For months, Monument mom Ashley Sutton has waited for the federal government to help her daughter access the education she legally deserves. Dr. Edwin Asturias, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Hospital Colorado, has tried to help patients navigate shifting federal guidance on vaccines.
And worker safety advocates have winced at attempts to roll back federal safety regulations that they say will leave workers facing unnecessarily dangerous conditions.
All are examples of the new uncertainty surrounding federal policy since President Donald Trump returned to office last year. Colorado’s Democratic legislative majority already had sought to insulate the state from Republican priorities that are at odds with their own — resulting in laws that have enshrined protections for immigrants, abortion, voting and more in state law.
And now lawmakers are turning to areas where the federal government has pulled back under Trump. This year, Democrats have already unveiled a suite of bills that would give the state more say in authorizing vaccines, would grant it more authority to enforce workplace safety and would aim to better protect students with disabilities, among other legislation.
In all cases, the backers have cast the efforts as the state stepping in where an unreliable federal partner has stepped back.
“We have never had to question whether or not the federal government is a reliable partner, and now we do need to,” said Heather Tritten, the CEO of the Colorado Children’s Campaign and a backer of the disability rights bill. “When we think about the programs like civil rights in education, or even in Medicaid or TANF (the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program) or education, we’re seeing that the money and partnership we could always rely on just isn’t there. And that means we need something here that can take up that space.”
House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat, says it’s not a posture unique to Colorado.
She recalled that during a meeting with legislative leaders from other states last year, there was “a desire to really assert state authority in this moment.”
“So many of the issues that I think we’ve looked to the federal government to resolve are now falling to the states to grapple with,” McCluskie said.
It remains unclear how assertive Gov. Jared Polis, also a Democrat, is willing to be when it comes to passing such laws, which have drawn opposition from Republicans and, in some cases, business groups. Eric Maruyama, a spokesperson for Polis, said the governor will review every bill that reaches his desk individually.
But he also understands the legislative priority.
“It is not surprising that the legislature is trying to fill gaps being created by the federal government and congressional inaction on some of the hardest problems facing the country,” Maruyama said in a statement. “Regardless of federal chaos, the governor is focused on delivering on better education, more housing options Coloradans can afford, less expensive healthcare, and protecting our Colorado for all.”
Months of silence from federal office
One new piece of legislation is aimed at helping families like Sutton’s.
Her high school-aged daughter lives with serious medical conditions — the type of things where, without specific care, she could lose the ability to walk or risk organ shutdown, Sutton said. At the beginning of the school year, the family sought and received a 504 plan, a federal designation meant to guarantee that people with physical disabilities have the same access to education as their peers.
It didn’t take long for Sutton to suspect that the accommodations required by the 504 plan were not being met. She said she raised her concerns to Palmer Ridge High School officials in October, then to the school district before she escalated it to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in December.
Three months later, Sutton said she’s heard nothing beyond an acknowledgement her complaint has been received.
Her daughter, meanwhile, has faced new diagnoses and has spent more time in the hospital. All the while, school work has piled up as her accommodations aren’t met, Sutton said. Sutton declined to discuss some aspects of her daughter’s situation, as well as some details of her medical conditions, with The Denver Post because of a pending legal complaint and to protect her daughter’s privacy.
“We’re in the thick of it right now,” Sutton said. “Beyond the emotional effect it’s had on my child, it’s had real academic harm for her. The implications are very real. For our students, depending on what their post-high school goals are, are we setting them up for success — especially when they already have to do so much to overcome their existing disabilities? I don’t think so.”
In a statement Friday, Rick Frampton, executive director of student services for Lewis-Palmer School District 38, didn’t address Sutton’s situation but said the district “believes in implementing all 504 plans with integrity and a commitment to ensuring that students with disabilities receive equal access to education.”
“We follow a structured process and work closely with families to implement and develop those plans,” Frampton said.
Stories like Sutton’s spurred Sen. Chris Kolker, a Centennial Democrat, to introduce Senate Bill 125. Last March, the federal Office of Civil Rights laid off more than half of its staff and closed more than half of its regional offices, according to the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.
The office also “deprioritized” its usual work of investigating civil rights complaints, such as those filed by students with disabilities, according to the think tank.
SB-125 would give the state similar power and authority that was previously left in the hands of the federal office. Kolker says the goal is to recreate what had previously been accepted practice at the state level.
As it stands now, 504 plans are solely the purview of federal enforcement and outside the scope of state offices.
“The cases (the federal office) investigates are very important for these families to have someone look into what is happening,” Kolker said. “This is just a fundamental right for our disabled community.”
Madi Ashour, a policy advisor with the Colorado Children’s Campaign, said the goal is to make it so there’s “no wrong door” for families looking for recourse when their children’s needs aren’t being met.
Advocates also hope the bill, if it becomes law, would give families needed support even if the Trump administration, or the next president, reverses course. Ashour estimates the bill would require the addition of three attorneys at the Colorado Department of Education to help families navigate and seek support for their 504 plans or other accommodations. Legislative analysts haven’t yet released a fiscal note.
Paying for the bill is one of its bigger hurdles, Kolker said. Advocates estimate it may cost about $500,000, though nonpartisan fiscal analysts have not yet released their analysis. Kolker has introduced other bills that may produce budget savings that he hopes to leverage to pay for SB-125, but nothing is set in stone.
