Packing up, and heading home

With only a few days since we ended the session, I’m still in the process of packing my belongings and heading home for the interim. It’s been a good session, but I’m ready to be back in southwest Colorado for more than the 36-hour weekend trips that I can make during the session.

I’m pleased with the results from the past session as all of my bills made it through the legislative process. Given the number of times a bill can be killed or amended beyond recognition, this is a very good thing. For me, the key to having a successful session is working with the legislators from both sides of the aisle and carrying legislation that is more oriented to my district than to politics.

I’m especially pleased that Coloradans will have the chance this fall to vote on whether to change the way we amend our state Constitution. I’m proud of the bipartisan group of legislators who showed real leadership on this issue by passing a politically tricky resolution to refer the matter to the voters. It was a tense few days as we approached the end of the session and the fate of the resolution was unknown. But, all’s well that ends well and that’s the case here.

The agricultural community’s lobbyists, especially from Farm Bureau and the Dairy Farmers, were very helpful in working hard to garner the necessary support among the legislators. The geographic distribution component was a unifying rallying cry for those from the rural areas and, with some compromise, we prevailed in the end.

There’s a lot of work ahead to develop the very grassroots campaign on behalf of the referred measure on constitutional amendment reform. But, we start with an impressive list of supporting organizations from across the state and we’ll be working through the next six months to add to that list.

Once home, I’ll begin to work with others on the setting up of the legislative youth council for next year. Each Senator gets to appoint one youth from his or her district and we have the five at large seats available, especially to include rural youths, so I’m hoping we may get two youths from southwest Colorado on the council. I was able to get the bill passed with the funding for mileage to council meetings, so it was a good legislative year for recognizing the value of the views of all ages in rural Colorado.

In addition to the usual constituent work and meetings around the district during the interim, I’ll be on the campaign trail as it’s already time to run for re-election. Being elected for two years at a time means not having much of a break from campaigns, but that’s part of the job, too, and is a good way to hear the views of my constituents.

I also have a number of interim meetings to attend including the criminal justice reform commission, possibly another committee on wildfire threats in Colorado, being a board member of the Colorado hospice and palliative care organization and being an appointee to the governor’s task force on issues related to nurses. The legislature also passed the resolution supporting our ability to get broadcast television from Denver, so there’s another project for me to work on with our congressional delegation so that we all at least have the choice of getting Denver broadcasts in our area.

I’ll be going back to the monthly column instead of weekly now that the session is over. Thanks for the interest and feedback that many of you have given to me over the past several months as we handled over 700 bills and I look forward to seeing you in the district this summer and fall. Denver and Colorado’s beautiful Capitol building are great places to visit, but there’s no place like southwest Colorado. Now, it’s back to packing up and heading home.

With no more than three days to go, we’re heading down the home stretch. It’ll take at least a month or so to digest and analyze what we really did this session, because many bills have come through in the past month. Even if a bill passes out of the legislature, we don’t really know its fate until the governor has decided to sign a bill, allow it to go into law without his signature, or veto it.

I look forward to coming home and presenting to the many groups in my house district who are interested in a legislative update, but it’s most informative if we do that after we know what actually became law.

This past week, the last of the bills I sponsored made it through the legislative process in good shape, with only a couple remaining to be signed by the governor. The governor’s office has indicated a willingness to have an official signing ceremony for the youth advisory council bill and I’m hoping some of the youths from Southwest Colorado who worked on the bill will be able to join us for that.

Even without my having had a chance to take a deep breath to fully realize what the passage of the youth council bill means, I hope the young people from our area are excited as I aim to see their thoughts of what’ll be a valuable resource to the legislature as soon as next year come to fruition. From last fall’s meetings where we brainstormed about how the youth council could help inform and shape Colorado state policy on issues affecting youths to the drafting and testifying stages of the bill, we’re at the point where the ideas turn to reality.

I’m now working on the logistical part of the council being set up which includes drafting a budget for those items not covered by the bill such as a part-time staffer to arrange the council, its meetings and the necessary communications piece. Then it’ll be time to turn to interested donors and organizations to help raise those funds to make this council as effective as it can be for the legislature and the youths participating on it. The work never ends, but thanks to the bill passing, it’s work that I’m thrilled to have before us.

