District lobbyists Steve Melserovich and Tim Coleman updated the board on the 2025 Colorado legislative session and the items the district tracked or influenced.

Melserovich and Coleman told the board they screened 731 introduced bills for impacts on Pueblo West operations and tax authority, then lobbied actively on 19 bills of direct interest. They said the district helped secure passage of the vegetative-fuel mitigation bill (named in the briefing materials and discussed at the meeting) and worked to correct a backflow-inspection bill that would have limited who can perform backflow inspections. Coleman described intense negotiations on the vegetative-fuel bill, which involved more than a dozen amendments and meetings with multiple interest groups including realtors, home builders, farm organizations, utilities and fire chiefs.

Lobbyists described successful efforts to postpone indefinitely two bills the district opposed: one that would have narrowed or limited a special district’s ability to use dominant eminent domain against other local governments (the proposal would have affected water and improvement projects) and another, House Bill 25‑12‑86 as referenced in the briefing, which would have imposed additional temperature-related work restrictions that lobbyists said would have exceeded OSHA requirements and significantly disrupted local maintenance operations.

The lobbyists said they maintain a legislative status sheet accessible to district staff and meet biweekly with staff to coordinate positions. Steve Melserovich invited board members to join the legislative committee and thanked staff for collaboration during the session.