On September 9, 2026, the Greater Arvada Chamber of Commerce hosted our Fall Leadership Luncheon which included a Statewide Legislature Forum for Arvada Candidates. Eight candidates running for State House and State Senate joined local business and community leaders at the Hilton Garden Inn Arvada to dig into the biggest issues impacting the state, including business regulation philosophy, property tax, attainable housing, and safety.
Below, find a transcript of candidate responses to key questions impacting the local business community.
State House of Representatives District 24
Candidates
- Lisa Feret (D)
- Kristopher Johnson (R)
Question: Small businesses tell us regulatory complexity and compliance costs are their biggest headache. Name one state law or rule that you would repeal, simplify, or fix.
Feret
One of the things that I’ve noticed when I got elected is that we kind of are siloed in the way that we make policy. So I have this idea and I run this idea, but I haven’t looked historically at what we’ve done or what other people are doing. It’s a block in communication, so it feels that we’re layering these policies. And one of the things I would love to do is every five years we don’t run a new bill. You have to stop and look at all the old bills and actually see what matches and what works. That will never happen. But that’s my aspirational goal. One of the things that I did want to note is when I was on City Council, I got to the nitty gritty around housing policy, and I recall that we had to approve a permit at the city level that was the same permit around environmental factors at the state level. And I remember asking on the dais, “Well, why are we doing this permit if it’s the same?” and they said, “Well, that’s just because then we can have that local review and make sure everything’s good.” Even though it was the same, that’s duplicative. That wastes a lot of time to have to go to the state. So that’s just one example of a policy that might be well intentioned that we could review and cut. So I think we could probably do a holistic view of some of the regulatory barriers and then trim it, and then streamline it from there.
Johnson
You know, there is not just one bill. There are many bills that have gone through in the last two years, year, eight years. We have to sit down, and we need to look at creating, like Representative Feret said, a one-in, two-out situation at the state legislature. For every single new small business bill that comes through, we should have a fiscal note of exactly what it does for small businesses. And if it is not conducive to growth, it should be removed and repealed, and another one along with it that is also duplicative. We have to make sure that we give all of our families here in HD 24 and across Colorado the opportunity, if they would like to run a small business, that regulations aren’t the only hurdle that they have to come over in order to even open doors in the first place. When it costs you more to actually have that opportunity to just open your door, that’s not smart business. Nor is it smart for our economy or for our people living here. We’re already struggling. We’ve got to stop struggling.
Question: What is the single most important issue facing Arvada that the state legislature can actually do something about and what would you do to improve it?
Feret
So, what I do a lot of healthcare policy, and this past year I ran a bill around the use of ER in first responders. So, when you call 911, you have to go to the ER, and that’s where you get your care, and that’s how first responders and paramedics are reimbursed. I changed that policy for Medicaid people. So, now they can transport to other locations to rehab to detox, and they can also get treatment in place. So if you go out and they just need a quick triage, they can do that and not transport you to the ER, or they can do telehealth and get that prescription for you. That saves Medicaid, that’s us as taxpayer dollars, $5 million minimum a year. Now I’m going back this next year to run it for the entire private health insurance companies. So that way, anyone that has insurance that calls 911, they don’t have to go to the ER. We are using ERs as primary health providers. We are using it for basic things that don’t need to be done. It’s so expensive. It clogs up our emergency rooms and hospitals. So if we can help our providers, we can help keep costs down for health insurance. That to me feels like the single most important thing because we all need to be healthy in order to work, in order to live, and in order to be in Colorado.
Johnson
Well, one of the largest ones that’s affecting Arvada is the fact that we can’t afford to live here. We are getting to a point where everything is too expensive. These are the places that you want your children growing up. You don’t want to have to have them move away because it’s unaffordable any longer. And that comes along with housing. We need to look at more medium-income, more middle of the ground construction that helps middle of the road housing. We have to help with small businesses, of course, because that is our lifeblood. Here, at the end of the day, they are what keep our communities going. And if we strangle out our small businesses, it leads directly to the household table, right then and there.
Question: Colorado’s cost of living keeps rising. What specific state-level actions would you support to make housing more attainable in Arvada?
