“I congratulate President Obama and the fine men and women of our armed forces on their successful mission against Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.  Americans and free people around the world are safer today because of their actions,” Sen. President Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, said. “As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, ‘The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.’ We must continue to be vigilant as we fight for peace around the world and yesterday marked a significant victory in the War on Terror.”

Bin Laden was reportedly killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan during a short firefight with a force of U.S. Navy Seals assigned to the operation. The leader of al Qaeda was then buried at sea due to concerns that U.S. officials would be unable to find a country to accept bin Laden’s body within an Islamic 24-hour burial requirement . The sea burial also stops bin Laden’s burial site from becoming a rallying point for terrorists.

Mayor John Hickelooper also praised those responsible for “bringing one of the nation’s greatest enemies” to justice and said he felt a sense of relief at bin Laden’s death.

“The death of Osama bin Laden gives our nation another reason to remember and honor the thousands of Americans who were killed on 9/11. We owe a debt of gratitude to our military and counterterrorism professionals for bringing to justice one of our nation’s greatest enemies. It’s hard not to feel a sense of relief and hope that we have turned an important corner in the struggle against terrorism.”

House Minority Leader Sal Pace, D-Pueblo, issued a statement which not only congratulated those involved in the operation targeting bin Laden, but pointed to those serving in the National Guard and to former Rep. Col. Joe Rice, who is currently serving in Iraq.

“I’d like to express my gratitude to the men and women in uniform who brought the hunt for Osama bin Laden to its conclusion last night.

“The Colorado National Guard has been on the front line in the war on terror.  Their families have made immense sacrifices over the past ten years.  To those families, last night’s news is a confirmation that their sacrifices have made a difference,” Pace said.

“May we keep the victims of the 9/11 attacks forever in our hearts and minds, and pray every day for the safe return of all of our men and women serving our country overseas.

“The House Democratic caucus would also like to extend our gratitude toward our former colleague Colonel Joe Rice, who is currently serving his fifth tour of Iraq in the U.S. Army Reserves.  Joe, we miss you and eagerly await your safe return.  Thank you for your service.”

“The extreme, untrue and dangerous rhetoric that Jane Norton uses to exploit the memory of those we lost on 9-11 is shocking,” said Rice and Jason Crow, a former U.S. Army Ranger captain, in the petition. “We have zero tolerance for her attempt to raise money and to scare voters into supporting her candidacy. We believe that the events of that day are to be met with solemn reverence; Jane Norton seems to believe they are to be met with a campaign contribution.”

Norton told conservative talk radio hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman that “We have to never forget the nature of the threat against us.” She said the ad is called “Forgotten.”

“We need to remember that we are fighting a war on terror and it seems like the president is more concerned with political correctness than with defeating the radical jihadists.”

Weld County D.A. Ken Buck who is running against Norton in the Republican primary and who also appeared on the show, said he had yet to view the ad.

Buck spokesperson Owen Loftus told the Colorado Independent that Buck didn’t have any response to the ad but he said, as the father of a West Point cadet, Buck was deeply concerned about terrorist action against the United States.

The ad has made waves in the political media-scape for being partly a throwback to the immediate post-9-11 political focus on terrorism. Indeed the argument presented in the ad is that, despite the long list of domestic problems plaguing the country and U.S. wars on two continents, the country’s leaders should again ramp up the War on Terror.

“The liberals in Washington seem to have forgotten” says Norton, then the screen goes dark to the sound of airliners flying.

Sen. John Kerry responded to the ad by evoking the “swiftboat” ad campaign that targeted him, a Vietnam war veteran, very successfully as a military phony and weak on defense.

“Like other desperate politicians who’ve deployed the tactics of fear and smear, she has sunk to invoking images of our heroic service members to launch a thinly veiled attack on Michael Bennet and President Obama.”

Pat Waak, Colorado Democratic Party chair, also expressed outrage. She told the Colorado Independent that Norton should take down the ad.

“Jane Norton’s has shown a shocking level of disrespect for of our men and women in uniform and the families that lost so much during the attacks of September 11th. She needs to immediately take down her website and return any money she raised off the memory of our fallen heroes.”

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Mark Ferrandino

Ferrandino said the point of his bill was to end the ever-deepening financial hole customers fall into and can’t get out, a debt trap the business depends upon. One loan begets another which begets another, he said. “When we talk about repeat customers here, we’re talking about a cycle of debt.”

