Gov. Jared Polis on Friday vetoed a bill that would have mandated Colorado’s municipal courts conform to state sentencing guidelines.

The governor, in a letter released Friday afternoon, said House Bill 1147’s sponsors had good intentions, but the legislation would have restricted municipalities’ ability to react to local crime trends in a manner they see fit.

“It is not in the interest of increasing public safety to constrain a municipality’s ability to set appropriate sentences for crimes within their borders,” he wrote. “Criminal justice and public safety issues are a shared concern among state and local lawmakers, and municipalities must have the ability to adopt laws to increase public safety based on the public safety challenges on the ground in each community.”

The legislation would have barred city courts from handing out sentences that exceed state limits for the same crimes. The legislature in 2021 significantly reduced penalties for low-level, nonviolent crimes in Colorado’s state courts. However, municipal courts, which operate individually and are not part of the state judicial system, were not included in the statute.

As a result, defendants in Colorado’s municipal courts can face much longer sentences than those in state court for the same petty offenses, The Denver Post previously found.

Polis said he supported two of the provisions in 1147: language clarifying that a defendant in municipal court has the right to counsel, and making clear that proceedings should be open to the public. He said he would support a narrower bill addressing those topics, or one tailored to addressing specific crimes where penalties between the state and local criminal codes are “far out of balance.”

Bill sponsors Reps. Javier Mabrey and Elizabeth Velasco and Sens. Judy Amabile and Mike Weissman, all Democrats, were alerted in April to the potential Polis veto.

“It’s incredibly disappointing that we’re doubling down on a broken status quo, where we have two systems of justice operating side by side,” Mabrey said Friday in an interview. “We will allow someone to go to jail and face vastly different sentences — to me, that flies in the face of the idea that we should have equal protection under the law.”

“This is wrong constitutionally, wrong morally, and it’s wrong as an approach to public safety,” he said.

Cities vehemently opposed the bill, saying the changes would encroach on their ability to deal with crimes specific to their areas. The Colorado Constitution, they argued, allows for home rule, meaning cities have the freedom to legislate on matters of local concern.

The mayors of Colorado’s three largest cities — Denver, Aurora and Colorado Springs — asked Polis in a letter to veto the legislation.

The Colorado Supreme Court this week heard oral arguments on two cases that touch on the sentence disparity issue. In those cases, arresting officers could have sent the individuals to state court for minor infractions, but elected to send both to municipal court, where they faced exponentially longer potential jail sentences.

Their attorneys argued this violates their equal protection under the Colorado Constitution.

A ruling, which won’t come for a few months, could have wide-ranging impacts on municipal codes throughout the state. Polis, in his veto letter, said he would like to see how the court rules before changing the law.

The governor, in April, did sign a separate bill into law that prohibits cities from criminalizing the failure to appear for a court hearing.

SB62, sponsored by Sens. Nick Hinrichsen and Mike Weissman and Reps. Michael Carter and Lindsay Gilchrist, all Democrats, came after a Denver Post investigation found Pueblo municipal judges were regularly using contempt of court charges to punish people for skipping court proceedings.

These charges — in some cases dozens of them — inflated sentences for defendants who otherwise faced little to no jail time on minor city offenses like loitering, trespassing and shoplifting, The Post found. Pueblo city judges sent people to jail for months on charges that in other Colorado courts are punished by one or two days in jail, if that.

A district court judge in Pueblo in January ruled that that practice was unconstitutional and released several people from jail.

Polis on Friday also vetoed a bill that would have allowed those 72 years or older to choose to temporarily or permanently opt out of jury service. The governor noted that between 2025 and 2050, the population of Coloradans in that demographic is expected to grow significantly. Plus, he added, a “jury of one’s peers means representation from all age groups.”

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Originally Published: May 16, 2025 at 3:41 PM MDT