Feret
This felt like a city council question almost when I was thinking about what we could do, and so I appreciate that I have that experience from City Council before I went to the state. I don’t know if you noticed, but micro loans, the repayment of micro loans is almost about 98%. So if you’re giving small loans to people, they’re huge in terms of paying that out. I think we could do a lot where we have government funded micro loans. Rent-to-own, we could build off of. I think there’s a fast track that we could look at for attainable housing. I think that warrants more of a conversation with the business communities, with the developers, in how that might look. But let’s prioritize more affordable fund funding while also trimming the barriers that are required for affordable housing. Just yesterday, I was talking to a neighbor across the street, Stan. He had a sinkhole in the property that he had, so he had to demo the whole place. And he wanted to build attainable housing, and he was going on about how he has to build a roof that is capable to withstand 135 mile-an-hour winds. That’s just one of the regulations, and the amount of extra regulations we put on attainable housing and affordable housing makes it not exciting for people to do or not possible to do in a timely manner. So I would look at a couple of those together, and then I would also look at some of the regulations.
Johnson
I think you got with my email because I had everything that you just said in my speech. You know what, but this is what’s fantastic. You know what? We can actually cross aisles. That would actually say that there is a blockade between sides, but these are things that we can do as legislators to help everyone. We can cross the aisle, have the conversation, win the vote, help the people, help with your businesses. Obviously, the contractors need less regulation in order to get these attainable homes. Yes, I agree with Lisa on the fact that the rent-to-own is a fantastic idea. It really is. Gives other options for single, first-time homebuyers, but these are things that we must work on as Coloradans, not as Republicans, not as Democrats. This is something that we have to do together for the people in our communities.
State House of Representatives District 27
Candidates
- Danielle Varda (D)
- Eric Bodenstab (R)
Question: If elected, how will you stay accountable and accessible to Arvada residents and businesses between sessions, and how should we measure whether you have delivered?
Varda
So, I believe really strongly that having strong connections is the answer to most of our ways of building policy. So, I will always be available for folks. I have run my whole campaign by going to where people are, meeting them in the places where they gather to be sure that I’m hearing from them, listening to their concerns, and I have been that way as a school board director. I always said to people, “Invite me to anything, and I’ll come.” I’m going to people’s houses right now. So, I think being present and just really authentically looking people in the eye and understanding what’s going on with them is the best way to be available. For businesses, we need to listen to what business owners have to say. I think that’s a critical part of building good policy for a business, here in Arvada and across the state. So, I will always be in session and in between sessions, available to connect with people and answer questions. I also think that we will set up a pretty formalized way for folks to submit questions. I see Rep. Feret asking people surveys all the time on what’s important to them. So I think for those people who don’t have time to show up and meet all the time, I want to make sure that accessibility happens in a number of different ways.
Bodenstab
This is probably the most important job of the legislature. We need to listen. If a business owner tells me a state rule is preventing them from hiring, expanding, or investing, you can be sure that I would fix that. If there’s something important going on in city council, I show up. I show up to all levels of government. Everybody knows that. Again, something’s not working. I want to fix it. I am an engineer by trade. Don’t measure me by the number of bills that I pass, measure me by the quality and the improvement in the law and the regulations that are lifted. One issue that has come to my attention is data centers. It is an issue I’m looking at. It’s something that Commissioner Zensinger put a moratorium on for Jefferson County. Arvada is considering it. It’s something that is an issue that I like to be ahead of. So I want to raise that and collect as much information as possible. My knowledge of data centers and the AI that underlies them is inefficient. I’m not a computer scientist, but I think as much time and care to put a new infrastructure in our region that will drastically affect the availability of power and water. The price of power, which has risen drastically here, is an important issue before we commit to building infrastructure like that.
Question: Property tax relief has been a moving target. What long-term structural approach would you support so businesses and homeowners have predictability?
Varda
This was the one I was hoping to get. The key point you just asked about is predictability. So I think we’ve all felt the volatile nature of property taxes. When we lost the Gallagher Amendment, we changed that structure in different ways that will eventually kind of play out. But in the meantime, we’re seeing property taxes react to the market, and so that’s making it feel very ugly. We know property taxes are incredibly important to pay for our core services. Our schools, transportation. So it’s something that all of us care deeply about, wanting to contribute to, I think, and also feel the impact every single month when we are thinking about our bills. But perhaps the best thing that the state could do is stay out of the property tax business. So I think that we could have other ways of dealing with these kinds of ups and downs, rather than the legislature always legislating the outcome.
