The annual legislative preview event hosted by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday produced a few fireworks about what’s expected to be the hottest topic of the 2025 General Assembly: changes to the state’s 80-year-old Labor Peace Act.

Chamber CEO JJ Ament said a December bill draft was relatively simple: take out the second election for a union.

The first election is to allow the union. The second, under current law, requires a 75% vote of the employees to levy a union membership fee. The draft, Ament said, eliminates the second election, which would mean all employees would have to pay union dues whether they wanted to be in the union or not.

Legislative leaders also talked about the proposal but with different perspectives.

Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen of Monument, while noting he hasn’t seen the bill, called regulatory burdens the most significant cost driver for business and unpredictability the greatest enemy.

“How about let’s not up-end the 80-year relationship between labor and business,” he said.

House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese of Colorado Springs also hasn’t seen a bill draft but asked why the change is needed now. “I haven’t heard issues with the current act and want to know why those issues are arising now,” she said.

Democrats were more circumspect, discussing process and communications. House Speaker Julie McCluskie of Dillon urged the audience of about 500 to speak with lawmakers about their perspectives on the issue.

“I believe we can be business friendly and worker friendly,” McCluskie said. “I want to see business leaders and labor partners negotiate about what should come next,” adding she believed that would happen.

Senate President-elect James Coleman of Denver said he’s asked Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez of Denver to bring everyone to the table and that they’ve agreed to fairness and stake-holding.

The panel was not without laughs. Coleman started by saying he wanted to be more like Lundeen but decided to be Senate President instead, drawing an “ouch!” from Lundeen.

Regulation, competitiveness and affordability

The Metro Denver Chamber recently published a report showing that Colorado has substantially slipped in its business competitiveness. The 2025 report looked at 33 key indicators, including affordability, the labor workforce, high school graduation, and more.

The report said Colorado is 40th in graduating high school students. While the state is ranked second for states with residents with a bachelor’s degree, the state ranks 46th in its ability to produce “homegrown talent,” a measure that indicates those degrees are earned somewhere other than Colorado. It’s the Colorado Paradox and has been a problem for over a decade. Chamber moderators also pointed to a CNBC ranking from 2024 that said Colorado slipped from 18th to 32nd in business friendliness in just one year and dropped from 11th to 16th among top states for business.

Coleman said he’s looking for an assessment and evaluation of regulations and how to incentivize businesses in the 2025 session. He pointed to the state’s film incentive to encourage the Sundance Film Festival to move to Boulder, noting that Colorado wouldn’t be in the running without that money, estimated at around $1.5 million.

Last month, Gov. Jared Polis axed outdated executive orders. Lundeen called it “leading the way on small stuff” and that the legislature needs to go after the “bigger stuff,” calling for the government to get out of the way of “value creators.”

McCluskie, who was intrigued by the chamber’s report, said the common goal is affordability, whether it’s housing, childcare, or just putting food on the table. Republicans and Democrats can have hard conversations about how to make the state more affordable, she added.

While “I appreciate the focus on competitiveness, at the same time, I want to see balance,” she said. “Are we falling in the rankings, but what are we doing to improve livability?”

According to Pugliese, the livability issue is the fees the General Assembly has levied on Coloradans in the last few years, such as the grocery bag fee and the retail delivery fee, which she called “nickel and diming” Coloradans.

It isn’t just about rolling back regulations, she said. The legislature needs to roll back fees so people can afford to live in Colorado.

So, what should the legislature do to reduce costs?

Pugliese had ideas, including looking at legislation increasing the cost of building new housing and energy choices. She pointed to efforts on electrification, such as requiring buildings to include electric vehicle chargers when Coloradans aren’t buying electric vehicles and getting rid of natural gas stoves without thinking about what that will cost consumers.

The lawmakers noted that housing policies will be on the agenda for 2025, whether it’s pushing for modular homes, construction defects legislation, or other affordable housing policies, including banning rent algorithms, a bill that died in the state Senate in 2024.

Lundeen, who carried one of the construction defects bills in 2024, said the current law is a prime driver of unaffordability, which is why for-sale multi-family homes, particularly condos, are not being built in Colorado.

McCluskie noted the median price of a home in Denver is $661,000, but in Summit County, it’s $2.4 million. That’s why people can’t afford to work and live in some mountain communities, she said. She called for more modular homes.

Communications

With more than 20 new lawmakers set to take the oath of office on Wednesday, how will leaders solve the communication problem without resorting to some of the divisive rhetoric of the past?

According to the legislative leaders, it’s a question of communications versus support for free speech.

“Nothing is more important to me as Speaker than returning civility and respect to chamber,” McCluskie said. She didn’t name names but called out lawmakers interested only in “performative politics” or going to the well of the House to speak because they need a social media clip.

She said they will honor free speech to make sure both sides of the aisle are being heard, but when it devolves into hate speech and becomes divisive, constituents feel the hate and anger.

She said lawmakers must come together and learn to disagree on policies that honor free speech but don’t devolve into hate speech.

Lundeen said the secret is leadership. It’s not about control; it’s about trust and honoring the other individual in the conversation, he said.

Coleman spoke about how he developed a friendship with Sen. Cleave Simpson, R-Alamosa, after spending a week on Simpson’s ranch in the San Luis Valley. After that week, he could see where Simpson was coming from and vice versa, and that led to a bill that Coleman called the toughest he had ever worked on, with the two as sponsors.

Pugliese noted her relationship with McCluskie but said censorship of the minority or of people who come to testify cannot be tolerated and that First Amendment rights must be preserved. “There’s a lot to be done on civil discourse,” she said.

The budget

The panel last discussed the budget and the anticipated $700 million shortfall. McCluskie noted that the leading cause is the “explosive nature of an older, grayer Colorado,” which has driven up Medicaid costs.

She said she trusts the Joint Budget Committee, the six lawmakers already working on the 2025-26 budget.

Republicans have a different view on what’s driving the shortfall. Pugliese blamed using one-time federal money from the COVID pandemic for growing government, and she said that should be looked at.

Lundeen agreed. “We expanded government when the feds threw all that ‘funny money’ at us,” he said.

When lawmakers can’t spend money creating new programs, Lundeen said they need to look elsewhere for ways to improve policy and provide regulatory relief to make Colorado more attractive to businesses.

Fees

The Chamber moderators noted the average Coloradan now pays $8,442 a year in fees, a 3000% increase since TABOR was passed in 1982.

McCluskie called some of the fees a success story, such as the retail delivery fee that resulted from Senate Bill 21-260. She said no other approach worked since voters rejected ballot measures to fund transportation.

That didn’t sit well with Pugliese or Lundeen, who pointed out that SB 260 was a mistake because it had the wrong vision. It created transportation alternatives that were not adopted by the people of Colorado, ignored roads, bridges, and highways, and put those enterprises in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.

Pugliese said the legislature needs to examine rolling back fees that make Colorado less affordable. “Everything costs more, and people are tired of it and can’t afford to live here,” she added.

She intends to carry a bill in 2025 to repeal the grocery bag fee, which drew applause from the audience.

Lundeen will carry a suite of bills for regulatory relief. McCluskie said she would have a bill on the Sundance Film Festival tax incentive, and Coleman jokingly said he wants a bill to bring more Heisman Trophy winners to Colorado.