An ER nurse, a funeral home director, a firearms instructor, a physical therapist, a flower shop owner and plenty of attorneys. These are just some of the professions Colorado lawmakers return to when they’re not under the gold dome for the annual four-month-long legislative session.
Colorado, like most states, has a part-time legislature that meets between the months of January and May. Lawmakers from all types of backgrounds pause their regular lives to be in Denver. The idea of a part-time legislature goes back to statehood and was primarily based on farming and ranching; lawmakers met in the winter and early spring when there was less to do on the land. For a long time, the legislature met every other year.
Though the number of days in the session has fluctuated over time, in the 1980s, voters approved a 120-day session in Colorado’s Constitution.
Sarah Miller Frazer from Denver submitted a question to Colorado Wonders to ask what lawmakers do the rest of the year, the eight months they’re not in session at the Capitol, and how they get by financially, earning roughly $40,000 a year as a legislator. That annual salary doesn’t include a daily per diem during session that can bump up the pay a few thousand dollars for metro area legislators and more for rural members.
“Do they have some kind of job that lets them take four months off, or do they not work the rest of the year and are somehow independently wealthy enough to cover all of their other living expenses?” asked Miller Frazer. “I know that some legislators are traveling and don’t live near Denver, and so I’ve wondered how their family is doing without them if they have kids or other family members that rely on them?”
Ad:Republican Rep. Larry Don Suckla holds the distinction of having the longest commute.
“I live almost an hour closer to Phoenix, Arizona, than I do Denver, Colorado,” Suckla said.
He lives on a farm and ranch in Montezuma County, about seven miles from Cortez. He’s one of the Legislature’s only full-time farmers, and he’s also an auctioneer. He said he had to lease out his farm and his cows because of the demands of the session.
“My cows, I lease out to my cousin, and he takes care of my cows.”
Suckla rents a place in Denver during the session and tries to make it home a handful of times. Even then, he’s usually driving across his district, which spans 280 miles.
“When I stuck my name in the hat to run for this office, I knew the sacrifices that I had to make. And I think every other lawmaker knows that as well,” he said. “And they better just figure out how to get their businesses in order and then come up here and serve.”
Every lawmaker CPR News interviewed said they were honored to have the job, but they say it’s demanding, from workload to hours to pay. Many are retired or have family help or flexible jobs that can accommodate the legislative calendar.
Democratic Sen. Kyle Mullica lives with his wife and three children in Thornton. The ER nurse said he occasionally picks up hospital shift work during the session but returns full-time when the Legislature adjourns.
Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of Ft. Morgan is the youngest lawmaker at the Capitol. She isn’t married and shares some living expenses with other family members. Out of session, she said she picks up a lot of seasonal jobs, such as county fair work, helping businesses with paperwork and data research, along with house sitting, babysitting and other odds and ends.
“We knew what we were getting into,” Johnson said of the demands of the job and low pay.
Democratic Rep. Jenny Willford from Northglenn has two young children and runs a flower shop out of her home. Her family primarily relies on her husband’s income during session. She said managing it all can be tough.
“It can get crazy.”
Republican Rep. Brandi Bradley of Douglas County also has a busy homelife. A wife and mother to four sons ranging from 12 to 19, she works part-time as a physical therapist. Her company lets her take the session off.
“It’s a family type of environment, and they’ve just always been really good to me,” she said.
Bradley said summer and fall are catch-up time on all the boy stuff she misses during session, from sports games to outdoor activities. She said she is grateful she lives close enough to the Capitol to hug her kids every night, “even if it’s two in the morning.” Last fall was an especially challenging time when she essentially lived at the hospital after her oldest son, Cole, nearly died in a motorcycle accident.
“I don’t take this job for granted,” she said of serving in the House. “I feel like God has placed me in it. You get to be one of 65 out of almost 6 million people, and we should be honored that the people have put us in this position, but there’s that human spirit when your kids are sick.”
Off session is when House Assistant Minority Leader, Republican Ty Winter, goes back to his other job, running a funeral home. He said his wife and mother pick up the bulk of the workload when he’s at the Capitol.
“And then after session, I end up doing more.”
Lawmakers take pay cuts to do the work
Lawmakers have often lamented the low pay. It was one reason Democrat Dafna Michaelson Jenet resigned from the state senate earlier this year, after serving in the statehouse for a decade. She has a new job that pays significantly more, and said she hopes she and her husband can finally start saving for retirement.
“We also were needing to rely on credit cards to help get through the months. Now I know that’s not different from many Americans, but it was a struggle that meant no vacations and no extra things for the kids, only the necessities. And we did that, and we made the choice to do that. But 10 years felt a little long,” Michaelson Jenet said.
