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Legislators favor lighter touch to regulating business audits contracted by cities
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Legislators favor lighter touch to regulating business audits contracted by cities

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance Given the options of taking an aggressive or conservative approach to combatting “trigger audits,” Colorado legislators appear to have chosen the latter. The Sales and Use Tax Simplification Task Force last week unanimously approved a bill for drafting that would require any that any third-party auditors contracted by cities maintain the same confidentiality with collected data that Colorado governments would use. It also will send a letter to the Colorado Department of Revenue calling on it to convene a task force to help increase the number of businesses using the existing SUTS tax-filing system — a change that it believes would boost compliance with state law. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE SUM & SUBSTANCE
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Report on hospital facility fees could stir new health-care regulatory efforts
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Report on hospital facility fees could stir new health-care regulatory efforts

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance A legislatively mandated report on hospital-system facility fees that was released Tuesday appears likely to spark a new round of debate on whether the state should limit the fees that opponents call costly and unclear and that hospitals say are vital to offsite operations. The Hospital Facility Fee Report concluded that the fees, added for services in nonacute-care settings, drive up health-care costs by more than $50 million annually, are opaque and confusing and incentivize independent physicians to affiliate with larger hospital systems. However, the report also notes that a reduction in fee revenue could drastically cut the federal matching money that’s been used to expand Medicaid eligibility, and it noted several times that the task for...
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Colorado regulators appear to reach consensus on cumulative-impacts regulations for oil & gas
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Colorado regulators appear to reach consensus on cumulative-impacts regulations for oil & gas

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance After four weeks of testimony and debate, Colorado regulators seem to have aligned on new cumulative-impacts rules that will require more protections from oil and gas firms wanting to drill in already impacted areas but will not shut off future projects altogether. The Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission broke Thursday afternoon until Oct. 8 but not before coming to a consensus around how oil-and-gas operators must account for their emissions as part of the cumulative impacts of all industry in an area. Environmental advocates have sought such added considerations for five years to better protect poorer communities that already have higher levels of pollution and industrial activity, and the rules the ECMC is developing ...
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Legislators considering bills to reduce ‘trigger audits’ targeting business
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Legislators considering bills to reduce ‘trigger audits’ targeting business

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance Multiple medium- to large-sized companies say that they’ve been targeted for audits over and over by groups of a dozen or more municipalities in recent years, typically at the behest of a third-party auditing firm contracted by smaller cities to investigate potential tax scofflaws. It’s not the general concept of the audits that bothers tax professionals and business leaders so much the frequency and number of these audits, as well as the fear that an unregulated company is sharing information from the investigations to spur more audits. The primary company contracting with Colorado cities to perform these audits says it does not share such information, but critics note that the firm — Revenue Recovery Group of Baton Rouge, Louisiana — refuses...
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Deadline looms for packaging producers to register for new state-mandated recycling program
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Deadline looms for packaging producers to register for new state-mandated recycling program

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance In just two weeks, any substantially sized company that produces packaging sold within Colorado — from plastic to glass to wood — must be registered with a new industry-led organization that will soon begin charging fees to fund a statewide recycling system. The deadline comes more than two years after the Legislature approved the first-of-its-kind makeup for the funding and administration of the programs, and the deadline has been moved up nine months from what that law originally anticipated. And while the Circular Action Alliance is still working to determine how many companies will be affected by the fee, the watchdog Colorado Consumer Coalition estimates the total could be about 1,500. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE SUM & SUB...
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Could an election-reform initiative really help the business community?
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Could an election-reform initiative really help the business community?

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance To the average business owner struggling to keep up with inflation and new regulations, electoral reform may not seem like an issue that should be at the top of their priority list. But former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry would beg to differ. Thiry, no stranger to election fights, is spearheading a ballot initiative this year that would upend the way Coloradans vote in statewide primary and general elections. Proposition 131 is drawing criticism from party leaders, unions and senior groups for being confusing and self-serving to the businessman, ensuring that it will be one of the more talked-about measures on what will be a crowded ballot this fall. READ THE FULL STORY AT THE SUM & SUBSTANCE
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State regulators on verge of passing new cumulative-impact requirements on oil-and-gas projects
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State regulators on verge of passing new cumulative-impact requirements on oil-and-gas projects

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance Colorado regulators are debating an “enormous” set of regulations that will require consideration of the cumulative impacts of any new or expanded oil-and-gas project on air, water and other natural resources before state officials can grant operating permits. The rules are the product of several laws passed since 2019 aiming to protect communities already dealing with significant emissions by requiring the state to consider permits in the context of existing pollution rather than focus only on the impacts of the new projects. The most recent bill on the subject, approved this year, gave the Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission a specific definition of “cumulative impacts” around which it must build the new regulations. How...
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Bill signing, initiative withdrawal sets November ballot at 14 measures
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Bill signing, initiative withdrawal sets November ballot at 14 measures

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance Colorado’s November ballot took its final 14-initiative shape Wednesday as Gov. Jared Polis signed a tax-cut bill resulting in the withdrawal of two high-profile initiatives that sought to achieve even bigger tax reductions and lead to bigger revenue losses for governments. With the removal of Initiatives 50 and 108 from the ballot, the remaining issues either have no direct impact on businesses or affect only specific business sectors, such as firearms dealers and operators of veterinary practices. But former DaVita CEO Kent Thiry is pushing one voting-reform measure, Initiative 310, in hopes that it can help more moderate and often business-friendlier candidates to survive the primary- and general-election processes more often. The Democr...
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Lawmakers also extended agricultural equipment property tax exemption in special session
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Lawmakers also extended agricultural equipment property tax exemption in special session

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance Colorado legislators who focused heavily on cutting property taxes for homeowners during this week’s special session also approved one other tax break — one specifically focused on an emerging technology in the agricultural sector. House Bill 1003, which passed both chambers by wide margins, expands and extends a 2022 law that defined produce-focused greenhouses and the equipment therein as agricultural equipment and thus exempted them from the business personal property tax. While such a focus for a bill may seem to have been far afield from the main concerns of the four-day session — and was a major reason some legislators opposed it — sponsors argued it fit under Gov. Jared Polis’ call to pass bills lowering property tax for 2025....
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On opening day of special session, lawmakers kill most bills, advance tax cut, constitutional change
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On opening day of special session, lawmakers kill most bills, advance tax cut, constitutional change

By Ed Sealover | The Sum & Substance Colorado legislators winnowed 13 property-tax bills down to just four during the first day of a special session Monday, but put a bill at the center of a governor-negotiated deal on a collision course with a constitutional amendment that could upend that deal. In the most anticipated hearing of the day, the House Appropriations Committee approved a measure that would expand property-tax breaks passed at the end of the regular session in May and cap annual growth of property-tax revenue for schools and local governments. Passage of House Bill 1001 also would get Advance Colorado and Colorado Concern to pull from the November ballot a pair of more far-reaching property-tax-cut proposals that education and government leaders fear would result in ...
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