Money spent on lobbying in Colorado again hit a record high this year — but the tally only begins to hint at the ways the deluge steers policy through the statehouse. In all, the $69.6 million paid to Colorado lobbyists in the most recent fiscal year, which ended June 30 and included this year’s legislative session, slightly exceeded what was spent on the fight for the U.
S. Senate seat on the state’s ballot in 2022. That annual lobbying tab has more than doubled since the 2012-13 fiscal year, and three of the five past years saw 10% annual bumps in spending, according to lobbying records maintained by the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.
And as the spending increases, so does the attention put on lawmakers. “The more money you have usually translates to a louder voice in politics,” said outgoing Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Democrat. “I think that’s true in elections, but it’s also true in the lobbying arena.
But I don’t say that necessarily as a way to judge it — it’s just simply a fact of how things work.” Both during and outside the 2024 session, which ran from January through early May, companies, trade associations, nonprofit advocacy groups, local governments and other outside interests spent the money to help advance policies they supported, to try to thwart those they opposed, and to influence changes to bills that would affect them directly. The spending isn’t a monolith, and the money often crashes against itself as competing in.
