For media inquiries, please contact Teresa Busk at [email protected].
DENVER – The Colorado Chamber of Commerce applauded the unanimous passage of Senate Bill 137 out of the House Business Affairs & Labor Committee today after its first legislative hearing in the House. The bipartisan bill, which is the Chamber’s priority legislation for 2026, creates more robust standards and criteria for how state agencies review existing regulations.
“Colorado’s economy depends on a regulatory system that is both effective and accountable,” said Colorado Chamber President and CEO Loren Furman. “Over time, layers of rules have added complexity for employers trying to grow and create jobs. This legislation is about taking a thoughtful approach to regularly reviewing existing rules and ensuring they are still working as intended.”
Employers and industry representatives from across Colorado testified in support of the bill, highlighting the real-world impacts of overlapping, outdated and complicated regulations across sectors including health care, manufacturing, housing and hospitality.
“Our recent analysis of competitive life sciences site-selection processes shows that Colorado has lost major life sciences investment opportunities to other states,” said Vice President and Counsel, Policy and Advocacy with Colorado Bioscience Association Amy Goodman. “These missed opportunities represented more than half a billion dollars in capital investment and more than 1,000 high-paying jobs. Site selectors tell us clearly: Colorado cannot compete on great weather and mountains alone. Companies evaluating locations for research and manufacturing facilities will look elsewhere if Colorado’s state regulations needlessly decrease speed-to-market, increase cost, or conflict with or duplicate federal regulations.”
“In western Colorado, we do not always see large relocations making headlines,” said Candace Carnahan, president and CEO of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce. “Instead, we see small, the medium sized businesses delay expansion, reconsider capital investment, and quietly scale back…It affects workforce stability, local services and overall resilience within our community. And the challenge is not just a single policy. It’s the cumulative environment that we’re facing. SB 137 offers a practical way to respond to that reality. We know that the difference between intent and outcome is where businesses feel the real impact.”
“Child care is a highly regulated industry and with good reason because many of these regulations exist to protect the health and safety of children,” said Alethea Gomez, Colorado executive director of Executives Partnering to Invest in Children (EPIC). “However, child care businesses, amongst others, operate on such thin margins that any opportunity to decrease their regulatory burden means more operational sustainability, improved affordability for all families, and more supply available to support the workforce of Colorado. Child care is just one of the many industries in Colorado that will be helped by this legislation.”
Business leaders across the state have expressed strong support for the measure following the Chamber’s report that Colorado is the sixth most regulated state in the nation, and SB 137 previously passed the Colorado Senate with unanimous support.
The 2025 legislative session marked the beginning of the Chamber’s initiative to bring broad regulatory reform to state government with the passage of SB 25-306, which placed certain state agencies under regular performance audits.
###
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.