The Greater Arvada Chamber hosted its annual Impression of Session: 2025 Legislative Review & Business Impact on August 14, 2025. This event convened key state policymakers, advocacy partners, and business leaders to reflect on the 2025 legislative session.. With more than 650 bills introduced in the 2025 Colorado Legislative Session, event attendees gained a valuable opportunity to unpack the session’s most impactful legislation for businesses.
Meghan Dollar, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs and Political Operations at the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, shared key insights on the process and outcomes of the 2025 state legislative session, including bills that passed and failed, and outcome for local businesses.
Attendees were offered the opportunity to connect directly with state policy leaders, including:
- Representative Lisa Feret (District 24)
- Representative Brianna Titone (District 27)
- Senator Lindsey Daugherty (District 19)
- Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer (District 23)
Business leaders learned more about state legislators’ work this past session, shared concerns from the local business community directly with legislators, and learned more about opportunities for involvement in state policy.
The event slides are available here. Below are our three biggest takeaways from this event.
- Colorado is the 6th Most Regulated State in the Nation
Colorado is currently ranked 6th in the nation with the highest number of business regulations. With almost 200,000 regulations, Colorado lags just behind states like New York, Texas, and California. With a high number of regulations, Colorado businesses experience significant costs to comply – for example, the annual cost of complying with business regulations is 2.56 jobs, and the total jobs impact for 10% increase in regulations is 7.9 jobs. Local business leaders shared their experience around the cost of complying with state regulations.
- Key Wins from the 2025 Legislative Session
Our keynote presenter, Meghan Dollar, shared about overall successes from this past legislative session including bill outcomes that can support local businesses across the state. There were several notable legislative wins for local business leaders from the past legislative session, including;
- The veto of SB25-5 preserves worker choice and avoids mandatory dues paycheck deductions (averaging $1,140 per employee) for certain employees
- $318 million saved by preserving the software sales tax exemption in HB25-1296
- The defeat of HB25-1297 saves $250 per family in annual health insurance premiums
State Representatives and Senators also shared more about individual bills and efforts they participated in and successes for both businesses and the broader community.
- What to Expect in the 2026 Session
As Meghan Dollar noted in her presentation, the Colorado Special Session was convened to explore solutions to mitigate the state’s budget deficits, explore options to the Colorado Artificial Intelligence Act, and healthcare affordability. The Chamber’s Special Session recap is available here. In the 2026 Legislative session, we are likely to see some recurring themes around fees and taxes to continue to solve for state budget gaps. The Labor Peace Act and other regulation and regulation reform bills are likely to reappear as sponsors try to strategize to pass legislation next year.
As noted through this event, state policy has real world impacts for local business leaders in the Arvada community, and beyond. The Greater Arvada Chamber of Commerce’s Advocacy Initiative seeks to foster a healthy business through advocacy at the local, regional, and state levels, and inform local business and community leaders about new policies and regulatory reform. Business leaders can play a key role by engaging in local and state policy efforts to stay informed, engage with local and state policy leaders, and testify to share direct experience and impact policy decisions.
Join other business and community leaders in the Chamber’s Advocacy Network to stay informed of critical state and local advocacy updates, resources, and events as we prepare for the 2026 Legislative Session and 2025 local elections.
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