A resolution offered by House Majority Leader Monica Duran drew protests from Republicans Friday, who claimed changing rules in the last days of the session is an effort to silence GOP voices.

House Resolution 1004 passed on a 42-19 party-line vote after a brief protest from Minority Leader Rose Pugliese of Colorado Springs, who spoke on behalf of her caucus.

In launching her protest over the resolution, Pugliese pointed out opening week comments by Gov. Jared Polis and House Speaker Julie McCluskie, who both pleaded for more civility and “disagreeing better” among lawmakers.

“We have strong objections to our voices being silenced,” Pugliese said.

The approved resolution makes several rule changes that apply to the end of the session.

Currently, House and Senate rules are suspended in the last three days of the 120-day session. For example, committees are decreased to three or four in each chamber, instead of 10 apiece. It also means many rules around procedure go by the wayside.

However, under the resolution, House rules would be suspended up to 10 days before Sine Die.

This could avoid what happened in the 2023 session when lawmakers worked longer hours and on through more weekends than they had in at least a quarter-century. The increased work hours were partly due to delay tactics and filibusters launched by the Republicans, which claimed it was one of the few tactics they had to slow down the Democrats’ agenda.

The other significant change applies to reading bills at length, which also directly takes aim at tactics used last year.

Republicans asked for bills to be read at length, and for some of the longer bills, maybe 40 pages or more, the requestor and other members left the floor while the reading was taking place, a point raised by House Democrats, particularly on social media.

The resolution states that if a requestor asks for a bill to be read at length and then leaves the House floor, the request is considered withdrawn, and the reading ends.

If a second person asks for the same bill to be read at length during the same House proceeding, the resolution allows for the reading to pick up where it left off instead of starting over.

A third change allows that when someone asks for a reading at length, the majority leader may decide to lay the bill over to another day — a non-disputable motion that requires only a simple majority vote.

The resolution also puts into rule what happened in 2019, when Senate Republicans sued Senate Democrats and won, over the reading at length of a 1,200-page bill. Democrats responded by setting up a bank of computers with reading programs that would each read a different section of the bill. The computers read the bill at about 600 words per minute, with close to a dozen computers all talking simultaneously, rendering the reading unintelligible.

The resolution caps the number of computer reading programs to one program or person doing the reading at a time.

Pugliese did seek legal advice on the constitutionality of the resolution in its changes to reading a bill at length but said she is satisfied the changes are legal, even if she doesn’t like them.

In a statement issued after the resolution passed, Pugliese said “On behalf of our caucus, we object to this Resolution, especially the suspension of the rules in the last 10 days of session. As many of us remember, during the last 3 days of the session, when the rules were suspended, our voices were silenced. We were not allowed to represent the people of Colorado that elected us to be here.”

Pugliese pointed to the comments from McCluskie on opening day. “Disagreeing better by suspending the rules and not letting us speak as the majority has done in the past, is not acceptable and we will not stand for it,” Pugliese said. “This is not a partisan issue; this is not a Republican-Democrat issue. This is making sure every single one of us gets our voices heard and can represent our constituents in the way we were elected to do.”

The statement also raised questions about House Democrats’ commitment to free speech. “The passage of HR24-1004 on strict party lines underscores the pressing need for a bipartisan commitment to protect the constitutional freedoms that define our great state,” the GOP caucus said.

Duran told Colorado Politics via a spokesman “reading bills at length is typically nothing more than a delay tactic that has increased in frequency the last few years. This resolution restores integrity to that process to ensure that requests are made in good faith and that our institution functions as intended to deliver results for Coloradans. The resolution also provides clarity to the body regarding our end of session rules, which do not limit debate in any way. Historically, these rules have gone into place around day 110, even though colloquially they have been referred to as the ‘last three days’ rules. The resolution ensures there is not longer any ambiguity for when these rules are in effect.”