The vote today mirrored votes in Washington this year in that the bill’s future hinged on swing Democrats. Republicans had lined up against the bill in lockstep. The bill’s success turned on the votes cast by fence-sitting Democrats like Debbie Bennefield, Sue Schafer, Ed Casso, Claire Levy, Joe Rice, Jeanne Labuda and Jim Riesberg. *

Comparing payday lending to alcohol, Republican Bob Gardner told the assembly that regulation wasn’t the answer. “Lets teach people how to use it but lets not regulate it out of town,” he said, without elaborating on how the state would provide such instruction.

Ferrandino and a coalition of consumer protection groups reworked the bill last week, raising the upper limit interest rates the law would allow payday stores to charge. In its current form, the bill would allow lenders to charge $10 per every $100 it lends for first loans and 45 percent of the loan amounts after that. Lenders say that interest rates sound high but that’s because they’re being compared to long-term loan rates. Payday loans are meant to be paid back in days and weeks not months and years. They say Ferrandino’s bill would throw 1,600 employees out of work and take away access to credit.

The bill’s supporters say the industry functions on escalating debt that prevents people from gaining access to less expensive forms of credit.

“Are there people who got into bad cycles of debt? Yes. But that’s their own choice,” said Brian Del Grosso, R-Loveland.

Rep. Steve King, R-Grand Junction, said that constituents have called him to plead for continued access to payday loans. “Don’t take this chance away from me. This is a way to solve my problems.” He said one of his constituents dropped a slogan in favor of the payday industry: “Don’t abuse; I use it!”

Rep. Joe Rice, D-Littleton, who has stood against the legislation from the beginning, asked for an amendment to send the bill back to the House Buisness and Labor affairs. Ferrandino told lawmakers that the Rice amendment was a ploy to kill the bill because the Business and Labor committee had lined up the votes to kill the bill. Ferrandino urged a no vote and the amendment died on the floor.

“What are we coming to when profits are seen as bad?” Rep. Larry Liston, R-Colorado Springs, said.

Ferrandino said he was pleased the bill made it out of the House alive.

Reps Ed Casso and Claire Levy voted in favor of the bill. Debbie Bennefield, Sue Schafer, Joe Rice, Jeanne Labuda and Jim Riesberg voted against the bill. The bill passed 32-31.

–
NOTE: An editing error lumped Rep. Jim Reisberg in with the fence-sitters on the bill. He opposed it from the beginning.

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“We are working the bill hard,” Ferrandino told the Colorado Independent. “And, as you know, the other side is definitely working it hard, too.”

Ferrandino laid the bill over after heated debate erupted around it on the floor of the House last Thursday, leading him to believe the bill might fail to pass.

In its current state, HB 1021 would strip payday lenders of special exceptions to state usury laws. Those exceptions allow Colorado payday lenders to charge between 300 percent and 500 percent interest on their short-term loans. Borrowers who fall behind on payments quickly see fines and rates escalate and descend into a debt spiral and often bankruptcy.

The debate in the House Thursday turned on whether a 19-day payday loan of up to $500, now available at an average 340 percent interest rate, should be restricted to 36 percent interest rate, the rate cap that guides all other lending institutions in the state.

Payday industry representatives have argued that the proposed rate cap would put 1,600 pay day workers on the unemployment rolls and end access to short-term credit for Coloradans who don’t qualify for bank or credit union loans.

Many lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, dismissed those arguments as overblown. Ferrandino said they were paltry justifications for “predatory practices” that trap a distressed population in debt. The short-term credit offered at payday stores, he said, was cheese for a trap that produces windfall profits on the backs of people often struggling to make it day to day.

Ferrandino is ready to tweak the bill, though, to ensure its passage.

“We are trying to look at possible alternatives and trying to see what people might be willing to support,” Ferrandino said. “So we are just going to spend our time talking to members to figure out what the strategy is.”

Ferrandino said that the group he has been working with on the legislation from the beginning– a group that includes the Colorado Progress Coalition and the Colorado Latino Forum– was looking at options that included considering promoting data base systems to better track laws that prevent borrowers from rolling over payday loans and amendments that would considerably weaken proposed rate regulations.

“At the end of the day, I want a bill that is going to protect consumers from getting stuck in this cycle of debt. If we can get something that does that, then we will move forward with the bill,” Ferrandino said.

