Term-limited after eight years, key legislator talks about his role in helping guide Colorado’s big pivot in energy since 2019 and what he learned about the legislative process
by Allen Best
In 2017, when Steve Fenberg took office as a state senator from Boulder, Republicans still held the majority in that chamber. Then, following the 2018 election, the traffic barricades went down.
Legislators have passed 128 bills since then that, in one way or another, have aggressively directed Colorado toward a dramatic — and some would say unattainable — downward shift in greenhouse gas emissions. The shift will ultimately impact every part of how we live and do business.
Colorado clearly has emerged as among the leaders of climate action among the nation’s 50 states.
In an interview conducted Sept. 10 at the Boulder Public Library, Allen Best of Big Pivots talked with Fenberg for 90 minutes about his eight years in the Senate and his leadership roles there.
Going into the Senate, he saw politics more as akin to the art of war. During his time as a legislative leader, he learned that the simple act of listening plays an important role in long-term success and that it’s important to show respect to those in the minority.
He also shares observations about working with Gov. Jared Polis and the power tactics of the oil and gas industry and the deep influence of Xcel Energy at the State Capitol.
Fenberg also reflected broadly on how he sees his individual role in the sequencing of generations:
“We think of ancestors and what they did to help us be who we are and get to where we are. What we don’t do often is think of ourself as an ancestor to future generations.”
Thel ightly-edited interview will be posted/published in five parts on successive days.
Let start with the happy notes. Colorado has defined an aggressive pivot in energy during your time in the Senate, especially since the 2019 session. According to a report by Will Toor at a recent conference, 128 bills have been passed into law that together aim to dramatically curb Colorado’s emissions of greenhouse gasses. Do two, three or four of these bills stand out for you as sweet triumphs or that provoke vivid memories? And why?
It’s not like we just passed 128 separate bills. Many of them are iterations of previous bills, and many of them are evolutions.
Also keep in mind that when I first got into office, I was in the minority. I introduced some climate bills that died, and then in 2019, when we got the majority (in both chambers of the General Assembly) for the first time in a while and the first time in my career, we had a whole lot of pent-up pieces of legislation that we were just ready to go with.
A foundational bill, HB19-1261, which laid out our broad greenhouse gas targets for 2025, 2030 and 2040, was legislation that had been introduced previously. If that bill was introduced today, I think many of us would say it’s weak sauce, but it was critical to get it done then, to set the foundation. I think it inspired or kind of facilitated many of the later bills.
I remember that fight vividly. We passed that bill at, I think, five in the morning.
You’re kidding me.
It was a rough-and-tumble period in the Senate, because we had just gotten the majority — by one vote. The Republicans were fighting like hell. They felt like we were doing too much, too fast. It’s a very natural reaction. I don’t blame them for it. I think if the tables were turned, I would do the same.
I was also younger and less experienced, and I wasn’t as convinced at the time about how much relationships matter in the legislative process. It was a learning experience for me. It was also a lot of fun to just have a knock-down, drag-out fight on a really important issue and to win.
There was a filibuster, and it went late into the night, and we finally called the question. I don’t think we’ve done that again since that night. It’s a very rare thing to do, but it was the only way forward. We felt like we had given the minority plenty of time to voice their opinion. It got to a point where they were just simply delaying.
You describe this bill as zealous? Did I hear that right?
I don’t think I would say zealous. It was ambitious for the moment. I think many states have since adopted those types of goals. And some aspects of those goals we now think we can easily surpass. But it was important for the moment to help lay out a framework for a roadmap and individual sectors of the economy.
The same year had many other big moments. One was SB19-181. (It made the protection of public safety, health, welfare, and the environment in the regulation of the oil and gas industry a higher priority than production).
Looking back, many of us think, okay, yeah, but there’s so much more to do. But take yourself back to 2019 and think about all of the oil and gas regulation bills that had been introduced, all the ballot measure wars, and all of the failures, one after another.
Those failures were important. I think we learned a lot. Think about the accomplishment of passing SB181 in the context of those years of a lack of progress. It laid the foundation for many oil and gas bills that came after.
