By Kami Welch, Greater Arvada Chamber President and CEO
In early June, a delegation from the Greater Arvada Chamber traveled to Washington, D.C. for four days of policy and relationship building on Capitol Hill. Our team included Chamber leadership and three board members, and we joined chamber leaders from five other Colorado communities: Fort Collins, Grand Junction, Greeley, Steamboat Springs, and the Vail Valley. The trip ran from June 8 through 11, and by the time we flew home, we had sat across the table from most of Colorado’s congressional delegation, met with the U.S. Chamber’s policy team, and traded ideas with national industry leaders.
People sometimes ask why a local chamber spends time and resources on a trip to the other side of the country. The honest answer is the same reason we do most of what we do. Small businesses are the heart of our community, and the decisions made in Washington land on Main Street in Arvada whether or not we are in the room. We would rather be in the room.
The experience
The heart of the trip was a packed day of meetings in the Rayburn House Office Building. Hour by hour, we sat down with Rep. Joe Neguse, Rep. Jeff Hurd, Rep. Brittany Pettersen, and Rep. Gabe Evans; We met with with staff for Rep. Jason Crow and with Sen. John Hickenlooper and senior staff for Sen. Michael Bennet. We also met with national voices on hospitality, energy, and bipartisan policy.
We made time for a tour of the Capitol that afternoon. Another stop took us to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a few blocks from the White House, for a briefing on the issues moving through Congress: energy and regulation, infrastructure and permitting, healthcare, workforce, and immigration.
To cap things off, many of us headed to Nationals Park for the Congressional Baseball Game, a tradition since 1909 where members of both parties trade the floor for the field. After several days of serious conversation, it was a good reminder that people who disagree can still share a dugout.
The conversations that mattered
Showing up is only half of it. The other half is being ready to talk substance. Here is some of what we came to discuss.
Energy costs and permitting reform
A recurring theme all week was a simple one: it should not take years to build the things our economy depends on. The clearest example is the SPEED Act, short for the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act. It is a bipartisan bill from Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas and Rep. Jared Golden of Maine that updates the National Environmental Policy Act, the 1970 law that governs federal environmental reviews. The bill passed the U.S. House in December 2025 by a vote of 221 to 196 and now sits with the Senate.
The goal is to shorten timelines and reduce the litigation that can add years to a project, while keeping environmental review in place. There is a direct Colorado connection, too. The bill builds on a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in a Colorado case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County. We talked through why faster, more predictable permitting lowers the cost of energy and infrastructure, a point reinforced in our meeting with Karen Harbert, CEO of the American Gas Association.
The abundance agenda and the Build America Caucus
Related to permitting is a broader idea gaining traction on both sides of the aisle, often called the “abundance” agenda. Its central premise is straightforward: scarcity drives up costs, and a system that takes years instead of months to approve housing, energy, and infrastructure keeps all of it more expensive than it needs to be.
That thinking now has a home in Congress through the bipartisan Build America Caucus, which launched in May 2025 with roughly 30 House members. Colorado’s own Rep. Joe Neguse is a member, which made our meeting with him a natural place to dig into it. For a growing community like ours, the appeal is practical. When it is easier to build, our families and employers have more options and pay less.
Housing affordability
The cost of housing is one of the most consistent concerns we hear from members, because it shapes who can afford to live and work here. The national housing shortage is estimated in the millions of units, and it shows up locally in what our employees and their families can actually afford.
There is real bipartisan energy on this. Rep. Brittany Pettersen, who grew up in Jefferson County and represents much of our region, is a founding co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional YIMBY Caucus, a group focused on removing barriers to building more homes. We talked about how federal action can support, rather than complicate, the local decisions that determine most housing policy.
Healthcare
The U.S. Chamber briefing spent real time on healthcare, and so did we. For most of our members, this is not an abstract policy debate. It is the rising cost of offering coverage to employees. Small employers feel premium increases more sharply than large ones, and those costs shape hiring and wages. We pressed for attention to cost and to the administrative burden that falls hardest on businesses that do not have a dedicated HR department.
Transportation and infrastructure
Permitting reform is not only an energy story. Environmental reviews also touch roads, bridges, transit, broadband, and water systems, the everyday infrastructure that keeps a growing community moving. In Arvada, we see this in corridor improvements and safer crossings that take far too long to move from plan to construction. Faster federal reviews, handled responsibly, mean those projects reach the community sooner and cost less by the time they are built.
Protecting the franchise model: the American Franchise Act
A meaningful share of Arvada’s small businesses operate as franchises, owned locally by people who took a chance on themselves. The American Franchise Act, introduced in both the House and Senate in late 2025 with bipartisan sponsors, would set a single, clear standard for when a national brand counts as a “joint employer” of a local franchisee’s workers.
For about a decade, that standard has swung back and forth between administrations, creating uncertainty and legal cost for the local owner. The bill clarifies that a franchisor is a joint employer only when it has substantial, direct, and immediate control over essential terms like wages and hiring, and that setting brand standards alone does not cross that line. Our meeting with a leader from the lodging industry, where franchising is everywhere, underscored how much that clarity matters to the people actually running these businesses.
Bringing it home
What we carry home is the conviction that showing up works. Relationships are built in person, and the legislators and staff we met now know that Arvada’s business community is paying attention and ready to be a resource on the issues that affect local employers.
That is exactly the kind of collective action our chamber exists to make possible. As we move our B.O.L.D. 2026 priorities forward this year, these are the relationships that help a local idea find a national audience. We will keep showing up, and we will keep bringing the voice of Arvada’s small businesses with us.
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