As Colorado continues to trend downward on the national economic scale, the Denver Chamber of Commerce is critical of the direction the state’s Democratic-led legislature took in 2025 and in recent years.

The main message at Tuesday’s annual post-legislative State of the State event, hosted by the chamber, was that the anti-business, pro-regulation approach is failing the business community.

Chamber members discussed Colorado’s economic challenges and legislative impacts. In giving a rundown of bills affecting the business community after the 2025 session, chamber members Rachel Beck and Carly West pointed to CNBC’s annual top states for business rankings. Once a perennial top 10, Colorado was ranked 11th last year and dropped to 16th this year.

This year, key issues plaguing the state included a $1.2 billion budget shortfall, the ongoing issue with AI regulations, a controversial bill on how tipped employees are paid and a union-fee bill.

Beck said with a full tab of regulations, wages, supplies, inflation and tariffs all trending upward, “it’s no wonder we’ve fallen in every economic ranking that we know of for cost of living and cost of doing business.”

“This is a trend that we must all work together to reverse,” Beck told the hundreds in attendance, including the business community and state lawmakers. “The only way that we’re going to do that is by tackling the root causes of problems, and that’s going to take all of us thinking more creatively than we ever have.”

The chamber criticized the legislative process and policies for not promoting competitiveness, innovation or affordability. However, they applauded the state legislature for passing the tax incentive bill to bring the Sundance Film Festival to Boulder.

Beck and West said lawmakers should just “Sundance it” when considering regulations and the business community.

One area the chamber said it would like to see lawmakers “Sundance it” is in artificial intelligence.

Beck said instead of bragging about Colorado being one of the first in the nation to pass a problematic bill to regulate AI, the state should be more willing to embrace its capabilities, highlighting technology being utilized to analyze fire and weather patterns and monitor areas where the human eye won’t see a spark until it’s too late.

“New technologies allow us to solve previously unsolvable problems and to do it better, faster, cheaper,” she said. “That’s why, rather than leading the country by rushing to hamper technology, we ought to be leading the country by embracing it and all of its exciting potential.”

The governor has hinted that he may call a special session to address the 2024 AI regulations bill that was supposed to be fixed through legislation that did not pan out in 2025.

Chamber President J.J. Ament said it has been a challenging few years for Colorado businesses.

“After we’ve worked so hard for generations to build Colorado back from what was the nation’s worst economy in the 1990s to a perennial top 10, to see it so quickly diminished by choices we’re making today can be discouraging,” Ament said.

Ament said the sheer volume of legislation being passed “is remarkable in not such a great way.” Since January, Ament said, the state legislature has passed 500 new laws and regulations.

At an average of four bills per day, Ament said, the trend matches numbers from last year. However, Ament said the problem is that the bills being passed do not necessarily make Colorado more competitive, affordable, simpler to navigate, and better able to achieve economic empowerment.

Instead, as he travels the country to promote Colorado and recruit businesses to come here, Ament said it’s tough because the state is now average, more “middle of the pack,” with the selling point that at least it’s still better than California and Oregon.

The chamber emphasized lawmakers’ positive efforts on affordable housing in 2025, most notably through passing the construction defects bill that will now allow more condos to be built. In speaking briefly during the luncheon, Gov. Jared Polis said he was pleased the legislature took his challenge at the start of the session and made progress making housing more affordable.

Ament said he appreciated Polis’s leadership throughout the 2025 session but noted that one major decision remains regarding the business community.

Despite a lack of compromise between the business industry and the union, state Democrats still passed controversial Senate Bill 005. Ament said while proponents of the measure call it a Worker Protection Act, it boils down to forcing union fees on employees who opt out and firing them if they don’t want to pay.

The bill now awaits the governor’s signature or veto. While Polis did not mention the measure on Tuesday, he has indicated he will likely veto it.