Other updates include telling you that Senate Bill 217, the innovative effort to get more of Colorado’s uninsured covered by health insurance using the private insurance market, made its way through the House and now will go to conference committee to see if the prime sponsors of the bill can agree or compromise on all of the amendments that were added during the process. I played an active role in the bill’s progress and look forward to explaining it and answering constituents’ questions about what its purpose and possible goals are. With this bill and many of the other healthcare bills that came up this session, I feel that we made real headway on some of the bigger challenges facing healthcare reform on the state level.

Finally, we were in the middle of quite heated debate on the proposed resolution addressing Colorado’s ballot initiative reform, including the geographic distribution part of the proposal, when we ran out of time on Friday. So, further debate was postponed until Monday. I’ve told you before about the various forces at play on this bill and I’m hopeful that in my next column, I’ll be able to tell you that there’s a good proposal that you’ll be seeing on the ballot in November. If it’s not on the ballot because the legislature kills the proposal, or if it’s not a good proposal because of amendments to it, I’ll tell you that too, and be assured that those of us who are working hard for an improved initiative process will not give up that fight in the future.

When amendments collide, and infrastructure crumbles

The only place to start my column this week is with the soon-to-be-introduced proposal for constitutional change by Speaker Romanoff.

Because the ink on it isn’t dry, I can’t point you to the exact wording of the proposal, but I can share with you a summary of its main provisions. And, before anyone feels a hyperventilation attack coming on, remember that this proposal must go to the voters for approval. It can’t happen without a vote of the people.

What follows may make your eyes glaze over, but for those with particular concerns, it’s worth trying to frame this and then I’ll get to the politics of it.

The bare bones of the proposal are that Amendment 23 and TABOR would change, with Amendment 23 no longer being the funding mechanism for K-12.

The essence of TABOR would stay in place as voters would still approve all tax increases, but any TABOR refunds would go to a savings account held in the state education fund. It’s important to remember that we’ve not gotten a TABOR refund since 2001 and, under current economic projections, we won’t for years to come.

The proposal keeps the 6 percent annual spending limit on the Legislature. The savings account in the state education fund would be funded with one fourth of the current fund diversion, and spending from the savings account is only allowed with a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. No general fund money would be moved to the state education fund until an account for highway money is fully funded.

Now, to the politics of the proposal. This proposal indeed gores everyone’s ox to some extent. At the same time, it’s a reasonable solution to an extremely complicated problem, which is: How do we run the State of Colorado in an economically sound way while our infrastructure crumbles?

Even without being introduced, the political yelling and whispering has begun, from all directions. This is a good thing. What has been lacking at the Capitol, but not lacking from those in the trenches across the state, is this very conversation.

We citizens have put fiscal policies in our state’s Constitution that can’t live together. TABOR and Amendment 23, the sacred cows of two very different political groups, can’t be reconciled on a long-term, sustainable basis. I voted for both, so I’m as much to blame as anyone. But, because of the way these constitutional provisions collide mandating tax reductions and spending at the same time, we are bankrupting our state at an already perilous economic time.

This proposal doesn’t raise taxes, but some will say that taking away the possibility of TABOR refunds is a tax increase. This proposal doesn’t defund K-12 education by taking Amendment 23 out of the Constitution, but it changes how education is funded. The proposal is simple and complex at the same time. So the word wars and headlines will amplify individual viewpoints and yet not tell you the whole story.

I’m not the only Republican supporting the proposal. I’m not the only Republican legislator who knows this conversation is critical to our state. While Speaker Romanoff is a Democrat, he doesn’t enjoy full support from his side of the aisle, either. What comes into play is the power of politics over policy. This is a campaign year. People who run campaigns love controversy for the other side, but not for their candidate.

There is never a good time for significant change. Even when we know something isn’t working well at all, it can be more comfortable to stay stuck in trouble than to move forward. This proposal deserves to see the light of day and to be talked about, debated, and understood. Perhaps it isn’t the right proposal and we need a different approach. But, if we don’t bring it out into the open, we’ll never know.

I vowed to myself that my personal mantra would be good policy over politics. By supporting the proposal and asking the Legislature to send it to the people for their consideration, I’m honoring that commitment.