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Richardson - Colorado HD56 Representative, P. O. Box 171, Elizabeth, CO (2026)

09/06/2026

I’m honored to receive the Common Sense in the Courtroom Award from the Colorado Civil Justice League.

CCJL works to promote a fair, balanced, and efficient civil justice system. One focused on protecting actual victims while defending Colorado families and businesses from abusive lawsuits.

I’m grateful for this recognition of my efforts at the State Capitol, but the real honor is serving the people of House District 56. I’ll continue working to protect my constituents, support our job creators, and bring common sense to Colorado government.

09/04/2026

I’m honored and grateful to receive the endorsement of the Colorado Farm Bureau PAC. I’ll continue working to strengthen agriculture, defend our rural way of life, and ensure the voices of Colorado’s farmers and ranchers are heard at the State Capitol.

Thank you for your trust and support!

09/03/2026

Today, I was excited to help recognize Merci Ames of Strasburg School District 31J as one of just eight finalists for the 2027 Colorado Teacher of the Year, selected from more than 300 nominees statewide!

It was a privilege to join CDE’s Chief External Relations Officer Emma Garrett-Nelson and District Superintendent Kelle Bongard in surprising Merci with the news.

Merci has spent an incredible 35 years in education, and her commitment to students extends well beyond the classroom—she also serves as a varsity and junior varsity basketball coach.

What a great opportunity to showcase the outstanding work happening every day in Colorado’s rural schools. Teachers like Merci make an extraordinary difference in the lives of their students, families and communities.

Congratulations, Merci! And thank you to the Boettcher Foundation for helping celebrate Colorado’s exceptional educators.

Note: The kids were pretty excited too. The were just about to start a test when we arrived for this surprise visit!

09/03/2026

COLORADO: A TALE OF TWO FUTURES

In November, Colorado voters will be presented with two very different paths.

One accelerates us down the road we are already traveling, a path of higher costs, higher taxes, more government spending and a business climate increasingly less competitive with our neighbors. The other offers Colorado an opportunity to correct its course.

Imagine looking back from the year 2032.

FUTURE 1: Colorado’s $2.7 Billion Mistake - In 2026, voters approved Initiative 195.

They were promised $2.7 billion a year in new revenue for schools, health care and childcare, while most Coloradans received modest tax cuts.

But people changed their behavior. Entrepreneurs moved before selling businesses. Investors delayed capital gains. Companies placed their next facility, jobs or headquarters in lower-tax states. Many businesses never formally “left” Colorado. They simply made their next investment somewhere else.

Rural families felt it too. Farmers selling land and owners retiring from family businesses discovered that one major lifetime transaction could push them into the highest tax brackets. Pass-through businesses paid higher taxes on income retained for equipment, inventory and payroll.

Eventually, revenues fell short of projections. But the spending commitments remained. Lawmakers drained reserves, delayed infrastructure, increased fees and began looking for new taxpayers to fill the gap.

Colorado didn’t collapse. The damage was quieter: businesses that never arrived, jobs created elsewhere, investment lost and a tax base increasingly dependent on volatile income.

Colorado wagered $2.7 billion that taxpayers and capital would stand still. They didn’t.

FUTURE 2: Colorado's Course Correction

Now imagine a different 2032.

Voters rejected Initiative 195 and approved Initiative 232, sending a clear message: Keep income-tax rates capped. Make government live within reasonable limits.

This time, lawmakers listened. Instead of asking how to raise more money, they asked where existing dollars were going. Duplicative programs were consolidated. Improper payments were recovered. Waste, fraud and abuse became continuing targets of oversight. Agencies were expected to demonstrate results. Lawmakers also rediscovered the difference between a priority and a wish list. Schools, roads, public safety and assistance for the truly vulnerable came first.

Then Colorado attacked another driver of unaffordability: excessive regulation. Permitting became faster and more predictable. Barriers to housing, energy development and business growth were reduced. Small businesses spent less time navigating bureaucracy and more time hiring and investing. Slowly, Colorado’s trajectory changed. Entrepreneurs stayed. Employers expanded. Investment returned. Jobs followed.

By 2032, Colorado was once again competing with surrounding states not only for businesses, but for families looking for an affordable place to live. The comeback didn’t happen because government found another source of money. It happened because government learned to do better with what it already had.

THE CHOICE IS OURS

One future asks taxpayers to accommodate a more expensive government. The other asks government to adjust to the realities facing taxpayers. We can accelerate down Colorado’s increasingly unaffordable path. Or we can change direction.

I urge you to reject Initiative 195 and support Initiative 232.

The future isn’t written yet. Colorado voters get to write it.

09/01/2026

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union is a grassroots family farm and ranch organization. Their vision is a society in which family farmers, ranchers, and their communities thrive. I support that vision and am proud to have their endorsement.

08/31/2026

🌾 What does the best of Colorado look like? It looks a lot like the people who have kept working the same land for more than a century.

This week’s Richardson Report starts at the Colorado State Fair, where we celebrated three House District 56 agricultural legacies spanning more than 120 years — families whose perseverance, stewardship, and commitment to community connect our past to the future of rural Colorado.

Also inside: 🚁 wildfire readiness in action, 📍 travels around HD56, 🎡 Colorado’s 150th State Fair, and an invitation to tell me what Colorado needs from the 2027 legislative session.

