Colorado lawmakers kill caucus transparency bill amid ethics probe into donor retreat

DENVER - Colorado lawmakers have voted down a bill that would have required legislative caucuses to disclose their donors, amid ethics investigations into more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers who attended a private retreat and raised an undisclosed amount of money last year.

One of those lawmakers, Sen. William Lindstedt, joined with two Republicans Tuesday in voting to kill Senate Bill 168. The bill would have required members of legislative caucuses to regularly file reports describing who donated to the group, how much it raised and what that money was spent on.

Lawmakers are required to disclose their own campaign spending and fundraising, but that requirement does not extend to caucuses.

While those groups have long existed in the legislature, SB-168 came amid internal Democratic disagreement over the Colorado Opportunity Caucus, a group of lawmakers who are generally moderate on business issues. The caucus's members attended a private retreat in Vail last fall with prominent lobbying groups, and it charged organizations up to $100,000 to attend and speak, according to legal filings against some of the lawmakers in attendance.

One Main Street, a dark money group that helped launch the caucus and financially supported the campaigns of several members, also donated $25,000 ahead of the retreat, according to an email reported earlier by The Denver Post.

The caucus, which has described the retreat as an educational event, has refused to disclose who attended the event and how much it raised.

Initially, lawmakers from the Democratic Party's progressive wing worked during this session with the two chairs of the Opportunity Caucus on a joint financial transparency bill. That measure, Senate Bill 108, was broader and would've required a wider swath of organizations that employ or include lawmakers - like nonprofits - to disclose financial information.

Amid disagreements over its breadth, the bill languished and then was functionally abandoned. SB-168 was then introduced, aimed squarely at legislative caucuses.

But unlike SB-108, it had only progressive Democratic sponsors.

"The intent of 108, like the intent of 168, was always to provide increased transparency for legislative caucuses, and only that," Sen. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat who backed both bills, said Wednesday.

He said he took responsibility for the "inartful drafting" of the bill. He declined to comment further on the first bill's collapse and whether he and other sponsors disagreed over amending it.

Sen. Lindsey Daugherty, the Opportunity Caucus's co-chair and Weissman's co-sponsor on SB-108, said she and Weissman "went in different directions."

"I thought transparency should be more expansive," she said. "Sen. Weissman wanted it narrowed."

Weissman told the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on Tuesday that SB-168 was "a simple transparency bill" that sought to fill a financial reporting hole in state law.

The committee's chairwoman, Sen. Katie Wallace, said she was concerned that the abandoned first bill would have applied to nonprofits and outside groups like churches. In backing the caucus bill, she highlighted diminishing trust "between the government and its people that it serves."

"Given that, Coloradans deserve representation that inspires robust earned trust in this institution," she said. "… Simply put, they deserve for us to be transparent and above reproach."

But Lindstedt, a Broomfield Democrat and Opportunity Caucus member, said he preferred the broader version of the bill. He said the Colorado Secretary of State's Office - which oversees campaign finance - should be tasked with creating a "proper entity" to report caucus fundraising.

"I think there should be transparency, but doing it in this way, it concerns me," he said. "I'll also say that the other bill that went away, the broadness of it was an inherent strength because it covered a much broader set of behavior."

Lindstedt is one of 15 Democratic legislators from the Opportunity Caucus facing ethics investigations for their attendance at the retreat. Those investigations are probing whether the members violated a constitutional ban on elected officials receiving gifts.

The lawmakers have denied the allegations.

________

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.

This story was originally published May 6, 2026 at 6:17 PM.