FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
CONTACT: Sara Loflin, Executive Director at [email protected]
DENVER: As the Colorado General Assembly opened the 2022 session with another ambitious agenda following up on historic progress made in the previous year on a broad range of issues, ProgressNow Colorado, the state’s largest multi-issue progressive advocacy organization, welcomed lawmakers back to the Capitol and urged them to build on the momentum of last year’s session and keep promises made to voters in 2020’s historic landslide elections.
“Since Gov. Jared Polis took office in 2019 with the biggest progressive majority in the legislature in our lifetimes, Colorado has plotted a course of practical progressive reforms that are making a difference right now in the lives of every resident,” said ProgressNow Colorado executive director Sara Loflin. “It started with the transformation of the state’s relation with the oil and gas industry in 2019 with Senate Bill 181 to prioritize public health over industry profits. In 2021, passage of the Colorado Option set the state on a path to achieve the biggest savings for healthcare consumers since the passage of the Affordable Care Act itself.”
“2022 is about protecting hard-won freedoms like voting rights, and saving Coloradans money as we recover from the pandemic,” said Loflin. “While making sure that special interests who can afford it pay their fair share, it’s time to reduce the cost to ordinary Coloradans of the basic tools they need to participate in the economy like driver license fees and starting a new business. At the same time, we need to stand up the historic paid family leave system Colorado voters approved in 2020, and make sure federal funds for infrastructure and disaster relief go where they’re needed most.”
“After years of being lulled into complacency, abortion rights under direct threat in Colorado and across the nation as the right-wing Supreme Court takes aim at Roe v. Wade,” said Loflin. “Colorado voters have rejected abortion ban ballot measures repeatedly, but that doesn’t stop conservative lawmakers from introducing bills that would make abortion a felony year after year. Especially if the worst comes to pass and Roe is repealed, locking down abortion rights protections in Colorado law is as essential as getting out the vote to ensure anti-choice extremist candidates are defeated. Abortion rights in Colorado, now more than ever, are just one election away from the unthinkable.”
“Colorado progressives can’t control everything that happens in Washington,” said Loflin, “But we can be proud of our elected progressive leaders in Colorado who get the vital work done year after year and keep their promises to the voters who elected them. We’re the model of practical progressive government that other states strive to emulate, and in 2022 our deeds will prove those words once again.”
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