Capitol Update for Feb 13

A few highlights of the week...

My $25 million tax cut bill PASSES out of committee (SB 37)
My bill cutting taxes on Colorado businesses (and by extension, Colorado consumers) won initial passage on Monday. Because of a bill-saving amendment I ran, it cuts about $20-25 million worth of taxes (that’s down from the mid 30’s as originally projected). See the Rocky Mountain News article for a pretty good description here.

School Transparency Win (SB 57)
The other big taxpayer win of the week requires school district financial transparency. SB 57 by Sens Harvey, Kopp, et al and Rep. Stephens, requires school districts to post their income and expenses on line in a searchable format.

After a lengthy floor fight on Friday the 13th, we finally fixed the bill after education committee members had gutted it to turn it in to little more than a request the state was making.

I ran an amendment that provided school district’s an extra year to comply, which takes the financial cost argument off the table. This will give them time to set new policies and procedures relating to how their financial data is recorded (i.e. they will need to begin eliminating things like codes and acronyms that the public wouldn't understand. In other words, districts can plan for phasing in compliance over the course of the next 18 months. I assume they will be able to fully absorb the costs of simply posting on their websites a monthly balance sheet in every day English, by making use of the extra time this amendment gives them.).

See the Rocky Mountain News Editorial here and the Colorado Senate News article here.

Convert State Vehicle Fleet to Natural Gas (SB 92)
My senate bill 92, converting the state vehicle fleet to compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles passed the full senate on second reading on Friday the 13th. It will require the state - to the extent it makes fiscal sense - to begin converting new fleet vehicles to run on safe, clean CNG.

Three major considerations:

1) Natural gas is cheap and abundant right here in Colorado. This move should save our state fleet managers money over the long haul. Studies also show that Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) vehicles last longer, providing another built in financial incentive.

2) Using CNG vehicles allows us to use a fuel source that is not subject to the whims of Hugo Chavez and other hostile dictators. As such, it allows us to take a tangible step toward energy independence. Indeed, most of our energy dependency is owing to the fact that we have a high importation rate of crude oil to fuel our nation's transportation activities.

3) There are real clean air benefits to using CNG. Natural gas-powered vehicles emit fewer pollutants. It’s so clean, in fact, that the EPA provided a grant to a Texas school district so they could purchase CNG school buses in a “non-attainment” area (that is, an area where the air quality is poor).

For more on this bill, see ColoradoSenateNews here.

Illegal Immigrant In-State Tuition (SB 170)
As you can imagine, there is a big fight brewing on this bill -- and there should be. You will know from my past legislative actions that I will fight the bill, as will the entire GOP caucus. I’ll keep you up to date as it moves through the process.

US Senate Vacancy Elections (SB 152)
My push to reform our US Senate vacancy procedures failed on a party line vote Wednesday night.

I argued for passage using Federalist Papers 62, 63, 64. Here, the framers made their case for why the senate was structured the way it was. Principally, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, were keenly aware that a key feature of the senate was that it build a stability factor into the federal government. This was accomplished in part by electing older legislators. And senators were also given longer, staggered terms for this reason.

And critically, the founders wanted the senate to be filled by members who had been recognized by the “collective capacity” of the people of the various states. They didn't envision an appointed class of leaders. The people, after all, elected legislators who in turn used their best judgment to elect senators -- who, in their collective judgment, could be trusted with the nation’s most important business, such as providing advice and consent on treaties, for example.

History and common sense demonstrates that the stability factor in the body is reduced when appointed senators, who do not have the stature of having being vetted by their state’s voters, serve in office. For one thing, odds are against appointed senators wining their election if/when they do go before the voters. Probably this can be attrituted to the fact that in those cases people feel that they were left out of a very important decision in the first place. This situation in essence creates a sort of revolving door -- albeit a limited one -- in the senate.

Revolving doors on senate seats would have been anathema to the founders for it chips away at the overall stability of the body – and this was truly one of the central concerns the framers outlined in the Federalist Papers regarding their rationale for the way they created the senate.

Since the 17th amendment to the constitution passed (1913) however, vacancies are filled in Colorado through appointment by a single person -- not the collective judgment of a legislature or that of the populace.

Consider this: the Governor of Colorado cannot even appoint a member of a college board without going through the senate for confirmation. My bill would have required a special election to be held -- same as we do with Congressional vacancies.

Since the 17th amendment was ratified and we began electing senators through a popular vote of the people, there is no good reason to treat senate vacancies differently than house vacancies whose members are also popularly elected.

Indeed, one person appointments risk nepotism and cronyism, as seen from both parties in recent years. And now, four of the members of world’s most powerful deliberative body have gotten there in the last few weeks through one-person appointments.

But, for all my hot air, the bill still lost! Two of those voting NO agreed with the policy change, they said, but thought it would turn into a critique of Governor Ritter’s appointment of [a talented, but collectively unjudged] Michael Bennet.

So they punted on a big – not in terms of frequency, but in terms of impact -- policy problem that needs fixing. Read about it on Coloradosenatenews here.