The No. 2 Democrat in the Colorado Senate on Saturday shuffled the members of a key committee in order to try to advance his measure tweaking Colorado’s first-in-the-nation law regulating artificial intelligence, which is set to take effect in February.
The decision was aimed at ending a days-long standoff among the Capitol’s Democratic majority about how to move forward on the AI policy, with tech groups and schools on one side of the coin and consumer protection groups and unions on the other.
The changes to the Senate Appropriations Committee, an extraordinary move made by Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, D-Denver, give Democrats a 5-2 advantage on the panel, whereas before they had a 4-3 majority. State Sen. Jeff Bridges, a Greenwood Village Democrat and chair of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, was removed from the committee.
It’s highly unusual for a committee’s membership to be changed in the middle of a session, especially in order to pass a single bill.
The committee shake-up should let Rodriguez’s bill narrowing the AI law advance to the Senate floor. The idea behind Senate Bill 4 is to shift some of the regulatory burden onto AI developers instead of the companies and others — like schools, local governments and law enforcement — that deploy the tech.
The bill has been stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee because it wasn’t clear if there were enough votes to pass it on to the Senate floor. Bridges, who is running for state treasurer, was seen as one of the possible “no” votes.
The newly added Democrats on the committee — progressive Sens. Katie Wallace and Mike Weissman — said they will vote to advance the measure.
The panel is set to consider the bill on Sunday, and changes are expected.
Because of how long it’s taking to negotiate on the bill, the special session will now run through at least Tuesday — unless efforts to change the AI law are abandoned. The special session began Thursday.
(Saturday was the earliest the special session could have ended if lawmakers had worked fast enough.)
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Rodriguez defended the committee change in an interview with The Colorado Sun, saying the pace of the special session and the number of bills moving through he Senate Appropriations Committee necessitated the changes.
But it was clear that advancing the AI bill was the real motive.
Bridges said in a statement that the committee change “allows for much-needed conversation and I’m optimistic we’ll have a good outcome.”
Rodriguez also said Saturday he was still negotiating with the governor’s office and the tech industry on how to amend his measure to make it more amenable to them. But the committee change shows he’s not willing to give in entirely to their demands that the regulations be eased.
“We’re trying” to reach a deal, he said of his negotiations. “I just don’t know what that deal is.”
Rodriguez was one of the authors of the AI bill when it was passed by the legislature last year. At the time, he, the governor and the tech industry agreed to work together to make changes ahead of it going into effect.
However, an attempt earlier this year during the legislature’s regular session failed — as did a last-ditch effort to postpone when the law takes effect.
Gov. Jared Polis asked lawmakers to take up the AI law again this week when the legislature gathered starting Thursday for a special session primarily aimed at plugging a $750 million hole in the state budget caused by tax policy changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. That’s the Republican federal tax and spending bill passed in July and signed into law by President Donald Trump.
But Senate Bill 4, which is supported by the AFL-CIO and ACLU of Colorado, isn’t the only AI bill being debated at the Capitol during the special session.
House Bill 1008, brought by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, was introduced as the darling of the tech industry. Instead of enacting new regulations around AI, it would have policed the technology through Colorado’s existing civil rights and consumer protections laws and it would have mostly taken effect in 2027.
The legislation was brought with the backing of the Colorado Independent AI Coalition and Ibotta, Inc., a shopping app based in Denver.
The measure was positioned as a foil to the Rodriguez bill, which is also sponsored by state Rep. Brianna Titone, D-Arvada. But on Friday, the second day of the special session, the House sponsors of the measure gutted the bill. Instead, they made it so the measure would simply change the effective date of Colorado’s existing AI law to October 2026 from February in an effort to get the legislature to rewrite the policy when lawmakers return for their 120-day regular session in January.
“Doing this in a special session is quite difficult,” said Rep. William Lindstedt, a Broomfield Democrat and main sponsor of the bill. “I’m just asking that we move out the date so that we can do this responsibly during the next session.”
House Bill 1008 is awaiting preliminary debate before the full House. That was scheduled to happen Saturday, but ultimately postponed until Sunday.
Two bills brought by Republicans seeking to change the AI law were rejected in their first committees. Democrats control both chambers of the legislature.
Lawmakers will return to the Capitol at 10 a.m. Sunday to resume their work.