Bodenstab
Businesses need a predictable picture of what the tax burden will be. The previous House District 27 candidate lost his business because he couldn’t. There was a spike in property tax and he could no longer afford his business in Colorado. He started an exercise facility. It was at the absolute wrong time to start it during COVID, and he got hit. And he was the only candidate I gave money to last cycle around because I heard his story loud and clear. We got to fix it. There is a cap on how much the Colorado Treasury can take. I would suggest preserving that as much as possible, both at the state, county, and other levels. I do look at this issue a lot for a lot of different types of individuals. One community that’s been unfairly burdened by property taxes is the equestrian community. If you run a boarding facility, you will pay commercial rates. That will make your ability to run that business very difficult. I know there are a lot of ballot measures that affect the tax rates this year, beyond property taxes. There is a mill levy override put forward by the Jefferson County Public Schools, and I want voters to look very carefully for that and reward good behavior only.
Question: Colorado’s economic competitiveness has slipped in several national ratings. What would you do at the state-level to make Colorado a place where businesses choose to start, stay, and grow?
Varda
This one is personal to me because I am a business owner. I have started two businesses here. I do think that Colorado has become a place where businesses are looking twice before coming, and that is detrimental to our economy. It is detrimental to our budget, and we have to do something. And I think one of the first things we have to do about this is listen to businesses and find out what’s working for businesses in our city, in our state, and then grow those policies. Find out where the roadblocks are and why they’re there, and work on revising those. We really have to link this question to the cost of housing and the amount of childcare people can get and transportation, because being a business owner here, being an employee here of those businesses means we have to be able to live where we work. So to have a thriving business economy, we have to think systemically about how we’re going to build a great system for folks who want to build those businesses and work here. And finally, we are filled with regulations in Colorado. I know regulations are necessary, but I think we also very much need to take a data-driven approach to this. We need to ask, what is the regulation meant to solve? How much is it going to cost the business to implement it, and is that even possible? How much does compliance of that regulation cost? And I think it’s time in Colorado that we think about some regulation, lots of regulation reform, and that’s something I would like to work on at the state.
Bodenstab
These rankings are important. It pains me to see Colorado fall. It pains me to see people leaving the state. I came here in 2002, and it was booming. It was the place to be. People were moving from all over the country, and it’s just not like that. So we need balance in the legislature. I intend to provide that balance. We need to target well-intentioned but ineffective regulations to encourage business, promote business. We need to promote interstate commerce, expand licenses. Like I said, with my own licenses, reciprocity. Kansas has taken their sweet time to give me a license there, for instance. Colorado doesn’t need to be like that. Actually, I also appreciate the fact that Colorado does education bridging. Please keep that. It’s a waste of time, only because you should study what you want to study and not what. Yeah, it’s not a good system. Colorado does it right. Another issue is food trucks got a break with House Bill 1295, but the entire industry, food industry, food service needs help.
State Senate District 20
Candidates
- Sheila Lieder (D)
- Richard Manusco (R)
Question: How should the state support workforce development and career pathways, particularly for the trades, healthcare, and advanced manufacturing jobs that are concentrated in Jefferson County?
Lieder
So, as a former decade-long member of the Tri-County Workforce Board, investment board I should say, that works with businesses and labor to build jobs and assist people in getting the proper training. So, I believe the state needs to continue to support them. Additionally, the state should be promoting careers and skilled trades as a long-term plan for better economic stability. I’ve passed legislation giving school career counselors a navigator to help assist the students navigate the CDLE website for apprenticeships. I support bringing back vocational into schools. Also, making sure that there are apprenticeship halls accessible across the state that lets juniors and seniors earn credits for their trade or license for a whole two years before they graduate. Additionally, partnering with the Department of Corrections and allowing apprenticeship programs to partner with them by giving inmates training so that they have a trade when they’re released, and I believe that would also lower recidivism.
Manusco
You know, I’m one of these people that believes that the more the government is out of our lives, the better our lives are. But the one thing I do agree with here, is that vocational is a big, big thing. It should be at each and every one of our high schools. When my kids were at Evergreen High School, I live in Evergreen, I’ve been in Evergreen forever, and it was a building trade program. It was an automotive program. The kids thrived in it. My son, by the time he graduated high school, had already built four houses. Both of my sons were in construction. The one I never expected. I always saw him as a professional basketball coach someday, but the thing is, he’s in construction too, and they’re doing very, very well. Today, a very dear friend of mine back in Minnesota, and I’m kind of both New York City roots and Winona Minnesota roots. So if I say something Polish, you’ll understand why. But you know, it’s just a crazy situation. We are trying to send all our kids to college. We’ve lowered the standards in college. The only one benefiting the administrators and the teachers, no one else. When I graduated college, 10% graduated college. Today, it’s over 40% of our population are college graduates, and they can’t find jobs. You’re better off being a lineman for Xcel Energy and making $150,000 a year than being unemployed, maybe a major was underwater basket weaving. I have no idea what that is, but thank you.
