More From America’s Worst Democratic Governor

One thing I really enjoyed when I was on Pod Save America this weekend was calling out Colorado’s “Democratic” governor Jared Polis for vetoing the repeal to right to work that Democrats in the legislature passed. To me, that’s worth reading him out of the Democratic Party entirely. Just join the Republicans. And here he is again, being terrible.

Last Thursday, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis vetoed the No Pricing Coordination Between Landlords bill (HB25-1004), a measure against price-fixing that would have put more restraints on anti-competitive rent-setting software used by companies like RealPage.

The decision marks yet another consequential veto from Polis and a legislative pattern that’s become all too familiar in Colorado. On the same day as the price-fixing veto, Polis rejected a bipartisan bill that would have protected patients from surprise ambulance bills by private equity–owned health care firms, something that passed both houses of the legislature unanimously, on the grounds that it may raise individual insurance premiums by $2 a month. And earlier in May, he opted to veto a labor-backed bill that would have repealed the state’s de facto right-to-work law.

Given that all three bills were rejected by Polis after Colorado’s General Assembly adjourned its legislative session, they can’t be sent back to legislators for a potential veto override. In the case of the unanimously approved surprise ambulance billing legislation, the two-thirds vote required for an override would be practically guaranteed.

The common thread here is that these bills would have burdened Big Tech, private equity, and large employers in the state. Like many previous vetoes, the decisions mark Polis’s unwavering commitment to maintaining his reputation as a pro-business Democrat, regardless of whether it comes at the expense of renters and working people.

The veto of the rental price-fixing bill in particular deprived tenants of potential relief on a highly salient issue in Colorado and across the country. As the Prospect has documented, RealPage and other firms use pricing algorithms to recommend higher rental rates to landlords and property managers. Often, these recommendations utilize nonpublic information and data about competing rents and vacancies, allowing landlords to create artificial bottlenecks in supply and push higher prices on renters than they would be able to by acting independently. Critics argue that the use of this software constitutes price-fixing, and that landlords who use it are colluding to illegally inflate rental prices.

This is just disgusting. And please, can we not see the kinds of defenses from commenters we used to get for Gavin Newsom’s horrifying vetoes of excellent legislation before he started playing footsie with Trumpers and thus finally did something that LGM commenters found not OK. Being a Democrat has to actually mean something. I don’t know what Jared Polis offers here that should make us think of him as a Democrat.