What your Weld County representatives accomplished during the 2022 Colorado legislative session: Jerry Sonnenberg edition

Written By Kelly Ragan

By Kelly Ragan

What have your Weld County representatives done for you lately? With the 2022 Colorado legislative session done for the season and an election on the horizon, it’s important to take stock of what our representatives accomplished this year.

Don’t worry, we’ve done most of the hard work for you.

We’ve looked at the bills each of our Weld County representatives were named prime sponsors of and show you what they got passed and what they didn’t. We’ll show you who the other prime sponsors were so you can get a sense of how bipartisan your representatives were this year.

Here we have Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, a Republican representing Weld, Cheyenne, Elbert, Kit Carson, Lincoln, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, and Yuma counties. 

Bills passed 

Child Care Support Programs, SB22-213: This bill helps to fund a variety of early childhood programs to the tune of $99.5 million. 

It also creates training and support programs for family, friend, and neighbor care providers, a specific designation for folks caring for young children but are not licensed childcare providers (like grandma).

Signed: June 3, 2022

Other sponsors: 

Meat Processing Grant and Loan Assistance, SB22-209: This bill requires the Commissioner of Agriculture to hire an employee or bring on a contractor to help small meat processors and people trying to start a meat processing business apply for grants and loans offered by the US. Department of Agriculture and other entities. The idea is to make life easier for the little guys who help our food system run. 

Signed: June 8, 2022

Other sponsors: 

Modification to Conservation District Grant Fund, SB22-195: This bill continues the Conservation District Grant Fund in the Department of Agriculture indefinitely. This means the fund will now get $148,000 added to it yearly. It was set to expire Dec. 31 of this year.The fund is required to distribute $2,000 to each of the 74 conservation districts each year.

The conservation districts themselves were formed in 1937, during the Dust Bowl era, according to the Colorado Association of Conservation Districts. The goal of those districts, according to the association, is to “provide leadership for the conservation of natural resources to their stakeholders and their communities to ensure the health, safety, and general welfare of the citizens of the State through a responsible conservation ethic.” 

Signed: June 8, 2022

Other sponsors: 

Behavioral Health-care Services for Children, SB22-147: This bill appropriates funds to the tune of $11.1 million to three new and existing programs related to behavioral health care for children. 

In an editorial published in the Greeley Tribune, Gov. Jared Polis said this about the bill: “SB22-147 takes an important step towards ensuring that we can meet kids where they are by providing expert support to community providers, by establishing a matching grants program for schools, and by expanding school-based health centers. This bipartisan legislation will increase access to much-needed behavioral health care to ensure all Coloradans have the support they need to thrive.” 

(*Colorado lawmakers invested almost half a billion dollars into behavioral health this year. According to a report by CPR, that is the largest state investment in the system in any single legislative session.)

Signed: May 17, 2022 

Other sponsors: 

Equip Wind Turbine Aircraft Detection Lighting System, SB22-110: This bill requires owners and operators of new wind turbines to install light mitigation technology that uses a sensor to detect approaching aircraft. The tech turns the lights on when aircraft approaches and leaves the blinking red lights off when there are no planes around. 

The International Dark-Sky Association called the bill a “big win for dark skies.”

Signed: June 8, 2022

Other sponsors: 

Conflict of Interest in Public Behavioral Health, SB22-106: This bill essentially tightens up regulations and oversight involving conflicts of interest on contract health care administrators working for the Departments of Health Care Policy and Financing and Human Services.  

Signed: May 20, 2022 

Other sponsors: 

UNC Osteopathic Medicine Degrees, SB22-056: This bill authorized Greeley’s own University of Northern Colorado to offer degrees in osteopathic medicine. Why did this have to be passed into law? The University of Colorado is technically the only university legislatively allowed to teach medicine. 

Signed: March 17, 2022

Other sponsors: 

Health Facility Visitation During Pandemic, SB22-053: This bill ensures that patients in health care facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, and assisted living facilities are allowed at least one visitor of their choosing, even during a pandemic. This bill is in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions that had been put in place around visitation. 

According to a report by Colorado Politics, Sen. Sonnenberg said “the bill is the most important one he's carried in his 16 years in the General Assembly.”

Signed: June 8, 2022 

Other sponsors: 

Expand Water Resources Review Committee to include Agriculture, SB22-030: This bill essentially changes the name and widens the scope of the Water Resources Review Committee to include agricultural issues. 

Signed: March 30, 2022

Other sponsors: 

Groundwater Compact Compliance Fund, SB22-028: This bill creates a fund to help finance efforts to reduce groundwater pumping in the Rio Grande river basin and help the Republican river basin meet its compact requirements. 

While the bill creates a mechanism to administer funding, according to the Alamosa Citizen, actual money would need to come from a legislative appropriation process. 

The bill passed as legislators voiced concern about a plan to divert 22,000 acre-feet of water from the Rio Grande Basin and a court decree to bring the Rio Grande to a sustainable level, according to the Citizen.  

Signed: May 23, 2022

Other sponsors: 

Bills failed 

Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Fee, SB22-038: This bill would have allowed hospitals to include the total amount of the Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Fee, formerly known as the Hospital Provider Fee, as a separate line item in its billing statement to increase transparency for patients. As it stands, the law prohibits hospitals from creating separate line items for these things.

This is a fee assessed on hospitals by the state. The revenue collected from hospitals, which can be up to 6% of net patient revenues, is then matched dollar-for-dollar with federal money and used to cover people who are uninsured, according to the Colorado Hospital Association. 

Other sponsors: 

Prioritize Water Storage Projects South Platte Basin, SB22-126: This bill would have expanded the criteria the Colorado Water Conservation Board uses to choose the projects that get funded. It would have prioritized projects that increased the “beneficial consumptive use of compact-entitled water in the South Platte river.” 

Beneficial consumptive use, according to Water Rules, is essentially the amount of water a state is allowed to use from natural water supplies within the state’s boundaries. A compact in this context is an agreement between states on rules around a shared water. 

So, this bill would have essentially given more money to projects aimed at increasing the amount of water Colorado could use from the South Platte river. 

Other sponsors: 

Allow Rural Public Health-care Entity Cooperation, SB22-125: This bill would have essentially allowed some health service providers (think county hospitals) in rural areas to engage in activities that could be considered anticompetitive, might result in a monopoly, or displace competition. 

That might look like joint ventures, joint purchasing agreements, negotiating with physicians, hospitals and payers, and more. 

That might sound odd – but the idea here is to create increased efficiency and cost savings for health care entities in rural areas with fewer resources. 

Other sponsors: 

Kelly Ragan
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