Question: Legislating means working across the aisle. Describe a time you changed your mind or found compromise on a hard issue, and how that would show up at the Capitol.
Lieder
I was hoping for this question because I have continuously worked on bipartisan legislation, and I have no issues in doing so. For me, it has always been about the policy or the people, not the letter behind your name. I vote my district. Most recently, House Bill 26-1286, Automated Drive and Commercial Vehicles, was a bipartisan bill in the House and the Senate again. You heard me earlier, requiring a CDL licensed driver present in a semitruck, literally weighing greater than 26,001 pound. They’re driving coming into Colorado. You know who possibly could go wrong with a 26,001 pound truck coming down our mountains. It’s just astonishing. You know, as well as a driver in the driver’s seat, not just in the cab when they’re carrying high-risk material. Unfortunately, it was vetoed twice by Governor Polis. Despite the bipartisanship, the changes we made, and the negotiations we all did. So I have absolutely no problem at all reaching across the aisle. I’ve reached across the aisle my entire career.
Manusco
Living with my wife. Anyway, I’ve learned how to compromise with her. I really have, and compromise to me is the big, big thing. But unfortunately, there’s an element of people that when you compromise with them, they see it as weakness, and it’s never weakness. You compromise. And I’ve got a number of handicaps. I’m ADD, okay. I’m dyslexic, and I’m also colorblind, so I think everybody looks Italian, okay. So it’s just the glasses that I have. But you know, I think of my kids all the time when I was teaching school. When I retired from industry, from business, from corporate America. I decided to get into teaching. I went down to Jeffco. I said, “What do I have to do to teach? And they said, “Well, go down to the state.” So I went down to four college degrees, and they said, “Just give us a check for 250, and you can teach school.” And I thought, “I’ll do it for one year and have some fun.” Instead, I wind up teaching 14 years at D’Evelyn High school, and it was a blast. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. So you talk about compromise. You talk about compromising, kids with fellow teachers, with the administrators. Compromise is part of my life, and I think a lot of it comes out of the fact that I do come out of an NYPD family. So what I wanted to be when I was a little kid growing up was a cop.
Question: The state has faced tight budgets under TABOR constraints. Where would you prioritize spending, and where would you cut?
Lieder
First, I would start by passing the Graduated Income Tax Ballot Initiative 87. Unfortunately, we’ve already cut from social services. Funding and phased out reduction targeted grants initiatives for teachers over the past few sessions. We capped caregiver hours. But I believe that we should put further guardrails around them. See, many states encourage Medicaid participants to move to Colorado to get paid to take care of their family members 24/7, which puts an undue burden on residents already here for years receiving it. So I believe we need to put a residency guideline around the program, like the senior homestead exemption act. One requirement is you need to live in your home for 10 years, but I’m not saying we need to have that requirement for that home. Additionally, I would add back the supplement wage payment for nursing facilities workers. This program is slated to run for 2027, but it was ended a year early. Students were depending on that to graduate in the profession that we already have shortages in, as well as the Office of Community Living cuts, which administers long-term support for aging adults and individuals with disabilities.
Manusco
Number one, our state overspends. It’s not that they lack money; they truly, truly overspend. Lisa, you did a great job when you were up here. I was really impressed. But you said one thing that just irked me. Okay, you referred to the people at the State Capitol as leaders. They’re not all leaders, folks. They’re our representatives, and they should represent you both. And if they’re not doing that job, they should be fired. Right now, Sheila said something else that just irked me. Graduated income tax. We don’t need a graduated income tax in Colorado. That’ll just drive more and more people away. We’re already losing population in the state. We’ve lost 34,000 businesses just in the last four years. But here are some real interesting statistics. Our state right now is one and a half billion dollars in the hole. Our state went from 500,000 people on Medicaid to one and a half million on Medicaid. Now you gotta understand something. I’ve got a medical background. I’ve got a what would I say? My care for people – a degree in sociology or degree in psychology – I care about people. The whole purpose behind Medicaid was a fantastic, fantastic purpose. It was to take care of your disabled child financially, so you don’t lose it-the house and everything else. But today, I like to know in our state who’s getting Medicaid because you don’t go in four years of 500,000 to 1.5 million.
State Senate District 22
Candidates
- Monica Duran (D)
- Steven Harkess (R)
Question: What is your position on funding for RTD, regional roads, and the connections Arvada residents rely on to get to work?
