DENVER — Colorado’s 2012 Legislature may not have achieved greatness. It may not have risen above partisan divide to solve complex problems and unify a state. It may not have addressed the state’s economic malaise or found a way to reliably fund education for the long term.
A bill passed the Colorado Senate Friday that would require hospitals to notify patients at admission if the hospital’s services are limited to those that conform to the hospital’s religious views.
One in five women in the United States has visited a Planned Parenthood clinic to receive health care. And three of seventeen women who are also Colorado state senators showed up to sing karaoke at a bar off the capitol Tuesday night to raise money for the organization’s local political arm, Planned Parenthood Votes Colorado. Denver-area senators Lucia Guzman, Evie Hudak and Linda Newell celebrated accessible women’s reproductive health services from their spots at the bar and from center stage at Hamburger Mary’s, where more than a hundred revelers delivered dramatic renditions of classic hits, tossed back cheap drinks and stuffed pockets with prophylactics.
A bill designed to put a stop to lavish “business” trips taken by government entities, such as Pinnacol Assurance, was laid over Wednesday after Democratic senators proclaimed the bill still too lenient with taxpayer dollars. The bill was laid over in the Senate Judiciary Committee to determine support for an amendment.
The battle over payday loan fees will strain partisan loyalties at the Legislature again this year as new legislation was introduced Friday in the House.
Senators Evie Hudak, D-Westminster, and Linda Newell, D-Denver, voiced their concern today that children’s lives are being destroyed by zero-tolerance policies in Colorado schools. While Senate Judiciary committee members had no tolerance for increasingly heavy handed punishment of student’s playground pranks, some reform advocates testified the bill may serve to shackle reforms already in the works.
DENVER–Surrounded by children on the steps of the Denver Child Advocacy Center, Gov. Bill Ritter signed into law a bill that creates a child welfare watchdog for the state. Senate Bill 171 , sponsored by Sen. Linda Newell, D-Denver, created a youth ombudsman to oversee the state’s embattled child protection system in which 35 children have died in the past few years.
DENVER– On Friday the state Senate passed a compromise version of Rep. Mark Ferrandino’s payday loan bill, which seeks to protect consumers against high interest rates and fees. Lawmakers fearing job-loss forecasts put forward by short-term loan industry softened the strictest limits the original version of the bill would have put in place. Ferrandino is confident the amended bill will pass in the House and head to the governor’s desk for signing this week.
Gov. Bill Ritter doesn’t think it’s a good idea to limit district attorney authority to determine whether to try suspects in juvenile or criminal court. Justice system analysts and Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Colorado, however, say the state’s harsh…
DENVER– A bipartisan team of Colorado lawmakers is seeking to raise the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults in the state. Rep. Clair Levy, D-Boulder, is introducing legislation this week to make 16-year-old suspects the youngest that D.A.s can try as adults. As it stands now, 14- and 15-year olds can be “direct-filed” by D.A.s Levy’s bill would move decisions in those cases out of the hands of prosecutors and into the hands of judges.
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