April 26, 2012 04:52 PM UTC

Death By Whacko UN Conspiracy Theory

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• by: Colorado Pols

It’s a rare event when a press release from Colorado House Democrats quotes an exasperated Republican, but that’s what happened yesterday over Senate Bill 12-130:

Bowing to criticism from people who said it was part of a plot against parents, a bill to streamline and consolidate services to Colorado’s young children was withdrawn today by its sponsors in the House State, Military & Veterans Affairs Committee.

SB12-130, with the bipartisan sponsorship of Reps. Millie Hamner (D-Dillon) and Tom Massey (R-Poncha Springs), would have created an office of early childhood and youth development to oversee and coordinate a wide variety of programs geared toward young children in Colorado. Some of the major components are child care, including licensing, school readiness, and the early childhood councils; the child care assistance program; and mental health consultation for children.

“It is government efficiency working at its best to streamline and make sense of a sometimes complicated bureaucracy,” Rep. Hamner told the committee.

The bill was initiated by the Early Childhood Leadership Commission, which was appointed by Gov. John Hickenlooper to improve outcomes for children in Colorado. Rep. Massey read a long list of supporters of the measure – essentially the entire childhood services and family services establishment in Colorado — and thanked them for their work in pulling together support for the bill. Influential business leaders – including former University of Denver Chancellor Dan Ritchie – also supported the bill.

But all that support crumbled in the face of opposition led by a Colorado Springs church that described the bill as an effort to undermine parental control of their children. The Denver Post quoted an email from the church that claimed the bill intends to “make the state responsible for child rearing,” “stripping parental rights even in the home” and creating a “massive abuse of government power against families.”

“This piece of legislation has gotten significantly derailed by non-policy-related perceptions and politics,” [Pols emphasis] Rep. Massey told the committee. “I’m sorry the policy has gotten so derailed by perceptions that this went beyond the scope of what we were trying to do.”

Lynn Bartels of the Denver paper reported in March that this bill was under threat from WellSprings Church, who denounced it as “an effort to circumvent not only U.S. law but the fundamental right of parents through the U.N.” The bill was also opposed by Sen. Kevin Lundberg, who sees the United Nations’ invisible hand, well, everywhere too.

It was moderate GOP Rep. Tom Massey’s request to kill this bill yesterday, which prevented the bill’s opponents from wasting everyone’s time with embarrassing conspiracy-theory arguments against passage–ahead of what looks like was always going to be a party-line vote to kill it.

This would have been embarrassing to Massey’s side of the aisle, it should be noted.