Duran
I know that this is a really big topic and big conversation, right? We want our roads to be repaired. We want to be able to make sure that where we’re living, we’re able to access getting to work, getting home. I live in a great area off of 52nd and Ward. I was on City Council when we actually passed that development right by RTD that borders Arvada. So it’s great access to be able to get to downtown or wherever you need to get. I think we really need to continue those conversations. Budgeting is really tough right now, obviously, but I think we can be creative. But most importantly, it’s conversations. Conversations with those experts in this field, and us not trying to decide what is that going to look like, what it should be, like with so many different pieces of policy. We really need to engage with each other and really try to figure out what can we do, how can we be creative, what does that look like, right? And I know that when we bring up TABOR, that’s something that you know may make some people cringe. But I think it’s an important conversation to have. Everybody should be at that table to figure out what that looks like. If it’s a small step, it’s a small step. But that’s where we find compromise, and that’s where we can find solutions. In my opinion.
Harkess
Highway and transportation funding is one of the main priorities for the state government. Some things need to be done at different levels. Many things shouldn’t be done by government at all. But this is one of the things that the state has to do, and it has to be a priority. I think it’s necessary to look at different ways to get the funding because our roads are getting more and more congested, and that needs to be addressed. In some cases, public transportation can help address these issues, but in general, Colorado and the metro area isn’t set up for that to be the complete solution. People need to be able to travel, a lot of us need to be able to travel on the roads, and the government needs to keep things operating. Not everybody lives next to where they work, and many times, if you do, you need to have the flexibility to look for openings in different parts of the city or different parts of the area, and we need functioning, effective roads to do that.
Question: Water is a long-term constraint on growth across the Front Range. What role should the legislature play in securing supply and encouraging conservation?
Duran
I’m a proponent of bringing everyone to the table, the state obviously can play a role when we’re looking at conservation, storage, and infrastructure. These are all conversations we are having, and we know we need to continue having to figure out what we’re going to do. I mean, we’re talking about increasing housing, attainable housing, whatever that looks like, but we also have to be mindful of water, the lack of water that we have. So these are conversations that I think in the state legislature we need to work in partnership, right, with other advocates, organizations, and community to really figure out a solution. I agree that it is a multi-state issue and concern, and how can we partner with our neighbors around us because they are also looking at the same issue and having the same problem. So I continue to support the conversations for now. Truly, what we’re going to do, what is meaningful, and what does that look like.
Harkess
Well, water is a multi-state issue. The state government certainly has a role to play in ensuring that Colorado has access to this resource. A lot of water starts in the Colorado Mountains and flows into other states. It’s important for the state government to keep an eye on this and ensure that we deal with other states and retain an appropriate amount of water for our needs. Additionally, the state government can encourage conservation of water resources, but top-down mandates don’t tend to do the job. I think ensuring access to water, especially the water that we already have in this state, is one of the most important things for the state level of government.
Question: Public safety, homelessness, and behavioral health are often intertwined. What state-level investment policy changes would make the biggest difference for our community?
Duran
With the work I do with domestic violence and child and human trafficking, we’re always talking about homelessness. Being homeless myself at one point in my life, having services combined, so they’re not in the silo. And I’m saying, if you’re looking at housing for the homeless, then how are we going to provide the other services that they need? Right? You can’t just put a roof over their head and say, “Okay, you’re on your way. You’re good.” We have to make sure that they have the counseling, the therapy they need, the access to be able to provide for themselves. So, I know that when you’re in a silo, these conversations are hard to have. First and foremost, if you’ve ever been there, there’s such a stigma to a lot of this, but I think as a state, we’re having these conversations in the legislature. We are being serious when we’re talking about how and what we can do. You know, we have a lot of buildings, right? Vacant buildings that are out there. Just thinking outside the box. How can we be mindful and thoughtful? But most importantly, I don’t want this in a silo. I want us to figure out, if we’re going to figure out, when it comes to housing, then how are we going to provide the wraparound services that we all need?
Harkess
I agree. Community safety measures, including community policing and encouraging the integration of police and mental health services is an important issue for the state government to address. A lot of this has to be done on a lower level, but there is a role for the state government. Also, it’s important that the state ensure appropriate funding for prisons and mental health facilities for those people who pose a danger if they’re left out in the public. I think there’s a number of facets that need to be addressed, but this is an increasingly significant issue over the last few years, and I agree that there needs to be coordination between different types of services and a discussion about different things that can be done to improve the situation.
Election day is November 3, 2026. Jefferson County election information is available here.
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Check out some photos from the event!
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