Colorado repealed its Wildfire Resilient Homes Grant Program 46 days before a call to create defensible space

The claim

On July 14, 2026, The Colorado Sun published an opinion column under the byline of Sen. John Hickenlooper. The column's biographical line identifies him as a U.S. senator from Colorado who served as Denver mayor from 2003 to 2011 and as Colorado governor from 2011 to 2019. That line records no party affiliation, and no snapshot in this file supplies one, so this piece assigns none.

The column states: "Disasters should never be political." It asks readers to follow local fire restrictions, practice campfire safety and "create defensible space to protect our homes from wildfires."

It sets the ask against a trend. Colorado averaged 13 wildfires a year in the 1990s, burning about 1,100 acres each, the column states; by the 2020s the figure was 72 a year at more than 1,700 acres each. It reports that Leadville, whose historical average annual snowfall it puts at 142 inches, received roughly 69 inches this past winter. It also points at federal action, citing more than $150 million in already-obligated funding frozen for 17 Colorado water and drought resiliency projects.

The cooperation the column asks for is stated in terms of levels of government and the public: local, state and federal governments together with citizens must work together, it says. Separately, it recalls Democratic and Republican administrations delivering disaster relief when the author was mayor and governor, and states that this is not what is happening now. The cross-party point in the column is retrospective; the forward ask, as written, is vertical.

The record

The checkable record is the Colorado General Assembly's own bill file for the 2026 session.

HB26-1395 is titled "Repeal Wildfire Resilient Homes Grant Program." Its prime sponsors are listed as Representative Emily Sirota, Representative Rick Taggart, Senator Judy Amabile and Senator Jeff Bridges. The bill page records House Appropriations referring it to the Committee of the Whole on April 6, 2026 on an 11-0 vote; House Third Reading passing on April 11, 2026 with "48 AYE, 13 NO"; Senate Appropriations referring it on April 14, 2026 on a 7-0 vote; and the governor signing it on May 29, 2026. It became law as Chapter 251, effective the same day. The bill page records the signing action but does not name the signer, so this piece does not either.

The House Appropriations roll call is published in full. Eleven members are recorded voting Yes and none No: Andrew Boesenecker, Scott Bottoms, Lindsay Gilchrist, Junie Joseph, Karen McCormick, Matt Soper, Rick Taggart, Brianna Titone, Yara Zokaie, Emily Sirota and Kyle Brown. The motion before them was, in the record's words, "Refer House Bill 26-1395 to the Committee of the Whole."

Seven weeks earlier, a separate measure went the other way. HB26-1310, "Wildfire Resiliency Grant Money," prime sponsor Representative Tammy Story, was introduced on March 2, 2026 and assigned to the House Agriculture, Water and Natural Resources Committee. On March 23, 2026 the committee adopted an amendment without objection, then defeated a motion to refer the bill to Appropriations 3-10 and postponed the bill indefinitely on a vote of 10-3. Its status is recorded as "Status: Lost."

So within one session the legislature declined to advance new grant money for wildfire resiliency, then struck the existing wildfire resilient homes grant program from statute.

Analysis

The column's forward ask is that governments at every level and citizens work together. Measured against the 2026 session, the cooperation problem it describes does not appear at the state level on this bill. On HB26-1395, both appropriations referrals recorded no No votes, at 11-0 and 7-0, and the sponsor list spans both chambers. What the record shows is agreement, and the thing agreed on was repeal.

That observation is scoped to HB26-1395 alone. HB26-1310's committee record was divided, not consensual: 3-10 against referral, 10-3 to postpone. Anyone citing the wildfire votes as evidence of bipartisan capacity has to cite them by bill and by stage, because the two bills do not tell the same story about consensus.

The chronology is the finding here, and it is arithmetic. The repeal took effect on May 29, 2026. The column ran on July 14, 2026. That is 46 days, roughly six and a half weeks, between the elimination of a state grant program named for wildfire resilient homes and a public appeal to Coloradans to protect their own homes.

One measure of what the individual ask is being asked to carry: in an April 9, 2026 opinion column in the same publication, Nicholas Scritchfield of Estes Park, identified there as a public communications associate with the John Muir Project, wrote that of Colorado's wildfire mitigation funding, "Just $60,000 goes toward home hardening and defensible space." That figure is Scritchfield's account of a state mitigation funding line. It is not a figure drawn from the HB26-1395 bill page, and this piece does not treat the two as the same money.

What the record does not show

The repeal is a state action requiring no federal cooperation. But the bill file does not show that HB26-1310's defeat caused HB26-1395's passage, or that money from one was redirected to the other, and no snapshot here establishes either link. It is a sequence, not a demonstrated chain.

Sen. Hickenlooper holds federal office and cast no vote on either state bill. Nothing here should be read as placing him in those roll calls. The tension is between a rhetorical frame and a state record, and stating it more strongly than that would be unfair.

An advocacy newsletter was gathered during reporting for the claim that conservation groups opposed HB26-1310. It is not used in this piece and no claim rests on it: it is a source with a stated position, and no committee testimony record was available to test it.

A prediction you can check

Based on the 2026 record above, Daily Pol predicts that as of June 30, 2027, the Colorado General Assembly's public bill records will show no enacted 2027 measure re-establishing a dedicated state grant program for wildfire resilient homes. The check is the bill search at leg.colorado.gov. If such a bill is signed by that date, this prediction is wrong.

Editor's note

No request for comment was made for this piece. It rests on official legislative records and on signed opinion columns, and the named legislators are characterized here only by their recorded votes and sponsorships. Daily Pol will append any response from the offices named.