Proponent asserts CCPAME would fund infrastructure and dividends; staff presses TABOR, loans and criminal penalties

At a March 19 hearing in House Committee Room 109, proponents and legislative staff reviewed Initiative 268, which would create the Colorado Consumer Protection and Automation Mitigation Enterprise (CCPAME) as a government-owned business to collect mitigation revenues from covered automation operators and allocate those funds through a hard waterfall to prioritized program tiers and resident dividends.

The measure's stated purposes include authorizing assessments (universal civic utility surcharges, digital severance assessments, reclamation fees), directing CCPAME revenue into loans for municipal civic infrastructure (including 0% or low-interest municipal lending), establishing a resident mitigation dividend that pays out when program reserves are met, and requiring environmental mitigations for covered compute facilities. Haroja Jawah of legislative council staff read the memorandum for the record.

Major staff concerns
Staff raised several fiscal and constitutional concerns: whether CCPAME qualifies as a TABOR-exempt enterprise (Article X, §20), whether collections would be classified as fees or taxes triggering voter approval, and how the initiative's appropriation note would (or would not) authorize a specific general-fund loan amount and repayment terms. Proponent Ben Gellhouse acknowledged those issues and said his draft contains contingency mechanisms, but staff urged clearer loan amounts and timing.

Penalties and definitions
Staff asked for clearer definitions of new criminal concepts (terms such as "ghost folio" and "ghost folio evasion") and whether proposed class-4 felony language intended strict liability; the proponent said he had addressed mens rea concerns in later drafts and explained that "ghost folio" describes attempts to hide scraping by partitioning data or using offshore routing.

Revenue projection cited
During funding discussion the proponent stated a projection of roughly $46,000,000,000 in new fee revenue over 10 years, characterizing the enterprise as an economic engine to finance infrastructure and programs. Staff asked for more precise appropriation schedule language and the timing and interest rate for any initial state loan.

Outcome
No committee vote occurred. Staff will provide drafting recommendations on TABOR, appropriation specificity, definitions, and enforcement language for proponents to incorporate in later drafts.

Sources: Legislative council staff and proponents at the March 19, 2026 initiative review hearing in House Committee Room 109. Figures and quotations are attributed to speakers on the record.