DENVER — Just over a week remains in the Colorado legislature’s 2025 session — and a number of the Democratic majority’s marquee proposals remain in limbo.

Big tax and labor bills are still unresolved as the end of the session approaches. Time pressure is mounting in other fights, including one between hospitals and the drug industry over how the proceeds from a prescription drug program can be spent. And top lawmakers already have punted on other priorities or scaled them back.

Limbo doesn’t mean death in the legislature, but every flip of the daily calendar puts more pressure on a bill’s backers, opponents and interested parties to find a resolution to their liking. In some cases, bills have lingered as negotiations proceeded in the background. Other deals have been hinted at but haven’t yet emerged.

But the clock is ticking. Barring a special session, the legislature must adjourn for the year by May 7. Whether the proposals pass, fail, change dramatically or simply don’t materialize will depend on a dozen factors between now and then.

“We have a tremendous volume moving through both chambers — a lot of big discussions and conversations still happening,” House Speaker Julie McCluskie said late last week. “It is kind of that magic time when things start to fall into place and come together.”

She added: “I’m eager to celebrate another great legislative session in less than two weeks.”

Here’s a look at several big debates to watch:

A TABOR reckoning? Maybe not.

A few weeks after a group of House Democrats called for a “reckoning” on the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights and previewed a slew of tax-reform measures, most of that package is either on life support or never saw the light of day.

The centerpiece of the package — a resolution that would direct state lawyers to pursue a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of TABOR’s very existence — hasn’t yet reached the House floor, let alone started its journey through the Senate. The bill passed a committee vote in early April but has languished since.

House Majority Leader Monica Duran said it was questionable if the debate would happen at all, given how little time was left in the session. TABOR, enacted by voters more than 30 years ago, requires voter approval for tax increases and limits how much government spending can grow.

Rep. Sean Camacho, a Denver Democrat backing the TABOR lawsuit, said he was “optimistic” the proposal would still be heard. Either way, he said, the state’s budget constraints — which many Democrats ascribe to TABOR’s spending caps — aren’t going away.

“Regardless of whether our bills passed or not, next year’s budget situation — and the year after that and the year after that — the question remains, can we sustain ourselves under TABOR?” he said Friday.

Another blockbuster proposal — to replace the state’s flat income tax with a graduated system that would more steeply tax the wealthiest Coloradans — was never introduced.

McCluskie said Thursday that there would be no income tax proposal introduced this year. That would’ve been a seismic legislative fight and also very likely would’ve been opposed by Gov. Jared Polis, who’s repeatedly voiced support for lowering and eliminating the income tax.

House Bill 1296, which would have tweaked or eliminated tax credits and deductions, was gutted in a House committee; its amended version passed an initial floor vote Friday.

Another idea, to reclassify highway funding so it didn’t fall under the TABOR cap — thus allowing the state to spend more money — was also never introduced.

Senate Bill 173, though, remains alive and well: That bill, which would reclassify other types of revenue to free up space elsewhere under the TABOR cap, passed the Senate and cleared a first House vote Friday.

Health care fight continues

One of the biggest fights of the legislative session has unfolded largely outside public view.

But within the Capitol, the lobbying and hand-wringing over the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program — which allows hospitals and health centers to buy prescription drugs at a discount — has been constant.

The politicking started well before session began. By January, much of the lobbying corps had been hired up, either by the hospital industry — to back a bill preventing pharmaceutical companies from limiting the program — or by the drugmakers, to oppose the hospitals’ bill and push their own measure. Their bill would require more transparency and guardrails around how the proceeds from the program are spent.

Labor unions have also jumped in, backing the pharma bill.

The two bills likely can’t both pass, and the two sides — pharma and hospitals — are powerful, wealthy and entrenched. As a result, the path forward is muddy: Though amendments inched the bills closer together, by late March, the Senate threw its hands up and passed both, kicking the debate to the House to resolve.

After a delay, the measures were set to be in the House’s Health and Human Services Committee on Monday — nine days before the session ends.

“I think the hospitals feel like they have given as much as they can in terms of transparency,” said Rep. Kyle Brown, a Louisville Democrat sponsoring the pharma bill; he’s also the chair of the health committee. “And I think that labor, in particular — or even some of the other patient groups — feel like they have given what they feel like they can. And pharma’s in there, too — and they generally are not very excited about laws like this across the country.”

