Colorado’s bill boom: 56 percent growth since 2012 sparks right-to-know push

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project

The legislation piles up so fast, you cannot keep up

I was texting with a friend the other day and we both agreed that the legislative pace is beyond human-scale. The laws and, frankly, the nonsense, pile up so fast it’s nearly impossible to keep up.

My impression seems to be borne out by the Common Sense Institute study linked at bottom. The bullet points out of the study’s abstract put numbers to things. Quoting:

–The growth of Colorado’s legislative output since 2012 is 56%—4^th-highest in the country

–In 2025, the legislature passed 487 bills. Although this is a decrease from 2024’s 527, it is still 23% more than the average between 2012 and 2018

–The average complexity of passed legislation has increased even faster than the count. 2025 bills were, on average, 26% more complex, as measured by word counts in each year’s Digest of Bills, than those passed between 2012 and 2018

–The number of statewide ballot questions put before voters, including citizen initiatives and referred measures, quadrupled from 4 to 16 between 2012 and 2024.

That latter was a surprise. I think I’ve been paying so much attention to legislation that I haven’t thought much about the referred measures/initiatives part of my ballot. I have supported many of the efforts I’ve seen on the initiatives front because I’ve felt like it was one of a few ways that everyday people can push back on the Democrats running the state, but I have to admit that (support or not), this dynamic is just as pernicious.

I will leave it to you to read the report in more detail, but a couple of the graphs/pictures from it were compelling and so I wanted to share.

Screenshot 1 gives a time series comparison of Colorado laws passed by (regular–not special) sessions compared to the baseline (the 2012 to 2018 average). The red line gives another interesting metric: it measures the average word count in the bill summary for legislation in that session as an indirect measure of bill complexity.

The jump in both is startling.

Screenshot 2 gives a comparison in the growth of legislation by state. Red colors show a percent increase and blue a percent decrease, with the intensity of either scaling with an increase.

Colorado’s up there, but clearly not by as much as some of our neighbors (like Wyoming).

Our job as citizens is to monitor what our elected officials are doing so we can make informed choices and votes. This is a job I take seriously (I harp on it all the time here); I know that many of you do too.

Think about how much harder our legislators make this job for us, particularly those among us who try to fit it in around all our other daily commitments.

Whether intentional or not, the jump in quantity and complexity of bills in the last 6 years makes our jobs increasingly complex, putting informed choices out of the reach of people who have every intent to be involved voters.

And I ask you to think over what we might have gained to offset this cost. Did the 7% increase in bills from 2023 to 2024 make your life commensurately better? Did the 33% increase from 2012-18 average to 2024 make your life that much better?

I submit it hasn’t. We’ve piled policy on policy. We’ve fattened the volumes of regulation our regulatory bodies keep. We’ve got more opportunities to give money to the government. It’s harder to start and operate businesses. Life here is more complicated and expensive.

But it’s not safer.

But it’s not easier and you don’t have more freedom.

But we don’t have better infrastructure.

But we don’t have cheaper and more reliable utilities.

Just more bills and more government we have to support.

https://www.commonsenseinstituteus.org/colorado/research/state-budget/colorados-legislative-pace-2025-update

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Enshrining your fundamental right to know in the Colorado Constitution

Been a long time coming, but we will (I hope) soon have a chance to vote to enshrine a right to know what our government is doing in our state constitution.

I’ve been keeping an eye on an amendment that been in the drafting stage for a while and, per the CFOIC article linked below, it’s finally finished and starting the process to make the ballot.

The CFOIC article gives some detail about the measure and the players behind it, as well as some reactions and comments. I’ll leave you to read that.

I want to delve into the proposed amendment itself. I put a link to the actual text second below.

The text of the measure has plenty to read and consider. I’ll leave it to you to do so if you’d like. There were some things which I thought of wide import and so I took some pictures and attached.

READ THE FULL COMMENTARY AT THE COLORADO ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.