Democratic state lawmakers are on their fourth attempt to expand the jurisdiction of the state’s independent ethics commission. House Bill 1079 won a party-line vote in the House Transportation, Housing, and Local Government Committee on Wednesday.

House Bill 1079 would add school board members and their direct hires for 178 school districts, such as superintendents and boards of the state’s more than 3,000 special districts and their direct hires, to the jurisdiction of the state’s independent ethics commission.

It would not apply to charter school boards, which are appointed and not elected.

The committee heard from more than a dozen witnesses who had gripes about their local school boards, with those complaints centered around failure by school boards to follow policy, failure by school boards to act on employees who commit crimes such as sexual assault or inappropriate relationships, First Amendment concerns when the public is not allowed to speak, harassment by school boards against members of the public or other violations of state law that likely do not fall under commission jurisdiction.

Article 29 identifies two specific areas for the commission: violations of the state’s gift ban and lobbying by former state lawmakers within two years of leaving office. It can also make complaints of breaches of “standards of conduct or reporting requirements as provided by law.”

What that looks like: The commission recently found that Gov. Jared Polis’s former chief of staff had violated state law by contracting with the governor’s office within six months of his departure. The commission did not fine Rick Palacio and dismissed claims he had “double-dipped” by having both a state contract and a state job simultaneously, attributing it to a human resources error.

Ethics commission: Rick Palacio violated state law by contracting with Gov Jared Polis' office

Rep. Tammy Story, D-Conifer, who has carried two previous versions of the bill, said that while the bill will add as many as 30,000 more people to the ethics commission’s jurisdiction—currently at around 125,000 people in local and state governments—it will not lead to more frivolous complaints, which currently make up 75% to 80% of the complaints filed with the commission.

In 2006, Colorado Common Cause, backed by then-State Board of Education member Jared Polis, put Amendment 41, now Article 29 of the state constitution, on the ballot. The constitutional amendment applied only to state and local governments and state lawmakers. They did not include school boards or special districts.

In 2016, state lawmakers tried to create an ethics body that would specifically apply to school boards. That bill, which was estimated to cost $275,000, died in its first committee hearing.

Story rejected claims her bill would be unconstitutional, a claim raised with an identical bill she ran in 2024 that died in the House Appropriations Committee on the session’s last day after sitting on the committee’s docket for almost three months. That bill came with a full first-year cost of $131,000. Her 2023 version had an estimated cost of nearly $109,000.

The introduced version of the 2025 bill put off its implementation until July 1, 2027, a move designed to avoid the costs associated with increasing the commission’s workload in a year when the state is dealing with a $1 billion budget shortfall. The 2027 implementation date comes with a cost of $171,000.

Story brought an amendment Wednesday to implement the bill this year without any money for the increased workload. It passed on a party-line 7-4 vote.

That prompted IEC Executive Director Dino Ioannides to tell the committee that the commission would fulfill its constitutionally mandated work first, hinting that complaints filed against school boards and special districts might be shelved indefinitely.

He told the committee that this bill cannot be implemented without an adequate appropriation. With adequate appropriations, the commission is neutral on the bill, he added. He didn’t say what their position would be without funding. “This isn’t the IEC’s bill,” Ioannides said.

The IEC has 1.5 FTE, its executive director, and one part-time investigator. On average, the commission meets nine to ten times a year. It currently has 12 open complaints going back to 2021.

Rep. Chris Richardson, R-Elizabeth, called the bill an “unfunded mandate” that would raise “false hopes” for people who think the commission can solve their complaints. “To assign a higher workload without additional appropriations is a cruel experiment. It would further erode public trust,” he said.

At the hearing’s conclusion, Story told the commission that it’s not uncommon for agencies and departments to have more work than they can get done. Her amendment would require data collection on the complaints filed for the next year and then an analysis of whether the commission would need more help.

HB 1079 won a party-line 7-4 vote and now heads to the House Appropriations Committee.