thornton Democrat, would repeal Columbus Day. Be prepared for charged testimony about the bold Italian who crossed the Atlantic in 1492. From the moment he set foot in the western hemisphere… Well, listen in to the House State Affairs committee hearing on the bill if you feel up to a people’s history of the “discovery of America.” “Those words, ‘savage’ and ‘civilized,’ I don’t think they mean what you think they mean…”

Read Ernest Luning’s piece on the bill and interview with the sponsor here.

Thursday

Senate Bill 278 would outlaw the literally toxic practice known as “rolling coal” in which diesel truck drivers protest the advance of clean energy and climate change awareness by sending clouds of unfiltered exhaust in the direction of bicyclists and Prius drivers. This is the second try this session. Rural senators killed an earlier version of the bill. They were subsequently brought around by Senate sponsor Don Coram, a Durango Republican. Rep. Joann Ginal, a Democrat from Fort Collins, is the House sponsor.

— john@coloradostatesman.com