UPDATE: Senate Bill 18-088 was introduced late Tuesday and sent to the Senate Finance Committee.

The issue that caused Gov. John Hickenlooper to call back lawmakers for what turned into a failed special session makes a return visit to the Capitol this week. But Senate leaders indicated Tuesday this measure might actually solve the mess that Senate Bill 17-267 created last year.

Senate President Kevin Grantham of Canon City told reporters that a fix to SB 267, known as Sustainability of Rural Colorado, will be introduced in the state Senate, possibly later in the day.

The measure reclassified the state’s hospital provider fee program into an enterprise, a government-owned business. Among its other provisions, a $30 million boost to rural schools, to be paid for by hiking the state’s marijuana sales tax from 12.1 percent to the full 15 percent approved by voters.

The problem arose a month after Hickenlooper signed the bill into law: a drafting error that accidentally stripped about a half-dozen special districts of the marijuana sales taxes they had been collecting for several years.

The error was most vexing to the eight-county metro Denver Regional Transportation District, which estimated it would lose about a half million dollars per month. The Denver-area Scientific and Cultural Facilities District also stood to lose millions. Also impacted: regional transportation districts on the Western Slope and a West Slope hospital district.

Grantham said Tuesday the measure to fix the drafting error will come from Sen. Bob Gardner of Colorado Springs, and it will look vastly different than the two measures that died in the October special session.

Senate Republican Leader Chris Holbert of Parker said Gardner has done the legwork that the governor didn’t do before the session. He explained that he had asked his caucus how many had not seen the 267 fixes before the session began in October and more than half of his 18 members raised their hands. “That was the problem,” Holbert said.

Holbert said the Gardner bill has the input from RTD, SCFD and the Colorado Bar Association, and he believes the bill has enough support to pass both chambers and draw the governor’s support. “That is the kind of work that should have been done before the governor called the special session.”

The bill still is unlikely to win Holbert’s support, he said Tuesday, based on constitutional questions about whether the fix should seek voter approval. But he indicated he won’t stand in the way if the measure has enough support from those who believe the fix is constitutional.

The Senate 267 fix is not the only measure that attempts to deal with the problem, but it’s the mostly likely one to succeed. A second measure, introduced by Democratic Rep. Steve Lebsock of Thornton, would reduce the state sales tax on marijuana, at 15 percent, back down to 12.1 percent and restore the 2.9 percent back to the special districts.