The rising cost of living in Colorado is top of mind for everyone. Whether it’s housing, energy or food, the cost of being a Coloradan is quickly growing out of reach for many.

Want to order a pizza? To have it delivered now comes with a $.27 fee — before adding the pepperoni. Checking out at the grocery store, the shoe store or even the hardware store? Expect to pay $.10 for a bag. Small individual charges, to be sure, but they add up, particularly when combined with significant increases in other costs, such as electricity and property taxes.

Colorado businesses face a similar drip, drip of regulatory costs. While some of these costs might be relatively minor when viewed individually, their aggregate impact is a growing burden on our state’s businesses. Much of this burden, of course, cascades through the economy to consumers.

In 2023, Common Sense Institute released a research study that quantified the cost of the regulatory burden at a staggering $2 billion imposed by just 20 pieces of legislation and ballot measures in two key policy areas: energy & environment and labor & employment. In a separate report, it examined how 43 recent bills shifted costs to businesses by creating, expanding and modifying civil causes of action.

A new study written by Common Sense Institute’s Mike A. Leprino Fellow Lang Sias demonstrates that Colorado’s regulatory juggernaut continues. The report highlights 24 bills that were introduced in this legislative session, including in the areas of energy & environment, labor & employment, housing and health care. Although the legislative session is not over, and some of these bills have been or will be defeated or amended, whatever emerges from the session will drive the existing $2 billion figure even higher.

Consider just a few.

The six bills introduced in the area of energy and environment have the potential to dramatically undercut the oil & gas industry in Colorado, with cascading impacts on the state’s economy, tax base, schools, and middle-class workers.

In the most extreme case, SB24-159 would terminate oil & gas well permitting by 2030, effectively consigning the industry to a slow extinction. Other bills in this package would significantly increase regulatory oversight and penalties in ways that are likely to drive up costs and make compliance more difficult.

The stated aims of this legislation include improved air quality, community health and safety and the protection of vulnerable populations. That these are laudable goals, we can agree. But clarity is lacking on the degree to which each of these measures will advance these goals, and the degree to which those improvements justify their direct and indirect costs.

Under the banner of housing, three bills regarding contractor liability push costs in opposite directions when it comes to the cost of construction. SB24-106 creates a right of repair for contractors to fix problems without costly litigation.

Its purpose is to stimulate condominium construction by developers that had shunned this work for fear of lawsuits, without limiting consumer protections.

Conversely, HB24-1008 and HB24-1230 increase contractor liability for wage claims and residential construction defects, respectively, and it is anticipated that these costs will be reflected in housing costs for consumers.

A group of proposed bills in the landlord-tenant area likely will shift some costs to landlords, which puts pressure on rents. These include HB24-1057 (prohibiting the use of algorithms for setting rent amounts), HB24-1298 (making it more difficult for a landlord to evict a tenant), and HB24-1007 (prohibiting local governments from enacting or enforcing certain residential occupancy limits).

HB24-1075 won’t alter costs because this bill merely authorizes additional analysis, not an implementation, of a single-payer health care system. While prior cost-projections of a single-payer system for Colorado suggest there will be some savings from government-imposed payment rate caps, prior Common Sense Institute work has shown how rate setting in health care markets causes costs to shift, and access to be diminished. SB24-130 increases the cap for recovery of noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases.

In an excellent illustration of how legislation that is rejected in one year sometimes returns in following sessions, HB24-1014 is a consumer protection measure that seeks to resurrect a reform that failed in the 2023 session.

By eliminating the long-standing requirement that a significant number of consumers be harmed before remedies may be available under the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, HB24-1014 expands the number of instances in which businesses can be found to have engaged in deceptive trade practices.

When combined with several of the new and expanded causes of civil action identified in Common Sense Institute’s 2023 report on litigation costs, HB24-1014 has the potential to expose businesses to considerably increased litigation risk.

Probably the most concerning characteristic of the proposed regulatory legislation is that very few, if any, of these measures appear to have undergone serious cost-benefit analysis before introduction. As the economist Thomas Sowell famously noted, there are “no solutions, just trade-offs.” While much if not all of the proposed regulations are well-intended, and some might in fact be good policy, the persistent failure to consider secondary consequences is deeply troubling.

The proposed regulations increase the price of doing business in Colorado and, when layered on top of existing regulatory costs, make our state less and less affordable and dissuade families and individuals from moving or remaining here.

Some might welcome the news that our population is no longer meeting fast-paced growth projections, and inward migration appears to have slowed. While that sentiment is probably shared by many when battling traffic or reserving a Memorial Day camping spot, we should nonetheless be concerned when rising costs threaten our competitiveness.

Colorado has always depended on inward migration to maintain our first-rate workforce, and we want to remain attractive in the competition for talent.

Read the latest report at www.commonseneseinstituteco.org.

Kelly Caufield is the executive director of the Common Sense Institute, a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of Colorado’s economy.