For Sutton, she sees the bill as vital to making sure families can get the support they need and avert the stress her family has experienced. Delays of even a few months represent time no one can get back — and for children, it’s especially formative time that could be key to their education.
“Parents shouldn’t have to become experts in civil rights law just so their child can receive the accommodations their school has already approved,” Sutton said.
Money worries loom over ambitions
Other proposals this year are intended to give the state some enforcement power in places typically covered by the federal government. But how to pay for the enforcement remains a hurdle in a particularly cash-strapped year.
The sponsors of House Bill 1054 seek to enshrine federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards — those intended to keep workers safe — in state law. But because the state doesn’t have money for new programs, it would rely on labor unions, individuals and state agents by giving them the ability to sue over violations.
The bill has drawn staunch opposition from business groups.
Sponsoring Reps. Manny Rutinel and Elizabeth Velasco, both Democrats, said they hoped to expand the proposal in future years to include direct state enforcement. But with the Trump administration threatening to rescind OSHA’s general duty rule — an umbrella regulation that requires generally safe workplaces — for “inherently risky professional activities,” they felt urgency to act now.
“If I had the magic wand, of course, I would want to have a state OSHA, a state entity or department that could be protecting workers and doing this rulemaking and looking at all the things that need to be done to hold bad actors accountable,” Velasco said. “But with our budgetary environment — with the barriers we are seeing — we believe that this is one good avenue to start with this issue.”
The Colorado Chamber of Commerce contends that the bill would create duplicative enforcement and regulatory systems. Meghan Dollar, the chamber’s senior vice president of government affairs, also expressed concern about it expanding civil liability for employers.
“It could lead to conflicting legal standards with multiple levels of overly complicated rules, creating confusion over how state and federal enforcement interact,” Dollar said in a statement. “Regarding filling hypothetical gaps in OSHA enforcement, there are more effective ways to address issues that arise with changes to federal rules — layering separate state standards and creating new litigation risks will only increase costs, uncertainty and regulatory complexity for business.”
HB-1054 cleared its first hurdle at the end of February, passing a narrow 7-6 vote in the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee. It now heads to the Appropriations Committee, where voting members will determine if the state has money to push the matter.
That question may not be resolved for a month or longer, as state budget writers look at how to shave nearly $800 million in planned spending for the upcoming year to close the state’s gap.
“When the Trump administration decided to gut our health care, Medicaid — to the tune of almost $1 trillion — it gutted OSHA in the process,” said Rutinel, a Commerce City Democrat who’s running for Congress. He was referring to the omnibus spending package that Trump signed into law last summer. “(The administration) did it all to give tax breaks to his corporate donors and to pump billions of dollars into immigration enforcement.
“Colorado is having to step in and find ways so that, despite our budget concerns, we can still find ways to protect our most vulnerable workers”
‘Trying to insulate Colorado’ on vaccines
A similar motivation is behind recent vaccine legislation at the Capitol.
Asturias, the Children’s Hospital Colorado doctor, said that over the past year, he’s seen a huge amount of anxiety among families that are trying to navigate changing federal guidelines and do what’s best for their children.
Since Trump appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long trafficked in disproven claims about vaccine safety, to head the federal health agency, Kennedy has moved to change the recommended vaccine schedule.
“We have seen a huge amount of patients and families and parents being confused now,” Asturias said. “Even parents who are health care providers are now reaching out and saying, ‘Can you give me a good explanation of what’s changing?’ ”
To calm those concerns, Asturias is supporting Senate Bill 32. If it becomes law, the measure will give state health officials the authority to use immunization guidance from medical professional organizations, and outside of the federal advisory committee steered by Kennedy, when approving vaccine schedules. It would build off prior efforts by the legislature and the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment to maintain vaccine access in Colorado.
Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat and emergency room nurse by trade, doesn’t see vaccines as a partisan issue. But when he brought the bill to the floor for debate in February, he was direct in his diagnosis.
This bill, Mullica said, is about “trying to insulate Colorado from some of the dysfunction that we see coming out of Washington, D.C., and with Secretary Kennedy.”
That wasn’t meant as a partisan jab at a Republican administration, Mullica said, but was him “calling balls and strikes,” just like he would if a Democrat was doing something he disagreed with.
“I think that it’s just the facts,” Mullica said. “They are doing things … that just do not follow the science and do not follow the experts and what we should be doing.”
He said it was time for state policymakers to “step up.”
But the bill nonetheless has caused substantial bristling among Republicans. None voted for the measure when it passed the Senate, with several raising concerns about liability for people harmed by vaccines.
Senate Minority Leader Cleave Simpson, an Alamosa Republican, said the vaccine bill was interesting enough to warrant consideration. But starting the conversation with a posture of opposing the Trump administration “certainly slanted it a little bit.”
“As the minority leader, and a lifelong Republican, these are probably opportunities for some level of thoughtful engagement and conversation,” Simpsons said. “But it starts from that place of the influence national politics might be and are having on the conversations here.”
He said he’s been approached about supporting other measures that he substantively agrees with. But language that’s designed “to put a stick in the eye of the federal government” keeps him from signing on.
“We should, where we can, be thoughtful and avoid those kind of conversations, and just focus on what’s good for Colorado and the reasons why — and not what the current administration makeup looks like,” Simpson said.
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