By Kevin Lundberg | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
As Colorado’s 2025 legislative session began, the governor and leaders in both houses laid out their agendas. The legislators’ remarks were somewhat predictable, talking about unity and cooperation — a good place to start, but more lip service than reality.
The Republican minority leaders, to their credit, also spoke up for the people of Colorado. They emphasized the government policies that have driven up the cost of living to impossible levels for far too many families. Under Polis and one party rule in the legislature, intrusive and far too expensive fees and regulations have ratcheted up costs and made it harder to run a business, buy a home or even drive a car. Every year, more laws compound the complexities of life in Colorado.
On the Democrats’ part of this equation, they like these laws. They made them and will continue to do the same this year. Looking at the first batch of bills already introduced is a clear picture of their intentions. Senate Bill 003 is a radical shutdown of semi-automatic rifles and handguns. Senate Bill 005 upsets Colorado’s unique balance in labor laws between forced unionization of work places and right-to-work policies. Senate Bill 045 will take the state one step closer to a state-run medical system.
The governor is another story, a very complicated one, but equally complicit with the radical agenda we have seen in these years since he took his office at the capitol. Polis is a very shrewd politician. He has orchestrated the hard left policies that have been put in place in Colorado throughout the past six years. Colorado now looks like the radical policies of California. But, at the same time, Polis is trying to present himself as a moderate, liberty loving, business friendly kind of guy on the national scene. It is a complicated dance that he continues to promote.
In his State of the State address, several times he repeated the phrase “free state of Colorado,” but this doesn’t mean anything near to what a liberty loving conservative thinks it means. Polis’ kind of freedom is free to celebrate and promote all abortions. Free to completely reinvent the institution of marriage, family and gender. Free to illegally migrate from other countries and enjoy all of the entitlements and privileges created for legitimate U.S. citizens.
His speech reaffirmed a dogged commitment to the whole global warming scam that, after riding that horse for more than 30 years, has become a worn out retread of the 18th century scare tactics of Thomas Malthus. Colorado’s rich treasures of energy resources are being squandered by Governor Polis.
To his credit, he has identified the high cost of living in Colorado as a priority concern for most Colorado citizens. However, his answer is heavy-handed policies that override local control of communities and subsidies and study commissions to manipulate growth and development. He boasted about cancelling 100 years of meaningless, obscure executive orders from previous governors, while letting hundreds of his own executive orders stand.
What about his sound-bite sentence about controlling cattle rustling while he is literally turning more wolves out on Western Slope ranches? And then there is TABOR, which he claims to support — but not a whisper of it in his speech — yet he still signs bills into law that have created a multitude of new taxes for millions of dollars that are illegitimately called “fees.”
Finally, his idea for improving education is throw more money at it. What about significant school choice for parents, including private and homeschool options? I find his perception of a good education clouded by a lockstep adherence to the transgender ideology in public school curriculum, forced pronoun policies for all public schools (including charter) and silence on the absurd and dangerous policy of men in women’s sports in our public schools.
Polis may have aspirations of even higher office, which might explain his trying to pose as a middle-of-the-road Democrat, but the hard-left shift in policies for the state of Colorado tells a very different story, and I expect this year will be more of the same.
Kevin Lundberg is a former member of both the Colorado House and Senate, a former assistant majority leader in the Senate, a published author and businessman.
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