A bill seeking to speed up the deployment of new cell phone towers in Colorado is poised to pass the statehouse after lawmakers made several key revisions. 

House Bill 1056 would hold local governments to a timeframe for approving permits for new wireless infrastructure and is among a package of legislative proposals from a group of mostly rural lawmakers seeking solutions to the state’s patchwork of cell phone service.

Other measures advancing through the legislature include providing property tax incentives to telecommunication companies that build in underserved areas and expanding the role of the state’s broadband office to include support for wireless services. 

Those proposals, including the one on cell phone towers, came out of an interim committee that met ahead of this year’s legislative session to identify solutions to cell service problems. 

“We have heard loud and clear from Coloradans across the state that lack of cell phone connectivity is a major safety concern as well as a major hassle,” said Rep. Meghan Lukens, D-Steamboat Springs, the committee’s chair and a sponsor of House Bill 1056. “The bills that are making progress this legislative session from the interim committee are positive steps in the right direction to increase cell phone connectivity across the state.”

House Bill 1056 is aimed at reducing what telecom companies say is among the biggest barriers to development: time. During committee hearings, lawmakers heard testimony from companies that said some local governments have sat on permit applications for over a year.

The bill initially sought to force local governments to approve permits for wireless projects within 60 days, but the timeline was more than doubled through a series of amendments in the House and Senate. 

The current bill now includes a 150-day shot clock for governments to approve applications for large facilities and a 90-day requirement for smaller projects. If those timelines expire without a decision, permits would automatically be approved. 

The bill does allow local governments to pause the shot clock once a permit has been received. The window for initiating a pause was increased from 30 days to 45, and governments can do so for a host of reasons, such as when officials are in the midst of considering critical housing or water projects. 

Bev Staples, legislative and policy advocate for the Colorado Municipal League, said the changes will help ensure other important local projects aren’t pushed to the backburner because of wireless facilities. 

Both the Colorado Municipal League and Colorado Counties, Inc. have expressed skepticism, however, that fast-tracking permitting timelines will increase telecom infrastructure. 

Staples said most towns and cities are already approving permits within 60 to 100 days, while  Kelly Flenniken, executive director for Colorado Counties, Inc., said some counties haven’t seen permit applications in over a decade. 

Both groups say the issue isn’t permitting but a lack of interest from telecom companies to build in rural areas, which they may not see as cost-effective. 

“I think what we’re disappointed that has not been added is anything to actually tie this bill to improvements in coverage,” Staples said. “I’d be very curious to see in five to 10 years what kinds of coverage improvements we are going to see because that’s really how this bill was presented.” 

Lukens said bill sponsors worked to incorporate much of the feedback they’d heard from local governments into the bill’s final form. She has stressed that the bill doesn’t stymy a community’s ability to deny a permit, only that they make those decisions within a reasonable timeline.

“I feel very pleased with the final version of the bill,” Lukens said. “At the end of the day, the goal of this bill is to support increasing cell phone coverage in rural Colorado and across the entire state.” 

Along with Lukens, House Bill 1056 is sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Bacon, D-Denver, Sen. Nick Hinrichsen, D-Pueblo, and Sen. Dyan Roberts, D-Frisco. 

The bill has already passed both the House and Senate, but lawmakers must still approve amendments made in both chambers before sending it to the governor’s desk.