The 2025 Colorado legislative session will go down in history as a year of budget cuts. With a billion-dollar budget shortfall caused by rising Medicaid costs, voter-approved policing expenditures, property tax cuts, and TABOR, many well-intended bills have had to be put on hold.

But what does this mean for us and our work at the Legislature? Organizations working on issues like education, environment, energy, and agriculture have all been grappling with the same question: “How do we get creative this year so we can move our work forward without putting the burden of cost on the state?” For some organizations, including our own, the answer ends up being… We can’t.

Over the past year, we have worked tirelessly to reintroduce a bill that would support Colorado’s agricultural producers and local restaurants while advancing sustainable farming practices. However, despite broad bipartisan support and strong backing from the agricultural community, we have made the difficult decision to pause the bill’s introduction in 2025 due to the state budget deficit. This decision was not made lightly. While legislative hurdles are nothing new, the fiscal impact of this bill has never been the primary concern — until now. Colorado’s current financial situation has forced us to reassess our strategy.

A Strong Start with Unexpected Barriers

In 2024, we introduced SB24-152, The Regenerative Agriculture Tax Incentive bill that aimed to support Colorado’s agricultural producers and local restaurants while advancing sustainable farming practices. This bill would have incentivized restaurants to purchase from local regenerative farmers and ranchers by offering a tax write-off for those purchases. The goal was simple: Reward businesses that source sustainably while supporting Colorado’s agricultural economy.

Agriculture has been one of Governor Polis’s top priorities, and the bill had strong bipartisan support in the legislature. The issue was never about whether lawmakers supported the idea — many did. Instead, the challenge arose from the bill’s fiscal impact. Due to Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) cap, any revenue reduction or tax incentive program contributes to state budget limitations. Even though the financial footprint of our bill was small in comparison to other state expenditures, it would contribute to pushing the state budget beyond its allowable limit. Ultimately, this led to the bill’s failure in 2024.
Determined not to let this setback define the bill’s fate, we spent the summer and fall refining our approach, gathering additional support, and preparing for a stronger reintroduction in 2025. But as we navigated the process, it became increasingly clear that the state was facing a significant budget deficit. Even though our fiscal note was relatively small compared to larger projects, it was still too high to overcome in the current financial climate.

Shifting Strategies: From Tax Incentives to a Grant Program

Recognizing the budget constraints, we made a strategic pivot. Instead of a tax incentive program, we restructured the bill as a grant program, hoping that this approach would alleviate the burden on the state budget and allow us to begin collecting funds through creative mechanisms. This shift, however, brought new challenges.

Since the change was significant, we had to pull a new bill title, which meant introducing it as a late bill rather than a priority bill — meaning our legislative bill sponsors would need to seek leadership permission to introduce an additional bill beyond their usually allocated five. Additionally, while shifting to a grant program reduced some fiscal concerns, it did not eliminate them entirely.

The final straw came in discussions with the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA). Since the bill’s inception, the CDA has been a strong supporter and was set to oversee the program. CDA would determine which producers qualify as regenerative partners for restaurants to receive the incentive. However, even minimal oversight adds a fiscal impact, requiring dedicated staff time. Just by simply naming the Colorado Department of Agriculture in our bill as the oversight entity, estimates placed this cost between $145,000 and $175,000 in the first year. While this is a relatively small amount in the grand scheme of state budgeting, there was no guarantee that the cost wouldn’t derail the bill’s progress once again.

Making the Strategic Decision to Wait

Rather than risk a second failure due to fiscal constraints, we made the strategic decision to pause the bill and reintroduce it in 2026 when the state’s financial outlook may be more favorable. While this decision is disappointing, it is also practical.

In the meantime, this pause gives us the opportunity to engage in robust, statewide conversations about the definition of regenerative agriculture in Colorado. By focusing on education and consensus-building in 2025, we can ensure that the bill has strong odds in 2026.

A Challenge Facing Many Advocacy Efforts

We are not alone in facing this dilemma. Across the issues (housing, environment, energy, and more), organizations are asking the same question: How do we move our work forward in a year when the state’s financial resources are constrained?

While our bill will wait until next year, there are still important bills moving through the legislature. Several of our committees are actively engaging in housing, energy, and youth-focused legislation. We will continue to keep our membership updated on how they can stay involved, as West Slope voices remain relevant and necessary despite the challenging budget landscape.

Just weeks ago, we took our largest-ever cohort of West Slope Youth Voice students to the Capitol where they advocated on student issues ranging from reducing food waste in schools, to school districts leasing land for solar and affordable housing projects, to protecting library resources from unnecessary book bans to protect freedom of information for students.

For regenerative agriculture, the delay is not a defeat — it is a necessary step so we can deliver the well-deserved benefits to Colorado’s agricultural community in the smartest and most strategic way possible.