Those two fights were particularly important and personally gratifying and a big part of my professional growth as a legislator. That’s partially because I was arguably in charge of getting the (Democratic) majority back. That was my mission in 2017 and 2018, and we did it. And I made a lot of promises to a lot of people that if we get this majority, here’s what you can expect from us. And I feel like we delivered on a lot of that.
You said one thing you learned was the importance of relationships, which has perhaps helped you as you’ve gone on through your legislative career. Are there ways you went about this that you regret?
I wouldn’t use the word regret, because, again, I think if it didn’t happen the way it happened, I wouldn’t have learned certain lessons. But it was pretty turbulent.
We had the (Democratic) majority back. We were getting a lot done in one session. Jared Polis was a new governor. We had the trifecta (control of both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion) for the first time, and I was in the middle of it.
Not long before in my legislative career I had been a freshman in the minority, which basically means you just sit there, right? For two years, I was just lobbing bombs, and they would deflect every single one of them. And so we got the majority and immediately I became the majority leader. Very quickly, I had to learn. And I don’t think I would have learned certain lessons if we had not pushed the envelope in the way that we did.
But there’s a little bit of me that feels it’s not how I would do it today. Again, it’s not regret.
The biggest lesson is the importance of just communicating with your opponents. I think I went into those fights too convinced that my opponents were my enemy and not just simply my political opponents. And I think when you have the mindset of an enemy, you take actions and you use tactics that maybe you wouldn’t if you just simply saw them as someone who disagreed with you. That was okay. You were still going to work to get your way, but an “enemy” makes you treat people differently than if they’re just simply a political opponent.
You said the basic argument of the Republican minority was that this was too much, too quickly. Was there a basic agreement within the Republican minority about the need to change , that some policy was needed, that we needed to decarbonize?
No, not at all. I think that’s shifted a little, but not a ton.
When you think about the oil and gas fight, it wasn’t just the Republican minority, it was an army of oil-and-gas industry lobbyists (and) executives. In some ways they kind of weaponized their workers. There were rallies regularly. It was just a very tense period, and the narrative was that this was going to bankrupt the industry. We were going to have massive layoffs. It would hurt the state’s economy overall.
Those are scary things. It’s people’s livelihoods. It’s personal.
The opposition came more from oil and gas sector as opposed to the coal sector?
Yes. In fact, I can’t even think of a lobbyist for the coal sector. I don’t know that they were ever part of the conversation. Non-existent, basically. The closest thing in Colorado probably is Xcel Energy. Especially back then they had financial entanglements with coal.
They are a major presence at the Capitol.
Xcel? Oh, absolutely. They’re a sophisticated player, for better or for worse, and I would say they are agnostic on the use of fossil fuels, as long as they get to build things that make their shareholders money.
And we’ll get to that presently. Another question. Several people I spoke with described you as an uncommonly good listener and suggested that it has made you a more effective legislative leader. I also heard you described as cautious, careful and perhaps cagey. What are the key skills you believe are necessary for effective legislative leadership?
Listening and communication. Open communication is more important than I thought at first. So when I went into this, “The Art of War” (book by Sun Tzu written in fifth century BC) and positioning and kind of outmaneuvering was very much on my mind. I’m not saying that’s not part of the equation, but I think I’ve learned a lot more. Just as important is treating people like people — basically just treating people with respect, even if they don’t respect you, and especially when you’re in a position of power.
Because when you’re in a minority position, it’s different. You have a different role. In some ways, your job is to push buttons and to poke and to make sure that the voice of the minority is heard. When you’re in the majority, your job is to govern and actually problem-solve. It’s a much heavier responsibility. And you’re not just a political player. You’re an actual public servant. You’re a leader that has to govern and solve problems for people, for communities.
An individual in Boulder how is a master negotiator has said this: The cheapest consolation you can provide in a negotiation or a conflict is respect, because it doesn’t cost you anything, and it means the world to your opponent.
How do you express that respect?
