Ask any Colorado legislator what they hope to accomplish in the upcoming session and they will tell you they want to create jobs, or help businesses create jobs, or remove regulatory impediments to job creation, or improve access to capital.
Christopher Hitchens died yesterday of cancer. He was a learned and caustic cultural critic who wrote for the popular press and who was at his best when eviscerating the hypocrisy and pretense of people in power. He famously hated organized religion. It’s easy to imagine that, had Hitchens ever trained his talents on Colorado politics, he might have reserved his best stuff for the small-town Christian moralizing and persecutorial grandstanding that erupts in regular intervals from certain corners of the state capitol.
Seven years ago the new head of the National Organization for Marriage, John Eastman, testified at a House impeachment hearing in Denver called by then-first-term-Rep. Greg Brophy. The staunch social conservative lawmaker from Wray drew national attention when he targeted Denver Judge John Coughlin as an “activist judge” who took it upon himself to make pro-gay laws from the bench.
After months of intense talks and partisan attempts to rearrange the congressional districts by Republicans and Democrats, the Colorado General Assembly’s redistricting attempt failed to produce a map. The Senate State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee killed an amended Republican map, moving the battle out of the Legislature–at least for now.
The big fight over congressional redistricting entered center ring Thursday afternoon as Sen. Rollie Heath introduced SB 268 as the Democratic starting point for the state’s new congressional district lines. The map mirrors a version first presented in the failed Joint Select Committee on Redistricting, which he co-chaired.
Republicans lined up to testify Wednesay in the Senate State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee on a declaration the Senate would never officially declare. SR 11-04 called for the Senate to put its foot down and state for the record that it would not raise taxes during the legislative session. Democrats all voted no and the bill died.
Republicans countered Democratic desires for drawing competitive districts Wednesday by refusing to use party registration as a factor in the Joint Select Committee on Redistricting’s effort to draw Congressional lines. The move led to another stalemate between the parties, leaving no map drawn and an ever increasing chance that Colorado courts will again draw the Congressional districts.
Tuesday, the Colorado General Assembly’s Joint Select Committee on Redistricting agreed that partisan emotions ran too high at Friday’s sharing of maps, but there appeared to be little common ground on at least one major Democratic starting point–competitiveness. Republicans rejected that as a compelling factor and called for a blank map created without looking at political balance. Democrats said that voters were calling for competition in a state where many districts have solid Republican numbers.
A bill that would have allowed anyone able to purchase a handgun in Colorado to conceal the weapon was shot down in the State and Military Affairs Committee today.
A handful of Democrats stood behind Sen. Rollie Heath, D-Boulder, as he announced today a citizens’ initiative to roll back tax rates in hopes of generating $1.63 billion over three years for higher education and K-12 education.
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