Corrine Fowler, economic justice director for the Colorado Progressive Coalition, was more specific.

“The coalition has discussed a compromise. But we have yet to come to consensus about the amendments that we would be willing to support. I will say that a reasonable cap on the [annual percentage interest rate] is the bottom line. Without that, we will no longer support [the legislation],”

Ferrandino said he didn’t want to see a replay of what happened to a similar bill he introduced in the past. He said that bill was “hijacked in the Senate.”

“That bill ended up being better for the industry than even current law is.”

If that happens again, he said, he would withdraw his own support for the bill.

Fowler told the Colorado Independent that the coalition was actively working to bring around lawmakers who remained on the fence, including Kathleen Curry, I-Gunnison, Sue Schafer, D-Wheat Ridge, and Nancy Todd, D-Aurora.

Ferrandino added that they would also like to see Democrats who actively spoke out against the bill to reexamine it. He mentioned Joe Rice, Littleton, Debbie Benefield, Aravada, and Jim Riesberg of Greeley.

Rice told the Colorado Independent that he was concerned that the bill would force the payday industry to fold here and shunt payday customers onto the even less regulated internet.

Ferrandino said that in Colorado internet lending was not legal and that past lawsuits have directly countered attempts to lend on the internet.

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At last it seems we are seeing true leadership from the Republican side of the aisle. Except that these bills were sponsored by Democrats.

House Bill 1001, the Income Tax Credit For Colorado’s Job Growth, was sponsored by Littleton Rep. Joe Rice and Boulder Sen. Rollie Heath. The bill provides the incentives to companies that move to Colorado and create at least 20 new jobs. Employers will pay half federal social security and Medicare taxes for up to ten years.

House Bill 1035, the Clean Technology/Medical Device Tax Refund, was sponsored by Greeley Democrat Jim Riesberg and again Boulder’s Sen. Heath. The law will allow technology companies of 50 or fewer employees to receive refunds of state sales and use taxes on research and development for clean technology and medical devices.

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Rice released a written statement via the Colorado House Majority Communications Office:

“While being away from home for six months will not be easy on me or my family, I am able to stay in touch with constituents and work on policy issues during my off-duty hours. Although I will be gone for a few months from my district, I will still stay in touch with my home community. I have an amazing group of volunteers that will be helping me stay informed and to prepare for the next legislative session that begins in January 2010.

“I’ll spend next week at Fort Benning, Georgia, for overseas processing and I will then head to Baghdad where I will be working with the Iraqi Army and Police units to aid in the transition to the Iraqi Security Forces. I was there at the beginning, a couple times since, and I feel that somehow this is my “farewell” tour.

“There is a saying in the Reserve and Guard that goes like this… ‘When we were needed, we were there. It wasn’t always easy, it wasn’t always fair. But when the call went out, we answered; we were there.’”

Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, made one last-ditch attempt to water down the new Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission regs, which give more weight to public safety, wildlife, water- and air-quality issues in the formerly frenetic natural gas boom in Weld County and on the state’s Western Slope.

The GOP rallying cry that the new regs – in the works and intensely negotiated since 2007 – are a major job-killing mistake that will send industry off to much friendlier states rang hollow with the Democratic-controlled state Legislature, which is not surprising.

Industry observers and lawmakers like Rep. Joe Rice, D-Littleton, saw right through the economic argument that the pending regs were costing jobs, mainly because the industry is scaling back around the nation in lockstep with plummeting energy prices in the wake of the global economic downturn.

But with even some moderate Republicans like Sen. Al White, R-Hayden, jumping on the jobs bandwagon, it’s clear the state GOP leadership will revisit this theme again and again leading into the 2010 election.

Most industry observers agree that the degree to which the economic argument will resonate with voters in the battle for control of the governor’s office and the state Senate will depend largely on the success of Gov. Bill Ritter’s “New Energy Economy” and the overall state of financial affairs a year from now.

Introduced by Dan Gibbs (D-Silverthorne) in the Senate and Rep. Joe Rice (D-Littleton) in the House, FASTER raises vehicle registration fees for most cars and trucks by $32 the first year, up to $41 after three years. It will raise more than $250 million a year to repair roads and fix the state’s 126 structurally deficient bridges.