Listening, hearing people out, giving them what they’re asking for to an extent when it doesn’t dramatically undercut what you’re trying to get right.
As an example a request of, “Look, we don’t like this bill. We’re going to fight. What we ask is that you don’t silence us, and you give us some grace, and sometimes that means you give us time to make our case. And we know at the end of the day you’re going to vote and you’re going to win, but don’t steamroll us. Allow us to offer amendments, allow us to make the case, allow us to try to find a path or maybe some little compromises here and there.”
And if you say “No, you’re in the minority, you have no voice. Screw you. We’re passing this and it’s a waste of time to hear you talk,” that will only inflame the situation and probably create more problems in the long run. Whereas, if you treat someone with respect and you say your voice is valued, I disagree, but at the end of the day, you represent almost half of the voters in the state, you can’t just disregard that.
I do think there’s a responsibility being in the majority to not just say, “Well, I won 50% plus one, and therefore I get my way on everything, and you don’t get to have a voice.” Many of my colleagues, many of the members in my caucus over the years, would sit there and be like, “We’re wasting our time. Why are we letting that so and so Republican blabber forever. Let’s get some work done.”
I have concluded that this results in a much longer and less productive process overall than if you just let people have their say, because they will fight back. You might get to a vote on that particular bill faster, but the next bill will come up and they’ll make you pay for it.
Well, that takes us to what can you say about working with Gov. Polis? He’s the leader of the Democratic Party in Colorado, and he wields the power of veto, which he has exercised a few times in regard to energy bills. How much room for discussion is there in any of this?
In other words, how much of the climate energy legislation comes from the Colorado Energy Office and other state agencies, and how much from individual legislators? How does that process work?
There’s absolutely a partnership and a collaboration. Sometimes there are family feuds and disagreements, but at the end of the day, the (Colorado) Energy Office wants what I think the most vocal Democratic legislators want. I think it’s a disagreement about how best to get there. Obviously, that’s a simplified version of what’s going on.
At the end of the day, I do think it’s important to remind ourselves that we’re not dealing with a oppositional governor who fundamentally disagrees with what we’re trying to accomplish. There are times where the governor’s office will communicate their position, and sometimes my members got really frustrated with that, and there are times where the governor’s office doesn’t communicate their position, and then they get surprised at the end, when it comes out that he doesn’t like that bill or whatever.
You can’t have the request of him to just not have an opinion, because he will. He’s an intelligent, thoughtful guy that gets in the weeds on policy. Previous governors were, at the end of the day, pretty hands off and generally speaking, signed the bills without asking a lot of questions. (Polis) is a legislator at heart. He was in Congress for 10 years. So he will be very hands on. He literally will read all the bills, and he will come to a conclusion on every single bill whether he will sign or veto it. There’s no default. He will evaluate every single bill.
It’s always better to know on the front end what his thoughts are. It doesn’t mean you have to meet him there. There have been many times where there are compromises and we meet in the middle.
I’m not just blindly defending the governor. It’s sometimes helpful in politics to have someone to blame. But I think you also need to sometimes to go a layer deeper.
For instance, some bills this past legislative session went by the wayside, and the narrative was, “It was the governor. He was going to veto that.” Go a little deeper, you could ask yourself, “Well, why was that bill stuck in committee for two months? Maybe it didn’t have the votes.” So, you can make the governor the bogeyman, but actually, we didn’t have the votes to get it done in the first place.
We shouldn’t be under this impression that if a liberal Democrat that cares about climate change introduces a bill, it has to pass. It’s not as easy as it was five, six years ago, a matter of just stop burning coal. The answers are no longer as obvious. It is nuanced now, and there is genuine debate among people who want to decarbonize about how to do it.
In Part II, Steve Fenberg talks about reining in oil and gas drilling and also regulation of Colorado’s biggest monopoly utility, Xcel Energy.
- Does no in Pueblo really mean no? - May 9, 2025
- It snowed again, but to what effect? - May 6, 2025
- Speaking about Colorado’s just transition… - May 1, 2025
