Most of my bills are on their way to being signed into law. On May 6, Gov. Jared Polis hosted us for a signing ceremony for SB26-040, Simpson\u2019s and my affordable housing bill. Proposition 123 was built as a statewide program, and rural resort communities have struggled to access funding for affordable housing because our needs don\u2019t always fit with the grant frameworks. We built SB26-040 with local county commissioners to add flexibility to Prop. 123 to make it more responsive to local realities and open up opportunities for us to expand affordable housing in Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n I\u2019d also like to give an update on my bill to prevent abuse of strip searches in county jails, which I brought forward in light of the charges against former La Plata Jail Cmdr. Edward Aber. It has been an enormous privilege to work with La Plata County survivors, whose bravery and advocacy have driven this process. HB26-1123 will tighten standards around strip searches, strengthen sexual assault prevention policies and establish whistleblower protections for county jail employees.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a long road to get this bill through the House and Senate. I\u2019ve held lengthy negotiations with county sheriffs of Colorado and county attorneys across the state over the past six months. We made a total of 16 amendments throughout the legislative process to move forward to a place where HB26-1123 both creates strong protections for prisoners and will be feasible for small rural counties to implement within the constraints of their budget and technology.<\/p>\n There\u2019s still a lifetime of work to do to ensure that Colorado\u2019s correctional facilities are safe and secure for everyone, but this bill is an important step forward to protect people who are incarcerated from sexual abuse and exploitation and increase accountability and oversight of jail employees. I\u2019m extremely proud to say that HB26-1123 passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support May 7.<\/p>\n This session has been a roller coaster as we\u2019ve navigated a historic budget crisis and federal uncertainty. It\u2019s meant late nights, hard conversations and even more difficult decisions, but as always I am honored to be your representative at the Colorado State House.<\/p>\n As the state Legislature heads into the interim, I\u2019ll be glad to be home in Southwest Colorado for more than 36 hours at a time \u2013 please feel free to invite me to your businesses, campuses, farms, ranches and everything in between, and I\u2019ll do my best to be there. I always encourage you to reach out to my office at katie.stewart.house@coleg.gov<\/a> if you have questions about my work or have thoughts you want to share.<\/p>\n Katie Stewart (D-Durango) represents House District 59 in the Colorado Statehouse, which encompasses Archuleta, La Plata, and San Juan counties and most of Montezuma County. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" year\u2019s legislative session ends May 13, and we worked through the weekend to get bills across the finish line. If you\u2019d like to learn more about our work over the past year, come to one of my town halls. Sen. Cleave Simpson and I will host Legislative Lowdowns with the League of Women Voters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6343],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-128830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-opinion","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128830"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=128830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}