By Jeff Bailey and Cindy Bailey

Coloradans have always done things their own way. From how we manage our land to how we build our economies, the instinct to govern locally — to trust mayors, councils and commissioners over distant bureaucracies — is not a partisan position. It is a point of pride. When a court ruling quietly stripped that authority from our local governments last year, most Coloradans did not notice. The businesses and officials left scrambling certainly did.

We run a hotel and event space in Pueblo. What we built was never just a business. It is a place where something happened — where a local band found its first real audience, where a neighborhood gathered around a shared set, where the sounds coming through the doors in summertime told everyone passing something worth stopping by for was happening inside. Live music is connective tissue. It is how communities remember, on an ordinary Tuesday, they belong to something worth showing up for.

For years, that was possible because our local government worked with us business owners. City officials who knew our block, our neighbors, and our zoning issued the permits that gave us legal clarity to book artists, invest in our space, and plan community events for the season. The arrangement was not complicated or unfair. It was local governance making judgment calls that no statewide rule could anticipate.

Then a court ruling changed everything.

Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling in Hobbs v. City of Salida identified a gap in state statute, and that gap effectively voided a permitting practice Colorado businesses relied on for decades. No community had abused its authority. No business had broken any rules. The legal ground simply shifted beneath us, and the clarity we had built our calendars around ceased to exist overnight.

For a small venue built on live programming, uncertainty compounds fast. I have had to defer bookings, turn away artists, and cut hours for staff who depend on a predictable season. The window for summer programming is closing, and I still cannot tell you with confidence what is legal and what is not.

The loss, when it comes, will not announce itself loudly. A venue that goes dark for one season rarely comes back unchanged. A neighborhood that loses its anchor music spot loses something harder to name than a business. Community spots provide a reason to gather, a place where strangers become friends, and a piece of the local identity that cannot be rebuilt from scratch. These are quiet losses, and they are already beginning.

Senate Bill 26-098 can stop this community erosion. Once passed, it will restore local governments’ authority to issue noise permits and set standards that reflect their own communities — their zoning, their needs, their priorities. It does not strip residents of any rights. Neighbors retain every avenue to petition local officials and demand accountability. What the bill restores is simply the balance that existed for decades before Hobbs made it untenable — the balance that let a music venue and a residential street coexist, because the people who knew both were empowered to work it out.

That is what a noise permit actually is, at its best. Not a bureaucratic formality, but a negotiated agreement between a venue and its community, overseen by an official who is answerable to both. A blunt statewide standard applied without local context does not protect neighbors better. It simply removes the people who know them from the conversation.

Nine in 10 say local governments, not the state, should set and enforce noise standards, and that consensus holds across party lines. Most Coloradans are united in the belief the person best equipped to decide what is right for a given block is not a legislator in Denver. It is the official who has walked that block, heard from the people on it, and worked with the businesses that give it life.

The bill passed the Colorado Senate with broad bipartisan support. It now sits before the House. I am not asking the General Assembly for anything new. I am requesting the same legal footing my business stood on for years — the footing that let us open our doors, fill a room and give this community something to show up for.

Jeff and Cindy Bailey are owners of the Abriendo Inn in Pueblo.