The next legislative session begins on Wednesday, Jan. 12.

That’s not news to those who know the Colorado Constitution, which calls for the General Assembly to convene by 10 a.m. on the second Wednesday of every year, then stick around for 120 days.

Coloradans learned last year, because of the pandemic, it doesn’t have to be 120 consecutive days. The state Supreme Court weighed in with that opinion last year.

Colorado General Assembly gavels in, gavels out

This year and last, lawmakers took a long break to allow for the virus to abate.

This year’s session began on schedule on Jan. 13, but after the speeches and essential business, lawmakers adjourned before returning on Feb. 16, after the peak of Colorado cases and most lawmakers and staff had been vaccinated. 

Senate Republican leader Chris Holbert of Douglas County said Tuesday he had preferred starting a week earlier, Jan. 5, next year. He learned, however, that could interfere with the schedule to construct the state budget.

“I thought, ‘It’s an election year; let’s start earlier and get it done,'” Holbert said on the Senate floor Tuesday.

Incumbents who have to run next year — Holbert faces term limits — might prefer to get out and on the campaign trail a week earlier in May.

“You might be involved in a primary in June,” he noted.

Staff indicated, and Holbert agreed, the budget is a higher priority than political considerations.

“So I’ll give up on the fifth,” he said of the proposed start date.

Holbert reminded the Senate that his first year in the legislature, 2011 in the House, legislators returned on that normal second Wednesday, then learned they had missed a constitutional deadline to approve elections the previous November.

Those same statewide offices are up for election again in 2022, which means that next year the General Assembly would need to start a few days earlier, before the Tuesday inauguration in 2023. Leaders will propose that schedule next year. 

 “It won’t be me,” Holbert said. “I’ll be somewhere else. I’ll miss y’all, but my guess is in 2023 you won’t start on a Wednesday.

Sen. Dominick Moreno of Commerce City, one of the Democrats on the bicameral panel that drafts the state spending plan each year, offered, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the Joint Budget Committee appreciates your cooperation.”

Senate Joint Resolution 25 passed unanimously.