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DENVER – With the 2023 state legislative session concluding this evening, the Colorado Chamber of Commerce highlighted its legislative accomplishments achieved on behalf of the statewide business community.
“Our key priority at the Colorado Chamber has been to ensure the voice of the Colorado business community is heard, and we’re proud of the progress we’ve made toward advancing our future-focused vision to improve our state’s economic competitiveness,” said President and CEO Loren Furman. “Despite an often-challenging political environment at the state capitol this session, the Chamber helped defeat major job-killing bills while promoting new initiatives to boost our economy. With the strength of the most effective government affairs team for businesses statewide, the Colorado Chamber gets results for its members.”
The Colorado Chamber released its 2023 legislative agenda in the weeks leading up to session, laying out short- and long-term goals to improve the state’s business climate. The agenda focused on Colorado’s regulatory climate, workforce development, and economic growth. The chamber’s lobbying efforts were led by Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and Political Operations Meghan Dollar, who aggressively advocated for business in her first session with the Colorado Chamber.
“A key tenet of our legislative agenda this year was to ‘do no harm,’ and there’s no better example of our work to protect businesses from costly new regulations than the defeat of the restrictive scheduling bill alongside the restaurant and retail industries and other partners,” Dollar said. “The backlash from employers and employees alike was unprecedented, and we’re grateful to the lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who listened to their constituents and voted it down in committee. We also appreciate the partnership with the Polis administration and key legislators in their support of critical issues like workforce development this session. Securing Colorado’s economic future means that we must find innovative solutions to long-term problems, and we will continue to build on our success in the years to come.”
In addition to the successful defeat of the costly restrictive scheduling proposal, in the final weeks of session major victories for businesses included defending the solvency of our unemployment system and saving businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in new workers compensation costs. In the final days of session, the Chamber’s lobby team also played a key role in neutralizing a problematic air permitting proposal that would have created costly new regulatory hurdles for thousands of employers statewide.
The Colorado Chamber will release its 2023 Annual Report in the coming weeks outlining the organization’s advocacy work in full detail.
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The Colorado Chamber of Commerce champions free enterprise, a healthy business environment and economic prosperity for all Coloradans. It is the only business association that works to improve the business climate for all sizes of business from a statewide, multi-industry perspective. What the Colorado Chamber accomplishes is good for all businesses, and that’s good for the state’s economy. It was created in 1965 based on the merger with the Colorado Manufacturers’ Association.