CO SB078

Legislative Council staff must establish a 5-day electronic comment period for bills and concurrent resolutions introduced on or after January 1, 2016, allowing public submission of comments on potential business fiscal impacts.

The 5-day comment period begins no sooner than the second day and no later than the fourth day after introduction; for bills introduced after the 115th day of a session, staff makes reasonable attempts to accept comments.

Staff compiles all received comments into a notice of reported business fiscal impact and posts it on their official website; if no comments are received, no notice is created.

The same process applies to proposed rules by principal departments, with departments receiving electronic links to notices before public hearings and treating fiscal impact comments as formal submissions.

The Director of Research establishes minimum standards for comments, which may include formatting requirements and prohibitions on threats, slurs, abusive language, personal attacks, and spam; noncompliant comments may be redacted or excluded.

$45,304 is appropriated to the legislative council for 2015-16 fiscal year to fund 0.7 FTE positions to implement the bill.