As the end of 2024 draws near and election results are finalized, state lawmakers representing Colorado’s Western Slope are gearing up for an uncertain political climate come January. 

We asked one of them — Sen. Dylan Roberts, a Frisco Democrat — about his thoughts on the election results, a tight state budget and the lessons learned from wolf reintroduction. 

When the next legislative session begins Jan. 8, Roberts will be one of 23 Democrats in the Senate, compared to 12 Republicans. The House will also have a significant majority of Democrats with a 43-22 margin, pending some recounts.

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The following interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

While you weren’t up for re-election this November, many of your colleagues at the state legislature were. There was also a pretty significant shakeup in national politics with Republicans taking control of the presidency and both houses of Congress. What are your takeaways from the results?

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I think in Colorado, we have stayed fairly consistent in the past six years — since the Polis administration started. There weren’t a lot of changes as far as majorities in the General Assembly — the Senate stayed exactly the same, the House is almost the same. So it seems that at the state and local level that voters here in Colorado are looking for consistency and steadiness in their state government. And I think that’s hopefully the message that my colleagues and I will take to the legislature.

Of course, the national results are on top of everybody’s minds, and we’re going to be in a different environment come January. Even though we are the state legislature, a lot of our work is either dependent or reactive to what’s happening at the federal level, and so there will be changes and differences in the way that this upcoming legislature acts, as opposed to how it’s been over the past four years with President Joe Biden’s administration

How might the Western Slope be impacted by the incoming administration of President Donald Trump? Could projects like passenger mountain rail be put on hold?

I hope not, but it is a reality that we need to be cognizant of. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law made a significant amount of funding available to the states to invest in their infrastructure, to improve roads, bridges and expand things like passenger rail. That bill also made a significant amount of money available for water projects and broadband infrastructure and all types of things that Colorado has been and wants to continue taking advantage of. 

I’ve heard talks of some of that funding, or all that funding, getting pulled back in the next administration. I hope that the new Congress and the Trump administration realizes that those were bipartisan bills and that they help everybody, whether you’re in a blue state or a red state. 

We rely on support and partnership with the federal government, and I hope that that can continue for some of these big projects, like mountain rail, or securing the Shoshone water rights on the Colorado River.

Proposition 127, a ban on big cat hunting, lost with very different results than the last ballot measure related to wildlife in Colorado, wolf reintroduction. What do you make of the difference between those results?

The opposition campaign to 127 was very well organized. I think they used the passage of the wolf reintroduction measure in 2020 as a galvanizing force to build a really strong campaign, raise a significant amount of money and get the message out to voters about why ballot box biology is a bad idea and the negative consequences of taking away jurisdiction from the scientists and the biologists at Colorado Parks and Wildlife. They raised significantly more money to oppose 127 than they had to oppose 114 in 2020. I think the rocky and rushed roll out of the wolf reintroduction over the past year has made voters rethink ballot box biology. I’ve talked to a lot of voters over the last couple years who say they regret their vote on wolf reintroduction. 

Even though the number of Democrats and Republicans in the state General Assembly will be similar, there are new people in many of the seats. How do you see the dynamics shifting as a result next session?

On the Democratic side of the aisle, every new Senator is a current member of the House. There’s also some Republicans moving over from the House too. I think that institutional knowledge always helps the Senate continue to be the chamber where things slow down a bit and get some more deliberative thought. 

I suppose that some of the new senators are more progressive than their predecessors, but there’s always some different dynamics based on who the personalities are. I think some changes are certainly to be expected. The biggest will be the changes in committee makeups. 

Given that Colorado’s results kind of stayed consistent, I think hopefully most of us are taking the message that voters want consistency. They want us to continue focusing on the biggest issues facing our state. And the Democratic Party is better at delivering those results.

What policies are you most looking forward to considering next session?

With such a limited budget, we have to get creative on what the state can do on the affordable housing front. We don’t have money to give out for construction grants but we’re looking at some interesting mechanisms to help people get access to more low cost loans for construction so that we can build more affordable housing units and try to ease up the market a little bit. I hope that there is going to be a continued effort on construction defect reform, that is a big reason why we’re not seeing the type of homeownership product being built in Colorado.

This is going to be a session that’s all about the strapped state budget. We have to make close to a billion dollars in cuts because of the TABOR formula inflation and economic growth and increased Medicaid enrollment. So it’s going to be about prioritizing what we can and trying to protect against significant cuts to some of the priorities and key services that Coloradans depend on, like education and health care and transportation. There’s going to be a big debate over what we should protect and what can take a cut.