Tag: Mark Ferrandino

Denver Democratic Rep. Mark Ferrandino this morning told radio host David Sirota that Coloradans should demand state Republican Speaker of the House Frank McNulty strip out the last-minute amendment his caucus added to the annual rule-making bill in order to roll back payday loan fee regulations put in place last year. Ferrandino said Republicans were playing chicken with billions of dollars in Colorado business revenue just to cater to one special-interest group.

DENVER-- The payday lending industry isn't giving up on this legislative session in Colorado. Lawmakers who have failed at several attempts to roll back regulations passed last session limiting high payday interest rates and fees are now reportedly planning to attach to a bureaucratic rule-making bill an amendment that would thin the payday regulations. The legislative session ends at midnight tomorrow.

A recent survey of Mississippi Republicans conducted by Public Policy Polling (pdf) found that a majority of them believe inter-racial marriage should be illegal. According to the poll, 46 percent of the Republicans told PPP staffers that interracial marriage should be illegal and 14 percent of them said they weren't sure. Only 40 percent of Mississippi Republicans believe interracial couples should be allowed to legally marry. The poll comes a week after Colorado Republicans voted down a bill that would have granted Colorado gay couples domestic partnership rights already granted automatically with marriage to straight people. The Republican lawmakers said the issue should be left to voters to decide.

The bipartisan hug issued around the Legislature after a compromise on the state budget Tuesday was broken Wednesday as House Republicans passed a bill exempting businesses from business personal property taxes.

The Joint Budget Committee comes to terms on budget and averts a stand-off. Bill restores some education funding and scales back some PERA contributions.

During an emotional eight-hour hearing on same-sex civil unions at the capitol in Denver Thursday, a long list of witnesses on both sides of the issue told emotional stories of life as gay and transgender Americans. More than a few wept as they talked about shame, discrimination and systemic bias. Others quoting scripture warned of the end times the bill would surely hasten unto the Centennial State should it pass. The five committee Democrats took turns agreeing and disagreeing with witnesses, debating theology, Constitutional history and the horrors of the Jim Crow South and the Holocaust. The six members of the majority bloc Republicans on the committee, however, had little to say. They watched and listened and, without really elaborating their positions, voted as a bloc against sending the legislation to the full House for debate and a vote. They stone-cold killed the bill.

Legislation changing last year's consumer protection law governing deferred deposit lending passed out of the House Thursday morning after being scheduled in a breakneck, three-day sprint to passage. The Republican sponsor of the bill, Rep. Larry Liston, Colorado Springs, said House Bill 1290 instates a non-refundable origination fee that last year's law was meant to contain. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, the sponsor of last year's HB 1351, said the bill was never meant to have that provision.

This afternoon the state House Judiciary Committee will review Sen. Pat Steadman's civil unions bill and decide whether or not to send it to the full House for debate and roll call vote. The Fort Collins Coloradoan is the home paper for two of the majority Republicans on the committee, B.J. Nikkel and Brian DelGrosso, both of Loveland, and this morning the Coloradoan joined with newspaper editorial boards across the state in endorsing the bill. It urged committee members to "shelve the debate over same-sex marriage" and think instead about "provid[ing] equal protection under the law for those who seek to form a committed, legal relationship."

Activists, lobbyists and citizens this week have been pressing for at least one of six Republican members of the state House Judiciary Committee to vote in favor of sending Pat Steadman's same-sex civil unions bill to the House floor for debate. On Tuesday, the House Democratic caucus officially joined the campaign.

The coming debate in the Colorado House Judiciary Committee on same-sex civil unions bill SB 172 will center on Republican arguments for and against the legislation. The debate scheduled to take place under the Dome in Denver Thursday will underline the dynamics shaping the larger national debate on gay rights-- a debate that now pits Republicans against Republicans because Democrats and Independents have already made up their minds on the matter.