There’s a lot happening across the Eastern Plains. Catch up with this week’s Richardson Report here>> https://buff.ly/6MvxgPA

08/27/2026

🔥🚁 Training together today so we’re ready when it matters most.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to observe an impressive joint wildland fire training involving South Metro Fire Rescue, Douglas County OEM, and their firefighting helicopter.

While crews attacked the simulated fire from the ground, the helicopter came in overhead with precisely coordinated water drops. With a nearby tender rapidly refilling its 320-gallon bladder, the aircraft was able to return for another drop roughly every 2–3 minutes.

That kind of coordination can make all the difference.

When wildfire threatens, the goal is to hit it fast, hard, and early. To hit before flames reach homes, force evacuations, or grow into the kind of devastating fires Colorado has experienced far too often this year.

Local government agencies training together like this builds the teamwork, communication, and muscle memory our firefighters need when the call is real.

Great people. Great equipment. One mission: protect Colorado communities.

08/26/2026

📣 Proud to once again earn the endorsement of NFIB Colorado!

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has spent more than 80 years advocating for America’s small and independent businesses—and I’m honored to have the support of its Colorado chapter.

One of my top priorities is strengthening the rural and frontier communities of eastern Colorado. That means standing up for the farmers, ranchers, contractors, family businesses, entrepreneurs, and Main Street employers who create jobs and keep our communities alive.

Small businesses don’t need more mandates, higher costs, and more red tape from Denver. They need state government to get out of their way and let them do what they do best.

I’ll keep fighting for lower costs, fewer unnecessary regulations, and a Colorado where small businesses can start, grow, hire, and thrive.

Strong small businesses = strong rural communities.

08/26/2026

Colorado families and businesses hardly need another increase in their monthly bills. Yet Xcel Energy customers are about to get one.

The Public Utilities Commission approved approximately $157 million in additional annual electric revenue, raising the average residential bill about $5 per month and increasing bills for small commercial customers by roughly 4.6%.

Five dollars may not sound enormous by itself. But nothing happens by itself anymore. Groceries, insurance, housing, utilities and seemingly every other everyday expense keep climbing. For small businesses, higher electricity costs join higher wages, insurance, taxes and regulatory expenses—and ultimately show up in the prices customers pay.

Admittedly, K.C. Electric, Mountain View Electric, CORE and municipal utilities serve much of our district. However, while most of rural HD56 isn't directly served by Xcel for electricity, eastern Colorado is increasingly where Xcel's electricity is generated and transported.

Xcel's approximately $1.7 billion Colorado Power Pathway already crosses Cheyenne and Kit Carson counties, with additional construction through Arapahoe, El Paso, Elbert and Lincoln counties. It is designed to accommodate 5,000 megawatts or more of additional eastern Colorado generation.

This latest increase may not be attributed primarily to the Power Pathway; much of Xcel's transmission investment is recovered separately. But it highlights a much larger question the Legislature needs to start asking: What are state policies doing to the total cost of electricity?

Generation mandates, transmission expansion, electrification requirements, wildfire mitigation, distribution upgrades and massive new loads such as data centers may each be considered separately at the Capitol. Ratepayers don't experience them separately. They receive one bill.

Too often, our affordability debate begins only after costs have risen: How do we subsidize the bill? How do we provide assistance? How does government help people pay?

Those questions have their place. But the Legislature should spend much more time asking the question that comes first:

What can we do, or stop doing, to keep the bill from becoming so expensive in the first place?

These are the questions that should be at the center of Colorado's affordability agenda.

08/25/2026

What a Tight Labor Market Means for Rural Colorado

As I travel our district and talk with our business community, I hear the same concern again and again: finding and keeping workers after COVID was hard and it is getting harder.

So, I dug into the numbers. Colorado’s statewide unemployment rate is 3.9%, but that headline does not tell the full story in eastern Colorado. Recent unemployment rates were just 2.3% in Cheyenne County, 2.5% in Kit Carson County and 3.4% in Elbert County. In many of our communities, the problem is not too many people looking for work. It is too few workers available to fill the jobs we already have.

At the same time, Colorado’s labor-force participation rate has fallen to 65.5%, its lowest level since 2020. That matters because people who retire, stop looking for work, or leave the workforce altogether are no longer counted as unemployed. A low unemployment rate is masking a shrinking labor pool.

The challenge is even more serious because our rural workforce is aging. In some eastern Colorado counties, 25% or more of the working-age population is already between ages 55 and 64. That means many communities are facing not only today’s hiring shortages, but a wave of retirements in the coming years.

This touches nearly every part of our local economy: hospitals and clinics, farms and ranches, trucking companies, construction firms, electricians and plumbers, auto and equipment repair shops, restaurants, grocery stores, banks, child-care providers, manufacturers, ag-support businesses, and Main Street retailers.

For a rural employer with a dozen workers, one or two vacancies can mean reduced hours, delayed projects, fewer services, or turning away customers. Over time, that affects more than the business itself. The resilience of a rural community depends on having enough people to keep its businesses, health-care providers, schools and essential services functioning.

These are exactly the issues that inform my work on the House Business Affairs & Labor Committee. When we consider new workplace mandates, regulations or employer costs, we need to ask how they affect businesses already operating with thin margins and an even thinner labor pool.

Supporting rural economies means more than creating new jobs. It means strengthening the workforce, expanding skilled-trades and career training, improving access to housing and child care, and making sure state policy does not make it harder for the employers we already have to survive, grow and serve their communities.

Richardson - Colorado HD56 Representative

09/06/2026

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