Rep. Matt Martinez, a Monte Vista Democrat backing the hospital bill, said his goal is “making sure that we’re passing good policy, and how we can do that is something we’ve been working on.”

Brown said he expected amendments on “at least one bill” this week.

“You might see the bills migrate even further together. I expect them to,” Brown said. “But I don’t know. Just depends on where we end up. I am really hopeful that we can come to some agreements. I think everybody wants the program to continue and wants to know about how the money’s being used and make sure it’s being used for patient care.”

Labor debate simmers

Senate Bill 5, introduced on the first day of the session in January, was backed by Democrats and unions but opposed by the business community and Polis. One hundred and seven days later, negotiations were still ongoing Friday over a proposal that would make it easier for unionized workers to begin negotiating union dues with their employer.

The bill is aimed at removing a requirement that unions that are forming pass a second vote with a supermajority threshold before workers and management can negotiate that part of their contracts.

“We are at the table, and I’m optimistic we’re going to reach an agreement that labor supports and is excited about,” said Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat who’s co-sponsoring the bill. “But time’s running short.”

The bill has already passed the Senate and cleared two House committee votes. But it hasn’t yet reached the House floor, where it needs two more votes before moving to Polis. Labor unions are negotiating with the governor’s office and business groups like the Colorado Chamber of Commerce.

The timeline for — or likelihood of — a deal is unclear. McCluskie, who’s tried to shepherd the negotiations, said Thursday morning that “everyone is talking about a compromise that ultimately earns the governor’s signature, and we can do the right thing by workers in the state — and in a way that’s in partnership with our business community.”

Polis has also brought in his former chief of staff, Lisa Kaufmann, to help steer talks.

If the negotiations bear fruit, it may require an entirely new bill. Under legislative rules guiding what can be changed in legislation, any movement toward the business community’s position would probably mean SB-5 must be scrapped and replaced with a new bill in the final week-plus of the session.

That’s not fatal: Legislators often recite — sometimes through gritted teeth — that a bill can be passed in three days if needed. Still, it’s an added complication for a contentious bill that’s hung over the Capitol since January.

Both sides are carrying sticks: Polis has said he intends to veto the bill if the sponsors don’t reach a deal with the business community. And labor unions, in turn, have leveraged national forces to push Polis to sign the bill.

They’ve also proposed a ballot measure that would make it harder to fire workers in Colorado — potentially a greater labor win that poses a deeper threat for businesses. Should the negotiations’ result prove acceptable to the unions, union officials have said they will drop the ballot measure.

Regulation review scaled back, clean energy scrapped

On Wednesday, the Senate introduced a bill that would require the state auditor to conduct performance audits of the state’s air pollution control and labor standards divisions.

The legislation is a much-narrowed version of a proposal drafted earlier this year that similarly called for audits of some state regulations. That earlier idea — which was never introduced in the legislature — would’ve more explicitly created a path to change regulations after the audits were concluded.

Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat, said the regulatory review was scrapped for this session and is now tabbed for work over the summer.

Instead, lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 306. That bill would simply require efficiency audits of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s air pollution control division and the Department of Labor and Employment’s division of labor standards and statistics.

Still, the Colorado chamber, which backed a study highlighting the extent of state regulations last year, praised the measure’s introduction Wednesday.

“If we want to foster a healthy long-term economic climate, it’s critical that we create a thoughtful regulatory review process, and we’re grateful to our legislative partners for paving the way to a more transparent regulatory environment,” the chamber’s president and CEO, Loren Furman, said in a statement.

Another bill that had been quietly discussed, meanwhile, will not arrive this year. Polis’ office and lawmakers had begun drafting a bill to accelerate the state’s clean energy plans and require that 100% of Colorado’s energy come from clean sources by 2040 — 10 years earlier than current plans.

When The Denver Post first reported on the idea earlier this month, supporters privately said the proposal had a 50/50 chance of coming to fruition this year, given that the legislative session’s clock was ticking.

On Thursday, though, McCluskie said the bill wasn’t happening this year — but said discussions would continue.

“The idea of a clean energy plan for 2040 is a really big discussion conversation,” she said, “and we simply did not have time to stake-hold that in a way that would’ve been fair to everyone involved.”

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