CSI panel looks at the 2026 session of the Colorado General Assembly
Common Sense Institute’s June 9 panel, reported in the June 25 Villager, put a Republican and a Democrat on the 2026 session.
Freda Miklin ·
On June 9, Common Sense Institute sponsored a panel discussion on some of the laws that were considered by the 2026 Colorado general assembly. Former Aurora City Council Member Dustin Zvonek, Homelessness Fellow at Common Sense Institute, moderated the discussion between a Republican and a Democratic legislator.
Elected to the State House in 2024, El Paso County State Rep. Jarvis Caldwell (R-HD20), a 10-year U.S. Air Force veteran, is House Minority Leader. Elected to the State Senate in 2022, after serving four years in the State House, Adams County State Sen. Kyle Mullica, an emergency department nurse, chairs the Senate’s Health & Human Services Committee and its Capital Development Committee. His wife, Julie Duran Mullica, is an Adams County Commissioner.
Asked where he found common ground with Democrats, Caldwell pointed out that doing so was the only way he could get legislation passed, since there were 43 Democrats and 22 Republicans in the State House during the 2026 session. He named energy policy, the business regulatory climate, crime, and child sex trafficking as areas where he successfully worked with Democrats. Mullica named school funding and holding the executive director of the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing accountable for high-profile mismanagement of Medicaid funds that cost the state more than $30 million in the current fiscal year before a billing-code error was discovered.
Caldwell said Joint Budget Committee staff have been sounding the alarm about the structural deficit “going back to 2020-2021,” adding that the budget shortfall was $1.2 billion in 2025, $1 billion in 2026, and expected to be “at least $700 million in 2027.” Despite significant cuts, “the budget we passed this year was a record $46.8 billion,” compared to $29 billion in 2019.
Mullica was pleased the general assembly created a Commission on Medicaid, to be chaired by Republican Sen. Lisa Frizell, to identify legislative and executive options for a sustainable Medicaid program and issue a report by Dec. 11, 2026. Zvonek pointed to SB26-137, a bipartisan regulatory review measure adopted in 2026 “requiring state agencies to review regulations every five years and eliminate outdated or duplicative rules.” Colorado has been identified as the sixth most regulated state in the nation.
On housing, Mullica conceded there have been missteps in public policy but said, “The biggest issue is that Colorado has become extremely unaffordable… How do we break down the barriers so that affordable housing can be built?” He noted construction defects remain a hindrance to building condominiums. Caldwell agreed that cost of living, particularly housing for young adults, is a hurdle, and that many efforts to control rent have scared off developers of new housing.
Print source: The Villager, Vol. 44 No. 31, June 25, 2026, pages 6 and 7. Issuu edition.