Tracking what's destroying Colorado
A curated collection of bills, news, and resources about Colorado politics and policy
A curated collection of bills, news, and resources about Colorado politics and policy
Colorado Small Business news, legislation, and policy updates.
7 articles tagged with "Small Business"
Heather Florio moved her company to Colorado in January 2025 expecting it to be her permanent home. Seven months later, new state tax thresholds doubled her tax bill and forced her out. She’s far from alone. The Colorado Chamber Foundation’s 2025 Relocations Tracker shows a record 27 companies left, relocated key operations, or chose to expand elsewhere last year—the highest single-year total ever. Since 2019, 98 such moves have cost or forgone more than 13,600 jobs. Business leaders cite the top culprit as crushing regulatory overload, not any single law: skyrocketing minimum wages, restrictive liquor rules, construction-defect laws, green-energy mandates, and complex compliance costs. Publicly traded company headquarters in Colorado dropped from 174 in 2022 to just 140 in 2025. Most companies are heading to Texas, followed by Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina.
In a post from @FreeStateColor1, HB26-1327 just cleared Colorado’s House Health Committee on an 8-5 party-line vote. The bill slaps large employers with an arbitrary ~$2,300 tax/fee per employee (admitted by a sponsor to be based on “feelings,” not economics). The poster warns it will hammer big-box retailers, force price hikes, trigger layoffs, and drive companies out of the state. It includes video testimony from the Colorado Retail Council and Colorado Chamber detailing the damage, plus a full list of the Democrat “yes” votes versus the Republican “no” votes. The original thread also called out Rep. Feret for openly admitting the tax amount was pulled out of thin air.
Colorado leaders just announced a shiny new task force to investigate the puzzling trend of businesses packing up and moving to lower-tax, lower-regulation states. The sarcastic post from @TheRMOyster (complete with a hilarious cartoon of a U-Haul speeding past a "LEAVING COLORFUL COLORADO" sign) perfectly captures the irony: instead of fixing the obvious problems driving companies away, the state is spending more taxpayer money to form yet another committee. Replies from locals nail it — high taxes, crushing regulations, homelessness, and heavy-handed governance are the real culprits, not some unsolvable enigma.
In a viral X post, citizen journalist @dobetterdnvr exposes a brazen open-air drug operation at a brick house on 44th & Sherman in Denver's Globeville neighborhood. Neighbors report RVs circling like a "support fleet" for dealers, with stolen bikes being unloaded from trailers— all just two blocks from an elementary school where kids walk by daily. Despite repeated calls to Denver Police, city policies under Mayor Mike Johnston have "tied their hands," allowing the operation to simply relocate 40 feet when tagged and resume business in minutes. The post, viewed over 6,000 times, sparks outrage in replies, with users slamming bureaucratic red tape and calling it a symptom of unchecked urban decay.
Christina Eisenstein, a Denver landlord, appeared before the Denver City Council on November 10, 2025, to oppose Bill 25-1580, which would extend a $2.77 million contract with the Community Economic Defense Project (CEDP). CEDP, operating under Housing First principles, provides legal aid and housing to low-income tenants without requiring sobriety or treatment. Eisenstein's testimony highlighted severe issues at her Congress Park property, where five unscreened tenants placed by CEDP led to drug contamination, violence, and unresponsive caseworkers. She argued that the program lacks accountability and endangers neighboring residents, urging the council to vote against the bill. The testimony reflects broader tensions in Denver's homelessness policies, with the bill postponed for further review amid public outcry.
Introduced on January 29, 2025, by Republican Rep. Bradley and a bipartisan group of House sponsors alongside Sen. Carson, HB 25-1141 aimed to toughen penalties for repeat retail thieves by mandating sentencing to at least the midpoint of the presumptive range for anyone convicted of burglary, robbery, theft, or related property crimes from a store if they had two prior similar convictions (including municipal equivalents) within the last four years—building on existing mandatory minimums for felony theft. The bill also clarified theft valuations for gift cards at their full face or maximum potential value (even if unloaded) to close loopholes exploited by organized crime rings, and added gift cards to the forgery statute for written instruments. Despite addressing Colorado's skyrocketing retail theft epidemic—estimated at over $1 billion in losses annually—the Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee killed it on February 25, 2025, via a 6-3 party-line vote to postpone indefinitely, after a failed 3-6 motion to advance it to Appropriations.
In a viral quote-tweet of U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen's lament over Trump's immigration crackdown allegedly crippling Colorado's ski industry—which she claims relies on 60% J-1 visa workers for essential roles—job site, Barefoot Student fires back by exposing the program's dark underbelly: ski resorts dodge FICA payroll taxes on these foreign "guest workers," turning America's powder paradise into a haven for trapped, underpaid labor from places like New Zealand and Australia. With over 5,000 likes and 69K views as of November 10, 2025, the post ignites a thread of conservative fury, from calls to boycott resorts hiring J-1s to laments over how private equity vampires have gutted American ski culture, replacing fun seasonal gigs for locals with unlimited, tax-free imports that keep wages stagnant and housing unaffordable.