With voters’ mounting cost-of-living concerns nixing the conversation at the Colorado Capitol around new fee-funded programs and initiatives, lawmakers this year are pursuing a new strategy to pay for their policies: making surcharges optional or forcing them onto businesses.
That’s how Democrats are trying to pass a pair of bills that failed in 2025 over objections from their colleagues about how they would raise costs for consumers.
“This is the challenge for Colorado,” said House Speaker Julie McCluskie, a Dillon Democrat who is working on both measures. “How do we fund the solutions to our priorities in a way that’s sustainable (and) makes sense for consumers?”
When Democrats took control of state government in 2019, they began passing bill after bill imposing new fees on Coloradans to pay for everything from transportation projects to waste diversion initiatives.
The Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights requires voter approval for any tax increases. But with a simple majority vote, lawmakers can approve fees as long as they go toward linked programs — like a fee on deliveries paying for road improvements. That’s why Democrats have repeatedly turned to fees to fund their policy goals.
“It’s important to recognize that our public is demanding that we find solutions to challenges with property insurance, ways to help make health care more affordable,” McCluskie said. “When we find a policy path, a way to make a difference in addressing these concerns, we also have to find the resources to make those changes happen.”
But polling in recent years has consistently shown that Colorado voters’ top concern is the high cost of living. And in 2025, moderate Democrats at the Capitol put their feet down.
McCluskie, who said she recognizes that affordability is a top public concern, is a lead sponsor of both bills this year that seek to resurrect fee-funded ideas from 2025.
Senate Bill 141, which has bipartisan support, would give Coloradans the option of paying an extra $5 when they renew their vehicle’s registration to raise money for wildlife crossings over or under roadways across the state.
The crossings are aimed at preventing motorists from hitting animals, which can be deadly for drivers and wildlife alike. They’ve been wildly successful and become a national model, but the state has no dedicated funding to build them given its budget crisis.
The optional fee would start showing up on registration renewals next year and could be adjusted for inflation starting in 2028. Nonpartisan legislative staff project it would generate about $4 million annually.
For context, North America’s largest wildlife crossing — an Interstate 25 overpass between Castle Rock and Colorado Springs — cost $15 million and was partly paid for with federal money.
The fee would be something Colorado vehicle owners would have to opt out of, similar to the Keep Colorado Wild Pass. The $29 fee is tacked onto vehicle registrations to fund Colorado Parks and Wildlife as well as the Colorado Search and Rescue Fund. The pass provides access to state parks.
“We’ve taken a few attempts at trying to find a permanent source of funding for wildlife crossings over the years,” said state Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat and lead sponsor of the bill. “They haven’t fully gotten there.”
A 2025 bill, sponsored only by Democrats, would have imposed a mandatory $3 fee on every Colorado vehicle owner through their insurance policy to pay for wildlife crossings. It would have raised an estimated $16.5 million a year.
The measure was rejected in the Senate over concerns about increasing costs for people.
“We feel really confident about this way, because it’s optional,” Roberts said. “Nobody’s required to pay it if you don’t want to. But we do think it’s a small enough amount of money that drivers will see the connection at the time of their car registration to the benefit that they would get.”
Given the share of vehicle owners who have paid for the Keep Colorado Wild Pass, a state parks pass, Roberts is hopeful about the number of people who would voluntarily pay the $5 wildlife crossings fee.
Senate Bill 155 is the other creative fee legislation moving through the Capitol this year. It would charge property insurance companies a 0.5% fee on every policy they write in Colorado to raise money for a grant program that would help homeowners pay for hail-resistant roofs. The hope is that as more homes get more durable roofs, property insurance rates across the state will drop.
The fee would be allowed to generate up to $100 million in its first five fiscal years, and insurance companies would be prohibited from passing the cost on to consumers.
The insurance industry is supporting the measure.
“This bill represents our shared goal of investing in hail mitigation and getting more fortified roofs in place in Colorado,” Carole Walker, who leads the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, said at a news conference.
In 2025, Gov. Jared Polis and a group of Democratic lawmakers teamed up on a bill that would have imposed a 1% per-policy fee on property insurers to raise money for a hail-resistant-roof grant fund and to limit insurers’ loss risk in the case of wildfires. There was no prohibition on insurance companies passing the cost along to homeowners, and the expectation was that’s what would happen.
But that measure was rejected in the state Senate over cost-of-living concerns. Its chief opponent was state Sen. Kyle Mullica, a Thornton Democrat, who said he’d “heard loud and clear from people that they don’t want more fees.”
Mullica is now a lead sponsor of Senate Bill 155.
“I think we’re pretty convinced that we’re going to see lower rates from it and not increased rates,” he said of this year’s measure.
Senate Bill 141 and Senate Bill 155 are expected to pass the legislature and be signed into law.