The act requires the state board of education (board) to adopt high school health education standards regarding drug overdose risks, identification of a drug overdose event, and drug overdose prevention and response. The act authorizes the board to seek, accept, and expend gifts, grants, or donations for the purpose of adopting these standards. The board must adopt the standards on or before July 1, 2028, if, the board receives by July 1, 2026, $20,000 from gifts, grants, or donations to adopt the standards. If sufficient money is not received, the board is required to adopt the standards on or before July 1, 2032, pursuant to the general standards schedule. Under current law, a school district, the state charter school institute (institute), or the governing board of a nonpublic school may adopt and implement a policy allowing an employee or agent of the school to furnish an opioid antagonist to any individual, including a student, but only if the student has received appropriate school-sponsored training. The act repeals the required condition that a student must receive appropriate school-sponsored training. The act authorizes a school district, the institute, a public school, or a nonpublic school to seek, accept, and expend gifts, grants, or donations for purposes related to acquiring, maintaining, and providing training for administering opioid antagonists. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
Sponsored bills
The act creates the American Indian affairs interim committee (committee). The purpose of the committee is to examine issues and challenges that impact American Indian Tribal Nations. The committee consists of 6 voting members of the general assembly who serve for the duration of the committee unless they resign, are removed, or are no longer in office and 2 nonvoting members, one from the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and one from the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe. The act allows the committee to meet up to 6 times and recommend up to 5 bills during each interim, but the committee does not meet or recommend legislation during the 2025 interim. On or before January 15, 2031, the act requires the committee to submit a report to the executive committee of the legislative council summarizing the work of the committee during the preceding 5 years. The committee is repealed, effective June 30, 2031. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
Beginning on or before July 1, 2027, the act requires a county department of human or social services (county department) to determine whether a child or youth who is in foster care and who has a deceased parent (child or youth) may be eligible to receive survivor benefits administered by the United States railroad retirement board, social security administration, or veterans benefits administration (federal survivor benefits). The county department must make an initial eligibility determination within 90 days after assuming legal custody of or authority over the child or youth. Under current law, certain federal agencies appoint a representative payee or fiduciary (representative payee) to receive and manage federal benefits on behalf of a child or youth in foster care. If a child or youth may be eligible for federal survivor benefits and the county department is the most appropriate representative payee, the act requires the county department to apply for federal survivor benefits on behalf of the child or youth. If the county department determines that the child or youth may be eligible for federal survivor benefits but that the county department is not the most appropriate representative payee, the county department shall provide information to the prospective representative payee that the county department has identified about how to apply for federal survivor benefits on behalf of the child or youth and how to become the child's or youth's representative payee. Under current law, a county department serving as a representative payee may use federal benefits to offset the cost of providing basic care and services to a child or youth in foster care. The act prohibits this offset practice with respect to federal survivor benefits. Instead, the act directs a county department serving as a representative payee to establish an account for the federal survivor benefits (account). A county department serving as a representative payee must save money in the account for the needs of the individual child or youth. Once the child or youth leaves foster care, the county department is required to release funds in the account to the child or youth. The act sets forth various accounting and notice requirements related to federal survivor benefits and requires the department of human services (department), in consultation with interested stakeholders, to adopt rules providing guidance for county departments. The guidance extends to procedures for identifying a representative payee, county department responsibilities when federal survivor benefits are denied or when a child or youth leaves foster care, and policies governing the establishment and maintenance of an account for federal survivor benefit funds. The department must provide technical assistance to a county department about how to conserve federal survivor benefit funds in the best interests of an individual child or youth. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
Embodied carbon is the carbon associated with greenhouse gas emissions arising from the production, construction, use, and end-of-life of products or systems used in the construction of buildings, roads, and other infrastructure. Section 1 of the act adds embodied carbon improvements to the list of new energy improvements that are eligible for property-assessed clean energy financing provided by the Colorado new energy improvement district. An embodied carbon improvement is one or more installations or modifications to real property using eligible materials that result in the reduction of the installation's or modification's embodied carbon emissions. Section 2 modifies the industrial clean energy tax credit so that embodied carbon investments are greenhouse gas emissions reduction improvements that, if certified, are eligible for the credit for a portion of the capital costs incurred in placing them in service. An embodied carbon investment is one that results in a 15% or greater reduction in cradle-to-gate embodied emissions of eligible materials when compared to the eligible materials' cradle-to-gate baseline. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
The act makes updates to the streamlined solar permitting and inspection grant program (grant program). The grant program provides funding for the adoption and implementation of automated permitting and inspection software. The act clarifies that funding from the grant program may be used by a recipient for eligible expenses for up to 3 years after the grantee implements the automated permitting and inspection software. The act also permits the Colorado energy office (office) to spend up to 9% of the money remaining in the grant program's cash fund as of September 1, 2025, for paying the direct and indirect costs of the office in administering the grant program. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
On or after July 1, 2025, the act requires a person, before commencing a project to install or substantially repair a contiguous fence of at least a specified certain size in the Sangre de Cristo land grant lands (covered fencing project), to submit an application for the covered fencing project to the local government with jurisdiction over the covered fencing project (application) if the local government has opted into the act's requirements. No later than 14 days after the local government's receipt of an application, the local government must publish notice of the application on the local government's website. No later than 60 days after the local government's receipt of an application, the local government must either approve or reject the application based on certain criteria; except that, despite the criteria, a local government may approve an application if it determines that the benefits of the covered fencing project outweigh the harms. If the local government finds that a covered fencing project presents no significant environmental impacts, then the local government shall not require a person commencing the covered fencing project to submit an application or pay a fee. The act does not apply to a covered fencing project that is necessary for a public utility or department of transportation project, an energy sector public works project, the safety or security of a public school or prison, or fences provided by the division of parks and wildlife. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
