A first-in-decades effort to rewrite the state land use code died Monday in the final hours of the legislative session, ending a weeks-long saga that split the Capitols’ Democratic lawmakers.
The proposal had gone through a series of rewrites since it was introduced with much fanfare by Gov. Jared Polis in March. It had essentially been split into two different versions that the Democrat-controlled Senate and House of Representatives couldn’t reconcile by the constitutionally mandated end of the session.
“Democratic senators are supposed to know better,” said Rep. Steven Woodrow, a Denver Democrat and the bill’s co-sponsor. “Today, they fell unfortunately short.”
The Senate had stripped the bill — which initially legalized accessory-dwelling units and reshaped single-family zoning across the state — to a series of housing studies statewide. The House then rewrote large portions of the bill, reinserting some upzoning and the limited legalization of ADUs. That set the bill on a collision course with the Senate; several key Senate Democrats had concerns the original proposal pre-empted local control and had indicated those provisions were nonstarters.
Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, who sponsored the bill in the Senate and led it through its first chamber, confirmed to the Denver Post that the bill was dead but declined to comment further. In a late Monday statement, Gov. Jared Polis spokesman Conor Cahill said that the governor was “deeply disappointed that politics and special interests continue to delay delivering real results” for Coloradans in need of more housing choices.
