Kathleen Collins Becker is an American politician serving as the 39th and current Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she has represented the state's 13th district since 2013. Becker was elected to the BoulderCity Council in 2009. When Claire Levy resigned from the Colorado House of Representatives in 2013, a vacancy committee selected Becker to replace her. Becker acknowledged that she had planned to run for the seat in the 2014 elections, when Levy would have been unable to run due to term limits. She was sworn in on November 4, 2013.
Prior to her legislative service, she served on the Boulder City Council, where she was the council’s representative on the Boulder Urban Renewal Authority and was the city’s representative to the Denver Regional Council of Governments. Becker was elected to the Boulder City Council in 2009. She was one of 13 candidates running for five available seats.
State legislature
During the 2014 midterm election, Becker defeated Republican candidate Michael James Hocevar with 67.7 percent of the vote. Becker ran unopposed during the 2016 election cycle. Given Becker's time working for the Department of the Interior as an environmental lawyer, Becker has been a key voice on water and agricultural issues in the legislature. During the 2015 and 2016 legislative sessions, Becker served as the Vice Chair of the Agriculture Committee. In addition to environmental legislation, Rep. Becker has focused her legislative efforts on affordable housing, women’s health care, and governmental accountability for special interest tax breaks. In 2017, Becker worked with State Rep. Jon Becker, State Senator Jerry Sonnenberg, and State Senate Minority LeaderLucia Guzman on the signature legislation of the session, a measure to stave off hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts to hospitals across the state. By exempting an obscure account called the hospital provider fee from the Referendum C cap on state revenue, the new law helps beleaguered hospitals, especially in rural areas, and allows Colorado to invest nearly $2 billion to repair and expand its crumbling, overburdened road network. Additional benefits will flow to rural K-12 students, small businesses and Colorado’s seniors. Becker and Sonnenberg spent nearly the entire legislative session negotiating the landmark compromise. As news of sexually harassing behavior of Rep. Steve Lebsock went public, Majority Leader Becker introduced a resolution to expel him from the Colorado House of Representatives. Controversy erupted when Rep. Becker potentially violated sunshine laws by preventing the media from accessing information related to the report. Rep. Becker kicked the press out of the room when they attempted to see the report.
