Tag: su ryden

DENVER — Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman’s fetal homicide bill never stood a chance of making it through the legislature, despite being propelled by...

State lawmakers here working feverishly in the last days of the legislative session failed to come up with a bill that could ease the high tensions building for years around boom-time drilling and fracking in Colorado, tensions that were never likely to be eased at the capitol.

Many Democrats are standing behind concerns raised by former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb last week after Webb said that Republican members of the Colorado Reapportionment Commission were playing it fast and loose with constitutional requirements when redrawing the state legislative boundaries.

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.

A heated committee hearing over a proposal to extend a state sex-offender policy board ended in wide bi-partisan support. The bill rankled detractors in its details not its main purpose.

DENVER-- A controversial bill seeking to extend Colorado's Sex Offender Management Board and rework some of the language guiding the board's work stoked intense debate at a Judicial Committee hearing Thursday afternoon. Sponsored in the House by Rep. Su Ryden, D-Aurora, HB 1364 would make distinctions between adult sex offenders and juvenile sex offenders and also lift language that describes sex offenders as incurable.