The Colorado Title Board, a three-member panel that sets the language for ballot measures, recently reversed a prior decision and blocked a proposal to privatize Pinnacol Assurance from moving forward.

The main issue decided by the title board is whether a ballot measure meets the state’s constitutionally mandated single-subject law and whether its content fits the title.

Last month, the title board voted unanimously to approve measure No. 218, submitted by Colorado Succeeds, an organization of business leaders.

The ballot measure would allow Pinnacol Assurance, the state’s largest provider of workers’ compensation insurance, to completely separate from the state and become a stand-alone mutual insurance company. Currently, Pinnacol is a political subdivision of the state.

As a political subdivision, it cannot provide workers’ compensation insurance outside of Colorado, the primary factor in the company’s desire to separate from the state. Pinnacol has lost market share over the past decade, and becoming a standalone mutual insurance company would allow it to provide workers’ compensation insurance to Colorado companies with employees outside the state.

Ballot Measure 218 would require Pinnacol to put $150 million into a workforce development fund as part of that separation and to buy out its employees’ share of the state pension plan.

The ballot measure would also require the commissioner of insurance to establish a risk plan that provides workers’ compensation coverage to employers unable to procure coverage in the voluntary market.

Pinnacol is currently the insurer of last resort: Employers who cannot find workers’ compensation insurance from any other provider can be covered under Pinnacol.

The company has previously said it would not abandon the last resort market and would bid for that business.

The request for a rehearing came from Stephanie Tucker, president of the Workers’ Compensation Education Association, a nonprofit association of attorneys who represent Colorado employees injured on the job.

In a statement after the hearing, Tucker said a proposal “that
fundamentally restructures that role raises serious questions about access to coverage and protections for workers. Today’s decision ensures those issues receive the careful review they deserve.”

The title board split 2-1 on the single-subject issue. Kurt Morrison, representing the Attorney General’s Office, said the issue for him was requiring the commissioner of insurance to develop the risk plan, which he claimed was not related to the measure’s overall goal.

Theresa Conley, representing the Secretary of State’s Office, had a different view: She said the creation of the workforce development fund appeared to be unrelated to the measure’s title.

The third member of the panel, Christy Chase, who represents the General Assembly’s Office of Legislative Legal Services, disagreed with both of them and said she thought the risk plan and workforce fund both fit under the title.

Attorney Trey Rogers, representing Colorado Succeeds, pointed out that past ballot measures have created funding sources unrelated to the title, such as the 2024 sports gaming measure, which took profits from sports gambling and devoted them to water projects. He also noted the 2008 ballot measure that allowed casinos in three mountain towns, with profits going to community colleges.

Rogers argued there is a connection between the ballot measure’s main purpose and both the risk plan and workforce fund.

But Conley said both of those previous ballot measures were generating new revenue, and to her, that was the difference.

The vote by the title board does not spell the end of the ballot measure, however. Colorado Succeeds filed two more, with one scheduled for a hearing with the title board on March 18. While both included the workforce fund, one left out the risk plan language, and it’s that measure, Initiative 249, that the title board will review next week.

At the March 4 hearing’s conclusion, Conley gave the proponents hope, or possibly suggestions, for the future.

“It’s a close call,” she said. “I could be persuaded that maybe single subject could be reached, but today I’m concerned about the sale, creating money, and then creating the risk plan and workforce fund.”

But “I’m definitely persuadable on it,” she added.

Time is growing short for proponents of ballot measures to get their time before the title board. Its final meeting for the 2026 election season is on April 15.