High Country Advocate — Votes Have Consequences Series, launching August 2
Colorado didn’t change overnight. It changed one vote at a time, in a building most people never visit, recorded in documents most people never read. The High Country Advocate read them.
2018: Divided Government — The Last Year of the Check
In 2018, Republicans held the Colorado Senate and Democrats held the House. Neither party could run the table. The result was a session that produced 39 bills the High Country Advocate classifies as Bad — legislation that expanded government, raised costs, imposed mandates, or restricted individual rights.
Even in a divided legislature, the record is not clean.
Every Colorado resident who registers a motorboat or sailboat was handed a new mandatory fee — adjusted upward by the Consumer Price Index annually, with no reduction allowed. The Department of Education had its spending fund converted to a permanent self-appropriation, removing annual legislative oversight entirely. The state opened a mandatory data pipeline from government EMS databases to private health information networks — meaning every Coloradan who has ever called an ambulance now has their patient records feeding into third-party systems without their consent. Landlords were handed new mandatory documentation requirements. Fifteen state departments received supplemental mid-year spending increases above their original budgets, most with no serious floor debate.
Every one of those votes is in the public record. The High Country Advocate pulled them all.
The 2018 scorecard: House Democrats averaged a 31.5% bad-vote rate. House Republicans averaged 20.8%. Senate Democrats averaged 18.6%. Senate Republicans averaged 14.1%. Not one legislator in either chamber was clean — every member voted yes on at least five Bad bills. The question has always been how many.
2019: The Trifecta — Everything Changed
In November 2018, Democrats won the Colorado Senate and the governorship. For the first time in a decade they controlled the legislature and the Governor’s office simultaneously.
In a single 120-day session, the legislature imposed 9 new mandates on employers — including a statewide Equal Pay law with civil penalties of $500 to $10,000 per violation, a Ban the Box law restricting when employers can ask about criminal history, and the repeal of the state ban on local minimum wage laws, opening every Colorado city and county to set its own wage floor. Nine. In 2018 there were zero.
It overhauled the entire oil and gas regulatory framework with SB19-181 — changing the mission of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission from developing energy resources to regulating them for public health and environmental protection, and handing every county in Colorado authority to impose its own drilling restrictions. Kirkland & Ellis, one of the nation’s top energy law firms, published a client alert calling it “the most drastic changes to the regulatory landscape for oil and gas operations in state history.” Weld County produces roughly 90% of Colorado’s oil and nearly half its natural gas. The bill passed 19–16 in the Senate. Every Republican voted No.
It passed 34 healthcare bills in a single session — including a public option study, a state reinsurance program, a single-payer task force, and an insulin price cap. It created 38 new standing government programs, each requiring annual appropriations. It referred Proposition CC to voters — a permanent waiver of Colorado’s constitutional spending limit — and Prop CC passed. It created a “just transition” office to manage coal’s decline in Moffat, Routt, and Pueblo counties, communities that had no vote on the decision.
The red flag gun law — which authorizes courts to order firearm confiscation before any criminal charge is filed — passed the Senate 18–17. The Democratic Senate President voted No alongside every Republican. One vote the other way and it fails.
The National Popular Vote compact, committing Colorado’s presidential electoral votes to the national popular vote winner regardless of how Coloradans vote, passed the House 34–29 — with four Democrats voting No against their own party.
The state operating budget went from $29.6 billion in 2018 to $31.9 billion in 2019. On top of that, $352 million in mid-year supplemental spending passed — the largest portion approved on the consent calendar with no floor debate.
Every vote is named. Every dollar is sourced. The High Country Advocate has the receipts.
Why This Series Exists
The mainstream Colorado press covered some of these bills. None published the full named vote record. None put 2018 and 2019 side by side and showed readers what one election changed. None reported that the Democratic Senate President voted No on the red flag bill. None noted that the early childhood educator tax credit that passed in 2019 never took effect — a drafting error in the enrolled bill required a cleanup bill the following year to fix it.
These are facts. They are all in the public record. They belong to every Colorado voter.
The Votes Have Consequences series publishes them — every bill, every vote, every legislator named — starting August 2. Six more years follow: 2020 through 2026, all under the same unified Democratic control, all documented the same way.
If you want to know what your legislature actually did to you — and who voted for it — this is the only place you will find the complete answer.
The series is paid. Subscribe to High Country Advocate .
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