The 73rd General Assembly, after a five-week break, will be back at the state Capitol beginning Tuesday to pick up where they left off in January.

Several legislative leaders are expected to give the opening day speeches they passed on in January. In the House, three Denver Health frontline employees (Nicole Stafford, nursing director of perioperative services; Jenae Martinez, a certified nursing assistant with women’s and children’s services; and Orlando Poole, the lead care patient navigator in Denver Health’s ambulatory care clinics) will sing the National Anthem.

Once the speeches are done, lawmakers will head right into committee work and begin to review the more than 600 bills expected in the next 117 days. 

The 2021 session is likely to focus straightaway on providing economic and other forms of relief to Coloradans impacted by the pandemic and recession that resulted from it.

But it’s not the only thing that lawmakers will be looking at. Last year’s pandemic-shortened session of 84 days still saw 224 bills introduced in the Senate and 427 in the House, about average for a 120-day session.

Twenty bills have already been authorized for pre-release by their sponsors, including a second attempt at allowing for composting of human remains. The Senate Local Government Committee plans to review that measure and two others Tuesday afternoon.

In 2020, the human composting bill was sponsored by Rep. Brianna Titone, D-Arvada, but was buried by the pandemic. Senate Bill 6, the 2021 version, will start in the Senate and is sponsored by Sen. Robert Rodriguez, D-Denver.

A second bill scheduled for Tuesday will grant county governments the authority to require businesses in unincorporated parts of the county to register, but those governments will not be allowed to charge a fee or require a license for that service.

The third bill on the Local Government calendar is on allowing county assessors to notify property owners of their valuations via postcard, a cost-saving measure.

A bill to create the status of “discharged LGBT veteran” and make those military veterans eligible for certain state services will be sponsored by Rep. David Ortiz, D-Littleton, and Sen. Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City. The bill notes that some LGBT veterans have been discharged less than honorably from the U.S. military due to sexual orientation or gender identity. Senate Bill 26 would make LGBT veterans eligible for tuition assistance available to the military, teaching grants, burial at the Homelake Veterans Cemetery in Monte Vista or any other state-owned veterans cemetery and hunting licenses for which veterans do not need to take a hunter safety course.

Persons who are dishonorably discharged remain ineligible for those state programs.

The names of Otero Junior College, Trinidad Junior College and Northeastern Junior College would all lose “junior” under Senate Bill 8, sponsored by Sen. Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa and Reps. Richard Holtorf, R-Akron and Don Valdez, D-LaJara. Trinidad’s name would change to Trinidad State College, although it would remain under the Community College of Colorado system.

House and Senate Democratic leaders Monday said they will focus on pandemic relief as well as getting the state back to normal.  “We will not only focus on direct need and assistance, but how to get the state on a better course to withstand these challenges,” said Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder. 

Sen. Chris Holbert, R-Parker, whose caucus is at a 15-20 disadvantage, told Colorado Politics Monday that their priorities will include constitutional authority. He pointed to a bill backed by Sen. Paul Lundeen, R-Monument, to redefine the constitutional authority of the governor and legislature in future disaster emergencies. “We now have 11 months of experience, and most of how we treat disaster emergencies is based on what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. This has nothing to do with that,” Holbert said.

The legislature should have some role in disaster emergencies, Holbert said. 

Holbert also noted a bill sponsored Sen. Rob Woodward, R-Loveland, that says in future declared emergencies that small businesses cannot be classified as non-essential. It’s based on a law passed by the Ohio legislature last November that curbed the authority of Gov. Mike DeWine to close (and define) non-essential businesses. Similar to the frustration experienced by small business owners in Colorado, in Ohio, “DeWine’s decision made winners and losers. Walmart was able to remain open while local retailers were not. Many small business owners were frustrated that they had to close their doors while others remained open, according to Cincinnati.com.

Holbert pointed to concerns over school funding, and that 30,000 students went missing in the October headcount. The Joint Budget Committee voted to sponsor a bill to hold school districts harmless from budget cuts tied to those pupil counts. But Holbert questioned where those students went, and whether some are being double-counted. How do districts get held as harmless when some districts get 100% of their per pupil funding from the state and some get very little? he asked.

Holbert said he’s also curious about whether the legislature will review the rulemaking done by state agencies through some of the 307 executive orders issued by Gov. Jared Polis in 2020. “But we don’t get to look at any of them and we think we should,” he said. “We want the legislative branch to have a role.”