Colorado governor eliminates hundreds of executive orders

Gov. Jared Polis this week took executive action to reverse over 200 executive orders that he argues are obsolete.

“Today, I took a table saw to outdated and wasteful Executive Orders, cutting away at bureaucracy to make our government more efficient,” the governor said in a statement.

Some of the rescinded executive orders date back to the 1920s, while the two most recent rescinded orders were signed by Polis. The 208 rescinded orders are listed here.

“Over time, Executive Orders may become unnecessary, outdated, or obsolete due to changed circumstances, the completion of their intended purposes, or redundancy with current laws and regulations,” the executive order signed on Thursday said. “The continued retention of outdated Executive Orders may lead to confusion, inefficiency, or administrative burdens.”

House Republicans called the executive action “a necessary and long-overdue step toward addressing inefficiencies in state government,” but said more should be done to rollback harmful regulations.

"It is about time the Governor recognized that Colorado cannot thrive under the weight of excessive regulation and overspending," House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese said in a statement. "This is a step in the right direction, but it falls short of undoing the damage caused by policies that have made it increasingly unaffordable for Coloradans to live in our state."

House Republicans pointed to the 2024 Colorado Business Economic Outlook, which was released this week by the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business, that found the state’s real GDP growth for 2024 was 1.6%, ranking 41st in the country. That’s down from a fifth place ranking for real GDP growth from 2008 to 2023.

“Following the great financial crisis until 2023, Colorado was one of the top-performing state economies,” Richard Wobbekind, a senior economist at Leeds and faculty director of the Business Research Division, said. “More recently we have moved more to the middle of the pack, perhaps suggesting that we are leading in the slowdown as well.”

Another report released this week by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce ranked the state as the sixth most regulated in the U.S., with almost 200,000 business regulations. According to the report, 45% of those regulations “can be classified as being duplicative or redundant.”

“Colorado’s regulations are consistently the top concern in every business survey we’ve conducted in recent years,” Chamber President and CEO Loren Furman said. “If we don’t get our regulatory climate under control, we’re putting future jobs and economic growth at risk. We’re preparing a bold legislative package to tackle this growing burden, which is our top priority going into 2025.”

The Chamber’s report recommends the state implement a “regulatory budget” – or “a hard limit on the number of state regulations while simultaneously setting a short-term regulation reduction target” – and more regulatory sunset provisions, which automatically expire or renewed.