The Colorado House approved a bill Wednesday to keep a sales and use tax exemption for timber companies that gather and sell wood damaged by pine beetles.
It was one of several measures aimed at dealing with climate change and wildfires that advanced through the Colorado Legislature this week.
The exemption, which expired last year, was put in place as a way of encouraging logging and milling companies to harvest the dead wood as a way of reducing it as a fuel in wildfires.
On paper, House Bill 1261 appears to cut state revenues by about $500,000 a year, but thatâs money the state has never collected. The Legislature created the pine beetle wood exemption in 2008 to encourage a new market to do something with the damaged wood.
Animal acts and drought mitigation are only some of the ideas that saw some advancement in the Colorado Legislature on Wednesday.
One of those measures, House Bill 1242, would create a new Office of Agricultural Drought and Climate Resilience within the Colorado Department of Agriculture.
Without adding to that department s budget, the new office would provide technical assistance, non-regulated programs and incentives to farmers and ranchers to help them respond to threats related to droughts or climate change, such as wildfires and floods.
The bill passed the Colorado House on a party-line 40-23, with only Republicans voting against it, including Reps. Marc Catlin of Montrose, Perry Will of New Castle, Janice Rich of Grand Junction and Matt Soper of Delta.