The act creates the geologic storage stewardship enterprise (enterprise) in the department of natural resources (department) for the purpose of: Determining the amount of annual stewardship fees; Funding the long-term stewardship of geologic storage facilities in the state; Funding the plugging, abandoning, reclaiming, and, as necessary, remediating of orphaned geologic storage facilities in the state if the energy and carbon management commission (commission), after notice and a hearing, determines that available financial assurance is insufficient; and Ensuring that costs associated with long-term stewardship of geologic storage facilities are borne by geologic storage operators in the form of stewardship fees. The act creates the geologic storage stewardship enterprise board (enterprise board) to administer the enterprise. The act requires each geologic storage operator to pay an annual stewardship fee for each ton of injection carbon dioxide that the geologic storage operator injects in the state. The commission collects the stewardship fee on the enterprise's behalf. All money collected as stewardship fees is credited to the geologic storage stewardship enterprise cash fund (fund), which is created in the act. Money in the fund is continuously appropriated to the enterprise. The enterprise shall adopt rules as necessary to implement the act and the commission may adopt rules to implement its collection of stewardship fees on behalf of the enterprise. The willful violation of a commission rule, regulation, permit, or order concerning class VI injection wells used for injecting carbon dioxide for underground storage is a misdemeanor subject to a fine of $5,000 to $7,000 per day for each act of violation. To approve a geologic storage operator's request to close a site, the commission must first determine that the geologic storage operator has contributed money to the fund. Upon the commission's approval of a site closure: Ownership of the injection carbon dioxide and ownership of any remaining facilities transfer to the state without payment of additional compensation; Except in specified circumstances, the geologic storage operator is released from all regulatory liability associated with the continued storage of the injection carbon dioxide and the long-term stewardship of the associated geologic storage facility; and The enterprise undertakes long-term stewardship of the injection carbon dioxide and any associated geologic storage facility. The act makes several updates to laws concerning the administration of underground geothermal resources, including: Clarifying that "nontributary groundwater" does not include "designated groundwater", as these terms are defined in current law; Exempting certain geothermal operations from needing a well permit from the state engineer; Requiring the state engineer to notify the operator of a prior geothermal operation of an application for a proposed well, and allowing the operator the opportunity to request a hearing if the application causes concern for material injury to the prior geothermal operation; Renaming the state board of examiners of water well construction and pump installation contractors as the "state board of examiners of water well and ground heat exchanger contractors" (state board of examiners); Establishing that the authority to regulate shallow geothermal operations is shared by the state engineer and the state board of examiners; and Regulating ground heat exchanger contractors in the same manner that currently exists for water well construction contractors and pump installation contractors.(Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
The Tony Grampsas youth services grant program (grant program) provides grants to community-based programs to reduce incidents of youth crime and violence. The youth mentoring program, the student dropout prevention and intervention program, and the student before-and-after school project (collectively, the "programs") were created within the grant program. The act repeals the individual programs and instead lists the programs as allowable uses for grant money under the grant program. The act transfers certain responsibilities from the Tony Grampsas youth services board (board) to the department of human services (department). The act repeals local public-to-private funding match requirements. The act requires each entity that receives a grant to annually report certain information to the department; except that an entity that has an operating budget of less than $1.5 million, or that receives a grant in the amount of not more than $25,000, is not required to report on the outcomes achieved by the services provided and the methods used to track the outcomes. The act decreases the appropriation from the marijuana tax cash fund to the youth mentoring services cash fund by $500,000 and reappropriates the money to the grant program by $500,000. The act decreases the appropriation from the youth mentoring services cash fund to the grant program by $504,120. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
For alternative education campuses (AECs), the act: Directs the department of education (department), when administering state education grants, to allocate priority points to AECs; Authorizes AECs to include certain high-risk students in the AEC's pupil count who are 21 years of age or younger during the budget year; Requires the department to prepare and post an annual report on enrollment trends, student demographics, and student mobility in AECs; and Exempts an AEC from losing its designation due to a fluctuation in enrollment for one school year. The act appropriates $9,613 from the general fund to the department for accountability and improvement planning. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)
The act requires the director of the division of oil and public safety in the department of labor and employment (division) to adopt rules concerning retail electric vehicle charging that set forth minimum standards relating to specifications and tolerances for retail electric vehicle charging equipment and methods of retail sale at publicly accessible electric vehicle charging stations to promote consistency in the marketplace by July 1, 2026, and to enforce the rules beginning July 1, 2027. The act broadens the allowable uses of money in the electric vehicle grant fund within the Colorado energy office to include: Operational and policy work to support electric vehicle adoption, electric vehicle charging, and affordable, clean electricity for electric motor vehicles, including covering the administrative costs of this work; and Support for the development and enforcement of retail electric vehicle charging rules by the division. The act also broadens the allowable uses of money in the community impact cash fund within the department of public health and environment to include environmental equity and cumulative impact analyses. The act also requires the community access enterprise within the Colorado energy office to reduce the amount of the community access retail delivery fee that it imposes as necessary to ensure that the enterprise does not collect more than $100 million in total fee revenue prior to June 30, 2026. For the 2025-26 state fiscal year, $225,320 is appropriated to the department of labor and employment for use by the division for personal services and operating expenses. This appropriation is from reappropriated funds received from the office of the governor that are continuously appropriated to the Colorado energy office from the electric vehicle grant fund. (Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)