Landlords and businesses would be required to advertise the full price of their services — including the cost of various hidden fees — under new legislation introduced in the Colorado House that’s part of a suite of measures backed by legislative Democrats seeking to curb costs in the state.

Lawmakers formally unveiled House Bill 1090 during a press conference late last week. The measure requires businesses across industries to display the total price of services, from apartment rentals to restaurant menus, in their advertisements.

Landlords would also be barred from charging so-called “junk fees” for services like pest control, common-area maintenance or to cover their property taxes — fees that have become ubiquitous in renters’ lease agreements.

The bill would require fee and price transparency for companies doing business and advertising in Colorado. That includes restaurants — which would have to include information about service charges on their menus or in pricing advertisements, as well as details about how those service charges are distributed. Restaurants would also be required to direct the proceeds of those fees to staff, not managers or owners.

But the measure specifically calls out rental costs: On top of barring pest control and certain common-space fees, it would also prohibit landlords from charging service fees for making rental or utility payments.

It would block landlords from charging for services that aren’t actually provided. Some tenants have told The Denver Post that they were charged for security cameras and storage lockers that didn’t exist or didn’t work.

Last year, roughly 50 Colorado renters told The Post about the wide array of fees they pay. Some paid one fee to have their trash hauled to the dumpster and another fee to have it taken to the dump. Others said they shouldered fees to pay their rent online or to pay for their utilities.

One renter said he paid a fee to calculate all his other fees. Those costs were piled atop rent, often listed separately and lower in lease agreements and ads.

“The common goal (of hidden fees) is to increase profits by draining more money out of the pockets of hard-working Coloradans, while masking the real cost of rent and other goods and services,” Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat, said at the press conference Thursday.

The measure is also sponsored by fellow Democrats Rep. Naquetta Ricks and Sens. Mike Weissman and Lisa Cutter.

Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission sent a letter to lawmakers and to Gov. Jared Polis supporting legislation to curb junk fees, particularly for rental housing. Lina Khan, the FTC chair under former President Joe Biden, talked about junk fees at a July event in Denver with Attorney General Phil Weiser, who later filed a joint lawsuit with the agency against a large landlord accused of improperly charging its Colorado tenants.

Messages sent to the Colorado Apartment Association were not returned. Drew Hamrick, a vice president for the CAA, has defended fees charged by landlords as essential to covering the cost of rentals, though he said landlords may be better served by folding some fees directly into rents.

Tenant advocates say that would be preferable, as it would give renters more transparency into total costs before they sign a lease or pay application fees.

The Colorado Chamber of Commerce’s vice president of governmental affairs, Meghan Dollar, said in a statement that her organization has “serious concerns” about the measure, particularly because of “the broad scope of industries impacted and the potential for increased legal liability for employers.”

The junk-fee bill was unveiled last week with two other Democrat-backed bills that had already been introduced in the legislature: House Bill 1010, which would generally prohibit grocery stores and other retailers from price gouging by raising the prices of certain goods by more than 10% within three months; and House Bill 1004, which effectively would prohibit landlords from using algorithms that, critics allege, are used by nominally competing landlords to coordinate prices and keep rents at higher levels.

The three bills come amid a renewed focus on Colorado’s cost of living from lawmakers of both parties.

Democrats have focused on regulating alleged market manipulation and cost increases from businesses and landlords, while Republicans have instead pitched cutting regulations and fees passed by the legislature.

Polis, who has also said he will prioritize curbing costs, will “review the final versions of the bills if they reach his desk,” spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said in a statement. Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, the top Republican in the House, declined to comment on the junk-fee bill Monday.

Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat who’s co-sponsoring the algorithm measure, said Thursday that the impact on Coloradans from fees targeted by Republicans “is miniscule.” Those state-imposed fees, he said, “fund programs that provide benefits for working Coloradans and protect our climate.”

In contrast, he pointed to research from the Biden administration — which has since been scrubbed from the White House’s website — that found that Denver-area landlords who use pricing algorithms pocket more than $1,600 in additional rent from each tenant every year. That was the second-highest annual cost to tenants among 20 major metropolitan areas in the country, behind only renters in Atlanta.

“We called a special session for property tax hikes that were less than that,” he said.

The algorithm measure is a rerun of a similar bill that died in the state Senate last year. The new bill would prohibit landlords from using the software or similar services, and it would bar landlords from coordinating prices together.

It would also make it illegal for a “coordinator” — like the software developer that makes the algorithm — from facilitating agreements between landlords that allow for price coordination.

The U.S. Department of Justice is suing RealPage, the algorithm’s developer, and several large landlords for alleged price-fixing (a charge RealPage denies). Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general, has joined that suit.

The algorithm bill is set for its first vote in a House committee on Feb. 12. The junk-fees bill does not yet have a committee date scheduled.