Much like the debate in the Senate, Republicans once again tried to throw up a roadblock to keep FASTER from becoming a reality, claiming it’s another financial hardship in tough economic times. But Democrats countered it’s the first new funding for road and bridge repairs in 17 years. The last time was when the state’s gas tax was increased.

“Nobody disagrees that there’s a problem safety-wise, nobody disagrees that we want to try and save private sector construction jobs, the question is what do you do about it, and of course it’s a natural reaction, everybody first wants to do something that’s not painful and doesn’t require new fees,” Rice said.

Every House Republican and four Democrats, including Majority Leader Paul Weissmann (D-Louisville), voted against FASTER. Rice said that because TABOR won’t allow the state Legislature to increase taxes to fund transportation, a fee hike was the only recourse.

“We’re in this boat because the gas tax has been declining for 17 years,” Rice said. “People are paying less than they did the year before, and most people understand the only real way to fix it is we have to bring in some new money to transportation. And frankly the cost of doing nothing is more expensive. It may be more indirect, but it’s more expensive.”

There was more debate about a provision that would allow local jurisdictions to impose tolls on existing roads, but ultimately it stayed in because Democrats argued it gave one more potential tool to local governments.

(Photo/picture taking fool, Flickr)

In an interview with the Colorado Independent on Tuesday, Rice, chair of the House Business Affairs & Labor Committee, said critics of the new rules, adopted by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC) in December, have yet to provide any specifics about what’s wrong with the regulations.

Now subject to approval by the state Legislature — although no timetable has been established — the new COGCC rules would go into effect this spring, providing greater protection for wildlife, air and water quality and overall public health.

But some industry advocates, including several Republican lawmakers, have charged that the rules have already hurt the state’s previously booming energy sector.

“Overall, I’m willing to listen, but they have not shown any evidence that any of these rules are causing any of the problems. When gas goes from $50 a cubic foot down to $5, that’s the problem,” Rice said, pointing to the flagging economy.

“Again, we want companies to be able to stay here, we want to make it as easy as possible, so tell me what the specific problem is.”

Rice points out that many industry representatives were at the table during the drafting process over the past year and a half and in fact voted for the new rules. He also said that the oil and gas industry all along said it wanted financial predictability, so delaying the rules now seems counterintuitive.

“The biggest thing that most people want in business is predictability. Frankly, that’s what we all want in all aspects of our life. What causes stress is unpredictability,” Rice said.

“The reason, quite frankly, that they want to delay the rules is they just want to keep the issue alive in the media, and again I keep saying, ‘Tell me what your specific issues are and maybe we can just address those.’”

A Senate committee late last month defeated an attempt by Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, to delay the new regs by a year.

“I’m just really angry the majority party won’t take this issue seriously,” Brophy said, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “I expected the adults in the majority party to realize our economy is tanking, and these new rules make it worse.”

But Rice, echoing Department of Natural Resources officials, said the new regs will actually reduce the amount of time needed to obtain a drilling permit and give the industry very specific guidelines to work from.

“I’m certainly willing to listen, but show me exactly what you want to have changed and then we can assess the ramifications of it, the pros and cons,” Rice said.

“I might agree with you and I might not, but right now, when (it’s) just about ‘we don’t like regulation,’ that doesn’t give me anything to bite onto.”

Without providing specifics, Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, told the Wall Street Journal that the new rules, on top of the current economic situation, will accelerate another energy bust on Colorado’s Western Slope.

“These rules have made a grim situation almost intolerable for these companies,” Penry told the Journal. “This is killing jobs.”

Senate Bill 151 failed by a two-vote margin after a long and emotional debate on Thursday. It was the third year that such a proposal has failed in the legislature. Wearing a seat belt is already state law, but law enforcement can currently only cite people for not being strapped in if they pull them over for something else. Twenty-five other states, plus Washington, D.C. currently have a primary offense seat belt law, but opponents argue that such laws result in an increase in profile stops, where people of color are pulled over merely for driving while black or brown.

In addition, opponents have argued – in Colorado and around the country -  that such laws are difficult, if not impossible, to enforce, particularly at night or for people who are in cars with tinted windows. Several lawmakers have termed the proposal as government “nannyism.”

But proponents, including the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Peter Groff and Rep. Joe Rice, maintained that the law would save lives and save money. When the bill was being debated in the Senate State, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee in mid-February, Sen. Chris Romer termed it a sort of “stupidity tax” on people who don’t wear their seatbelts.

Among the statistics to emerge during the debate:

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