Speaker McCluskie has served as a State Representative since 2018 and was re-elected in 2022 and 2024 to represent House District 13, which includes Chaffee, Grand, Jackson, Lake, Park, and Summit counties. She is the first woman Speaker elected from the Western Slope.
Over her seven years as a State Representative, McCluskie has served on the Rural Affairs and Agriculture, Education, Appropriations, Wildfire Matters, Early Childhood and School Readiness Commission, and Water Resources and Agricultural Review committees, and as Chair of the Legislative Interim Committee on School Finance. Most notably, she was honored to receive an appointment to the prestigious six-person Joint Budget Committee (JBC) in January, 2020 and was appointed Chair of the JBC in November, 2021. Over Speaker McCluskie’s time as Chair of the JBC, she carried the state’s budget, making record investments in public schools, higher education, and health care. Currently, McCluskie serves as Speaker of the House of Representatives, providing leadership and guiding legislative priorities for the Democratic Caucus.
Speaker McCluskie is a strong advocate for saving people money and protecting our mountain way of life. In 2021, she brought $48 million to affordable housing grants, nearly $200 million more to public schools, colleges, and universities, and over $100 million to wildfire mitigation and suppression. Over her time in the legislature, Speaker McCluskie also led multiple legislative efforts on student success and workforce revitalization, which invested more than $90 million in regional talent collaboration between businesses, labor, and higher education organizations; as well as helping Coloradans access over $40 million of zero-cost credentials to boost our workforce in the state’s most critical industries.
In 2023 and 2024, McCluskie also focused on rising costs and property insurance loss in the state due to increased wildfire threats. She created the first-ever FAIR Plan, which forms an unincorporated public entity to provide property insurance coverage to those who cannot get it from the private insurance market. Additionally, she carried legislation in 2024 which created a study of the Colorado property and casualty insurance markets for HOAs, timeshares, and condo hotels. The study will inform future programs and legislation to address insurance availability and the rising cost of insurance. During the 2025 Legislative Session, McCluskie continued in her work to address the rising cost of homeowners insurance caused by threats from hail and wildfire by examining the potential of creating new enterprises that could lower premiums and bring stability to the insurance market.
Speaker McCluskie is also one of the strongest champions for education in the legislature. During the 2024 legislative session, she passed the first significant rewrite of the Colorado School Finance Act in 30 years, making it more equitable, increasing funding for every student in the state, and ensuring every student has the resources they need to succeed. Despite a $1.2B shortfall in the state’s budget, McCluskie successfully implemented year one of the new school finance formula in 2025, and increased funding for public schools by $256 million. With Speaker McCluskie’s leadership, since the Democrats were elected into the majority of the General Assembly in 2019, total funding for schools has increased by over $3 billion.
In 2022, Speaker McCluskie helped increase accessibility to schooling by changing the rules around who receives in-state tuition – making it easier for Colorado high school residents and youth to attend college, regardless of their documentation status. In 2024, she built upon this by creating a more transparent, enforceable, and standardized system for schools to follow so that college students can obtain credits, transfer schools more easily, and graduate on time. Additionally, she carried out the Proposition EE ballot measure, which provided new funding for rural schools and the state education fund and ultimately funded universal preschool for 4-year-olds statewide.
Additionally, given the importance of water on the Western Slope and throughout the entire state, Speaker McCluskie has focused on protecting this essential resource, which is the very essence of the Colorado spirit. In 2023, she established the Colorado River Drought Task Force, which led to legislation passed in 2024 to address the worsening drought conditions on the Colorado River. Additionally, McCluskie created a permitting program within the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for dredge and fill activities impacting state waters following the 2023 Sackett v. EPA Supreme Court ruling – restoring protections & ensuring clean water for generations. In 2025, Speaker McCluskie expanded upon these efforts by improving snowpack measurement and water supply forecasting and generating millions of dollars of additional funding for water conservation projects through sports betting revenue.
Beyond her emphasis on sustainable water management, Speaker McCluskie has also been a champion for public lands. In 2025, she consponsored a bipartisan Joint Resolution affirming the legislature’s support for protecting public lands and ensuring they remain in public hands. When Colorado’s public lands came under threat from a federally proposed public lands sell-off, Speaker McCluskie successfully took action to communicate to Colorado’s Congressional Delegation that Coloradans on both sides of the aisle opposed the proposed sell-off, ultimately resulting in the removal of the proposal from consideration. She continues to prioritize protecting Colorado’s resources and public lands to ensure they remain accessible for decades to come.
Prior to serving in the State House, Speaker McCluskie spent more than a dozen years working in Summit School District, providing exceptional district leadership in strategic communications, community engagement, and student behavioral/mental health initiatives. During the Hickenlooper administration, she spent several years at the state Capitol as the Director of Communications for former Lt. Gov. Joseph Garcia. Speaker McCluskie also worked in resort and hospitality management, holding leadership roles in Xanterra Parks and Resorts in Denver and Doubletree Hotels in Colorado Springs and Vail.
Born and raised in Colorado and a graduate of Colorado State University, Speaker McCluskie and her husband Jamie have spent most of their married years in the Rocky Mountains. They are proud parents of two children, Ian and Cait, and enjoy spending family time in Colorado’s great outdoors.
