Under the Dome – Transportation: Move to Undercut Rural and NoCo Presence; Future NoCo Road Projects Need Input
More bills introduced impacting business
Last week, Senate Transportation Committee Chair, Senator Faith Winter (D-Broomfield), slipped an amendment into a House bill to change representation on the State Transportation Advisory Committee by making a complete change to how Colorado’s Transportation Planning Regions (TPRs) are defined and drawn. The result would dramatically undercut northern Colorado and rural Colorado presence in state funding decisions.
The amendment to House Bill 1101 would direct CDOT to allocate the 15 TPRs based upon population and remove lane miles as a factor, orienting the majority of TPR representation to the urban, metro area core. for proportionality. The result would be a collapsing of two of the TPRs in Northern Colorado — NFRMPO and Upper Front Range TPR — into one. It would also greatly limit the number of TPR covering rural Colorado. Colorado Sun did a piece on the change and the resulting politics surrounding it.
The change was made to HB 1101 regarding “Ozone Season Transit Grant Program Flexibility”. The change has prompted a significant backlash, the Speaker of the House, Julie McCluskie of Silverthorne is intervening. It’s a bill the NCLA previously took a position to support prior to the amendment. Given the implications of the amendment, last week, the NCLA Board reversed their position to “oppose unless amended.” The Speaker has assured us that she intends to strip the amendment in a conference committee.
NoCo’s Key Roadway Corridors Call for Support
The 2050 Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) is in development by the North Front Range MPO and northern Colorado’s regional roadway’s need community support to be positioned to secure funding. A process undertaken every four years, the RTP is used to funnel regional priority transportation and transit projects into the Colorado Department of Transportation’s 10-year funding plan. Each project is prioritized based on multiple factors including the input of community regaring needs and preference.
In order to assure the plan has input from the perspective of assuring roadways are adequately funded in the near and long term, we invite you to take a few minutes to participate in their online “Corridor Visioning” project for the 2050 RTP which allows community input into the critical planning process. This plan will set the tone for the next four years of project investment throughout the region. As an NCLA we’ve done a great job advocating and securing the resources for North I-25. As we continue our work there, the east west regional corridors are our next priority. You have the opportunity to “vote” for a number of the corridors in the region that are important to you. We encourage a vote for North I-25 and those key east west corridors you deem important to you. You can also expand upon your vote by commenting and answering questions about the corridor.
The site is a bit clunky. To spare you some time, scroll to the bottom of under the dome for an overview of the key links.
More Bills Impacting Business Introduced
The NCLA Board will consider a series of new bills just introduced in the last 10 days. Leading the measures is Senate Bill 23-172 regading “Protecting Opportunities and Worker’s Rights”. A revisit of the issue that was defeated in less friendly political environment, the bill expands the definition of workplace discrimination or unfair employment practices within Colorado anti-discrimination laws. Among other provisions included in the bill are the following:
- Adds a new definition of harass or harassment and repeals the current definition of harass that requires creation of a hostile work environment;
- Adds protections from discriminatory or unfair employment practices for individuals based on their marital status;
- Specifies that in harassment claims, the alleged conduct need not be severe or pervasive to constitute a discriminatory or unfair employment practice;
- For purposes of the exception to otherwise discriminatory practices for an employer that is unable to accommodate an individual with a disability who is otherwise qualified for the job, eliminates the ability for the employer to assert that the individual’s disability has a significant impact on the job as a rationale for the employment practice;
- Specifies that it is a discriminatory or an unfair employment practice for an employer to fail to initiate an investigation of a complaint or to fail to take prompt, reasonable, and remedial action
Labor
SB23-172. Protecting Opportunities And Workers’ Rights Act
Transportation and Land Use
HB23-1233. Electric Vehicle Charging And Parking Requirements
Economic Development
SB23-175. Financing Of Downtown Development Authority Projects
Oil/Gas
HB23-1242. Water Conservation In Oil And Gas Operations
Health Care
HB23-1243. Hospital Community Benefit
HB23-1227. Enforce Laws Against Pharmacy Benefit Managers
2050 Regional Transportation Plan
Thank you all for participating in North Front Range MPO 2050 Regional Transportation Plan corridor priority survey. It’s super important! Click here to begin!
First Page: For the region’s critical roadways corridors, click on box #2: “2050 Corridor Visioning: Regionally Significant”.
Next Page: In the right column, you can click on the specific project to expand and “vote”. Alternatively, you can click on one of the colored lines in the map and the corridor will also expand in the right column. At the top of the page, where you see “02 / 05” this is where you can navigate to “transit” and “active” corridors as well.
Next: Once you click on a corridor, in the map or in the right column, the details of the corridor expand beneath the roadway title. Scrolling down within in that information frame will bring you to the “heart” and “speech” links. This is where you “vote” for the corridor as a priority. You can vote for as many corridors as you wish by going back to each in the list.
Lastly, you can offer “comments” and feedback on the corridor when you click on the “speech” bubble and the comment section expands. Comment is not required to vote for a corridor, however.
Thank you all for participating in North Front Range MPO 2050 Regional Transportation Plan corridor priority survey. It’s super important! Also, feel free to share the survey with your work colleagues and friends.
NCLA Tracking Report
On a bi-weekly basis, the NCLA Board reviews and considers its position on pending legislation. See the NCLA 2023 Legislative Tracking Report for the list of bills, thus far introduced, in which the NCLA is engaged.
