Senate Democrats decided Friday against attempting to override a veto by Gov. Jared Polis on a bill that would have reformed the Colorado Open Records Act.

Senate Bill 77, which Polis rejected April 17, generally would have given local governments more time to respond to records requests. It would have created separate classifications and deadlines for open records requests depending on who submitted them, including a separate process for journalists that required faster responses.

Transparency advocates opposed the bill, saying it would give the government power to decide who is a journalist.

In a statement, the bill’s sponsors said that although they won’t try to override the veto, they will continue to look for ways to “find solutions that are both transparent and fair to everyone.” They added that the volume and complexity of records requests have increased in recent years and that the cost to fulfill them isn’t covered by the fees charged.

“While we believe our bill is reasonable and fair to both records requesters and those who must fulfill records requests, we also acknowledge the concerns raised by the Governor, the press and a coalition of groups who want to ensure their access to public records is not compromised,” according to the statement from Sens. Cathy Kipp and Janice Rich and Reps. Michael Carter and Matt Soper.

Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez, a Denver Democrat, moved to postpone the veto override until after the legislative session ends, effectively killing the effort.

Overriding a governor’s veto requires support from a two-thirds majority in each chamber.

This was the second potential veto override to fizzle this week. On Monday, the House abandoned an attempt to override a social media regulation bill, three days after the Senate voted to override that measure. The sponsors said they lacked enough support to reach the threshold.

The legislature is in the final days of its session, with adjournment set for next Wednesday.

School meals program bill

The state Senate gave initial approval Friday afternoon to a measure that would ask Colorado voters to bolster their support of a universal free school meals program approved in 2022.

The Healthy School Meals For All program has struggled to meet demand since its inception, leaving its future in jeopardy. The program guarantees that all Colorado students can eat free breakfast and lunch at school.

House Bill 1274, if it passes, would send two ballot measures to voters this fall. One would let the state retain about $12.4 million that was collected over projections laid out in Proposition FF. The second measure would ask voters to increase taxes on high-income households by limiting how much money they can write off from their income taxes.

Proposition FF limited income tax deductions for Coloradans with annual incomes over $300,000 to $16,000 for joint filers.

The new ballot measure, if approved, would limit the deductions for people over the income threshold to $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for joint filers. It would raise an expected $105 million per year.

The bill containing those new ballot referrals passed the Senate on an initial voice vote without any debate. It still needs a formal vote.

It already has cleared the House, but an amendment passed by the Senate will send it back for concurrence. Sponsor Sen. Dafna Michaelson Jenet, a Commerce City Democrat, described the change as technical.

Debate over ethnicities on forms

A House Republican spent the first chunk of the morning Friday blocking a five-page bill that would allow people to identify themselves as Middle Eastern, North African or South Asian on government forms.

Rep. Ken deGraaf of Colorado Springs said Senate Bill 50 was the “definition of racism.” He repeatedly attempted to amend it to add a list of other groups that people could identify as, to allow people to fill in whichever demographic identifier they chose and to remove demographic boxes altogether.

House leadership eventually called a recess to sort out a path forward, and the bill’s sponsor, Democratic Rep. Yara Zokaie, agreed to let debate proceed on another deGraaf amendment that effectively would’ve gutted the bill.

DeGraaf said he wanted to “focus on the content of everybody’s character rather than the color of their skin” and added that getting rid of demographic check boxes would help end systemic racism.

The amendment then was defeated soundly. Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat, said people identifying their ethnic backgrounds on government forms was not systemic racism.

“The definition of racism is with intent to harm — to use power structures, to use tools to harm people. To say you want to be seen is not harm,” she said. “And if you believe that, then I question, why does it harm you to recognize other people’s values?”

Zokaie, who is an Iranian American from Fort Collins, said the bill was something her community has been seeking “for a very long time.”

“Being forced to check a box for ‘white’ my entire life has not reflected my experience in this country,” Zokaie said. “I am going to guess that not many of you are told (you’re) from al-Qaeda, that they’re a terrorist, that they’re serving the ayatollah, that they should be taken back to Iran and raped.

“That was in the last week for me.”

The bill then passed on a party-line 42-22 vote. It now heads to Polis for passage into law.

Gender-affirming care bill

The Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee on Thursday night advanced House Bill 1309, which would enshrine access to gender-affirming care in state law and prohibit health plans from denying or limiting treatment that’s deemed medically necessary.

The bill still needed two floor votes in the Senate in the next five days. After that, it would need some cleanup work in the House before moving to Polis’ desk.

Sperm donors bill advances

The HHS Committee also advanced a contentious bill related to sperm donors and in vitro fertilization — and on Friday, House Bill 1259 passed a first voice vote in the Senate.

The bill would enshrine IVF protections in state law, amid challenges to the fertility treatment in other states. But it also would undo some regulations on sperm banks that kicked into effect in January.

That has drawn support from reproductive health advocates and a large donor clinic that argues the regulations are too burdensome. But donor-conceived people who supported the original regulations, as well as the state legislator who drafted them into law, have opposed HB-1259 as an unnecessary attempt by the sperm donor industry to deregulate itself.

Before the committee vote, the bill’s Democratic sponsors removed language criticizing the current regulations, and they restored some record-keeping provisions that HB-1259 would’ve stripped.