Democratic Rep. Kenny Nguyen of Broomfield took a $30,000 pay cut to be at the Capitol. The 31-year-old was appointed to his seat in January and quit his jobs at the Colorado Department of Revenue Division of Gaming and the Broomfield City Council. Nguyen said he doesn’t have a job lined up yet post-session, but he’s newly engaged and said he would like to start saving up for a wedding. Despite the pay cut, he said he doesn’t regret running for office.
“We need young progressive people of color, and that’s me,” Nguyen said.
Republican Rep. Ava Flanell is another lawmaker in her first session. The 39-year-old from Colorado Springs is a firearms instructor and social media influencer. She shoots firearms using certain brands of ammunition to record content for sites like YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
She estimates she’s lost $50,000 to $100,000 in sponsorship money since she was appointed to a seat in the fall, because she hasn’t had time to do any posts. A colleague is running her firearms classes during the session. She said the job of lawmaking is a lot more all-consuming than she ever anticipated, even on the weekends with all the events and campaign work.
“This is very much a public service position, but I am happy to do it. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. This is something that I feel passionate about. I hate the direction that Colorado’s going, and I’m a firm believer that you have to be the change you want to see,” said Flanell.
She said the biggest adjustment has probably been for her dog, who stays in Denver with Flanell during the week.
“She went from a really big house that has lots of natural light to this little dark apartment, and my apartment has a loveseat, a TV, and a bed. It’s really depressing, and I had a much better life when I was in college,” said Flanell.
While many lawmakers juggle different jobs, legislating can easily be a full-time job, and for some members it is. There’s constituent and policy work, stakeholder meetings, interim committees, conferences, town halls, and the job of running for reelection. Democratic Sen. Mike Weissman of Aurora has no other employment and said he has plenty of legislative duties to keep him busy more than 40 hours a week year-round. Weissman maintains his law license and said he’s able to make it work financially because he doesn’t have children, and his partner makes a decent salary at a law firm.
“If I were trying to do this job living alone, I don’t know how I would do it. I have four cats. I don’t know how I would afford pets,” Weissman said.
Making the job of legislating more appealing
Lawmakers from across the political spectrum seem to agree that it’s best for the state to be governed by people from all types of backgrounds and income levels, but they have very different ideas on how to recruit a more representative group of 100 lawmakers. A shorter session, a longer session? A higher salary, no changes at all?
“I would love to see a 90-day session. I would love for everyone to be able to come to the table and make better solutions,” said Bradley.
Flanell thinks too many bills are introduced.
“If people stuck to their five-bill limit … The session was not created so that people can ram 700 bills plus through the session within four months,” she said. “And I think that if people actually stuck to that five-bill limit, we wouldn’t have to work these crazy hours where we get home at 10:00 PM and wake up at 5:00 AM and go right back to work,” Flanell said.
Others say it needs to be even more full-time.
“I think the solution is that we go to a full-time legislature and we recognize that the work is ongoing and we pay accordingly,” said Michaelson Jenet.
A 2024 bill from Democratic Rep. Naquetta Ricks of Aurora created an independent commission to examine legislative and statewide elected office salaries compared to equivalent jobs in similar states or the private sector.
“Obviously, $40,000 is not enough to live in Colorado; that would not be able to pay for even a one-bedroom apartment or a studio plus other bills,” Ricks said.
Ricks immigrated from Liberia as a child. She is a mortgage broker and is the founder and president of the Colorado African Chamber of Commerce. She said the salary at the Capitol is structured for people with means and wealth, not the average person.
“I don’t have a husband. I don’t come from wealth. I’m a small business person. I work, and this is my duty to serve, but also to be able to earn a living, and we want others to come behind us and not be afraid to serve because of the money situation,” she said.
The commission released a report in December and determined that salaries for elected officials in Colorado are inadequate “considering the significance of the work performed,” and statewide officers are paid 14% to 35% below the median salaries of their counterparts in other states. Legislators are paid 6 % below those in similar states.
But with Colorado facing a $1.5 billion budget shortfall, no one is champing at the bit to run a bill to boost their own salaries. Two years ago, lawmakers did increase the per diem for metro area members by about $3,000. And this session, Senate Bill 98 explores requiring employers to offer paid or unpaid leave to a sitting member.
Republican Rep. Matt Soper of Delta is in his last year at the Capitol, and one of the only Republicans advocating for a pay raise. He thinks the state legislative salary should be tied to the compensation members of Congress earn, a $174,000 baseline annual salary.
“The average Coloradan’s life is more impacted by what we do here in this building than what a member of Congress can achieve in Washington DC. On top of that, the average time that Congress is in session is roughly 120 days. Huh, that’s interesting. We’re in session 120 days.”
He argued that state lawmaking is no less important.
“It’s not JV and varsity, it’s that we’re equal dual sovereigns,” he said.
Colorado’s independent pay commission said a much more modest $50,000 salary for lawmakers would be appropriate, but alluded to the unlikely nature of such a change.
“It is hoped that the State finds itself in a more favorable budgetary position than currently exists,” states the December report.
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