Sen. Byron Pelton wraps up first year in Colorado State Senate

First-year State Senator Byron Pelton of Sterling had big shoes to fill when he was sworn into office last January. 

Succeeding 16-year lawmaker Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, now a Logan County commissioner, Pelton was immediately part of a coalition of new senators on both sides of the aisle who were expected to stand strong for rural Coloradans and the agriculture industry.

In addition to Byron Pelton, that included his cousin, Republican Sen. Rod Pelton of Cheyenne Wells, who until the 2021 redrawing of senate boundaries represented northeastern Colorado in the House; Sen. Dylan Roberts, an Avon Democrat, and Sen. Perry Will, R-New Castle. 

All four served on the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, one of the least partisan panels in the legislature. 

It made the quartet unusually effective.

That included beating back a challenge from the Polis administration to remove State regulation of pesticides and put it under local control and a measure to put some teeth into how the State would reintroduce wolves on the Western Slope. That bill, however, was vetoed last week by Governor Jared Polis. 

In an interview shortly before the end of the session, Pelton said he spent a lot of time with Sonnenberg before the session started, sometimes sitting on Sonnenberg’s tractor for four or five hours. “The best advice he gave me was to listen to everyone,” Pelton said.

Pelton’s experience as a Logan County commissioner also came in handy, particularly on discussions around property taxes, which dominated the final week of the session.

There’s a fine line on this very complicated issue, he explained. You need to provide services to your community but can’t tax so heavily that people are run off their properties, he said. 

That local government perspective also showed up in discussions around drug abuse policy, such as Senate Bill 109, a measure he sponsored with Sen. Kyle Mullica, D-Thornton. That bill died in a House committee on May 5.

Pelton shared his perspective on what it's like to be a county commissioner who gets a phone call in the middle of the night from the head of the department of human services, who says he’s got parents overdosing on methamphetamines and four kids who need foster homes that night. 

“These are tough things that you have to convey to these people because a lot of them are kind of disconnected from local governments,” Pelton said.

In agriculture, it was important to relay the importance of coming up with the right plan for reintroduction of wolves.

Senate Bill 256 would have made sure the state got its waiver from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to allow wolves were introduced as a nonessential experimental population, rather than an endangered species. The difference is that in the former, farmers and ranchers could protect their livestock from wolf attacks, he explained.

One of the toughest votes he took in his first year was on right to repair for agricultural equipment, a bill that won overwhelming support from farmers and ranchers but got little love from Republican lawmakers.

“I hated that bill at the beginning and I still don't like it,” Pelton admitted. But he was able to get amendments onto it and what changed his mind was comments from his constituents. 

“I was hearing it at Lincoln Day dinners. I heard it at town halls. I heard it when I was in the grocery store. My wife got people talking to her in the middle of Walmart in Sterling, about right to repair and how important it is to them and how much they want to be able to fix their own stuff,” he said.

“I voted for it because my district wanted it,” he said.

One of the most difficult parts of the session was in dealing with the gun control bills run by Democrats. Pelton said they tried to get rural Colorado exempted from some of them “because they just don’t understand our way of life. Guns are a huge part of our way of life.”

At one point, a Democratic senator was talking about a domestic violence victim and said “call the police.” If that victim lives in Crook and the Sheriff’s deputies are in Sterling, that’s 40 minutes away, he said.

“You need that extra time to protect yourself and protect your family, but you have a right and a responsibility to do so. And that's the thing that I don't think they understand,” he said. 

Pelton said he’s seen gun violence; he had a cousin who was a police officer in Fort Lupton who was shot in the face. Not one of those gun bills would have protected him, he said. 

“We need to focus on behavioral health and that's where the focus needs to stay.”

Pelton was a prime sponsor of 11 Senate bills in the 2023 session, with eight making it to the governor’s desk. One bill he was pleased with is on suicide prevention that he co-sponsored with Roberts (House Bill 1007) that requires public and private colleges and universities to print Colorado and national crisis and suicide prevention contact information on student identification cards and distribute that information at the beginning of each semester.

It was an issue brought to him by a constituent, Pelton said. 

While the school finance act provided a much-needed $30 million boost to rural schools, it’s not a long-term solution, Pelton indicated. “We need to restructure” the formula and pay down the rest of the debt to K-12 education, he said, so that rural schools aren’t always asking for that extra money. 

“I've got four years up here and hopefully another four and can look at it again. I think we need to bring everybody to the table.”

Pelton also has been happy to learn from his cousin’s experiences, too.  “I was very successful as a commissioner because I learned from him right off the bat. And it's the same way here right now.” The other Sen. Pelton helped him learn a lot, he said. There were times when he wanted to go to the Senate microphone and say something but was advised that this might not be the best way to do things. “I don’t want to go down there and embarrass my district,” Pelton said.

From the other side of the aisle, he said he worked best with Roberts and Mullica, as well as Sen. Rachel Zenzinger, D-Arvada, a maverick who didn’t always toe the Democratic party line, particularly on the governor’s housing bill. “They’ve been good to sit down with and talk with and find compromises where we can find them. 

He also pointed to Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, D-Pueblo, the vice-chair of the Senate Ag committee, with whom he shares a passion for veterans’ issues. The two ran several bills together on that topic. “Everybody needs to help the veterans. It's not just a Democrat or a Republican.”

Among the biggest challenges is where to find consensus. On some issues, such as agriculture and veterans’ issues, there’s room for that. But on issues such as guns and abortion, that will never happen. 

Pelton said serving the people has been very enjoyable and he looks forward to doing more this summer, including hosting some agriculture tours for urban lawmakers, beginning next month. That tour will include visiting sale barns and oil and gas wells that are on ag land, because this does a lot for a farmer and his or her operation, he said. 

He hopes that those tours will help lawmakers understand that maybe lawmakers shouldn't touch certain areas because it might have unintended consequences for how we get our food, Pelton added.

“I’m trying not to be the guy that my dad complained about,” he said, someone who talks to you for five minutes and then asks for your vote. “I’m trying not to be that guy.”