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May 25, 2017 10:38 AM UTC

Senate GOP's Civil Rights Commission Idiocy Gets Bypassed

  • 1 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg.

The Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby updates the strange story of Heidi Hess, the chair of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission who was denied reappointment to the commission by the Colorado Senate GOP’s one-seat majority under circumstances that seem suspiciously like bias against Hess as an LGBT representative on the panel–that, or a comedy of errors that makes the Senate Republicans look incompetent to say the least:

Gov. John Hickenlooper chose to keep her on the commission, a move his office said is legal but one Senate Republicans question.

Republicans, who have a one-vote majority in the Senate, were surprised to learn from The Daily Sentinel that she was still on the seven-member commission. Regardless, Senate President Kevin Grantham, R-Canon City, said such rejections of governor appointees happen so rarely that he was having his staff investigate the matter.

Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, however, agreed that while the governor has the legal right to keep her on the panel until he finds a replacement, even until her new term expires in 2021, he said Hickenlooper is violating the spirit of the Colorado Constitution, which requires consent from the Senate on such appointments.

“It is ridiculous, but apparently that is within his purview and within his right to do so, to go around the Senate that way,” said the Sterling Republican, who led the effort to reject Hess’ confirmation. “It absolutely is against the spirit of the Constitution, but I think it’s completely inappropriate for the governor to wave his middle finger at the Senate.”

As Ashby reports again in this story and we’ve recounted in detail in this space, here’s what happened: Hess was erroneously listed on a website for the Colorado Civil Rights Commission as a “business representative,” despite the fact that in every other description we can find of her role she is listed as an at-large community representative. On the basis of this misidentification, Republicans led by Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg turned on Hess during what should have been her routine reappointment, declaring that she supported the “sue your boss” bill–a reference to workplace discrimination legislation passed in 2013.

Although it was quickly determined afterward that the listing of Hess as a “business representative” on the commission was erroneous, we haven’t seen any acknowledgement of that error from Republicans who voted against her reappointment. Given Hess’ role as chair of the commission as well as representative of both the LGBT community and the Western Slope, voting to remove her from the commission is not something that her friends and supporters–not to mention the governor’s office–took lightly.

What happens next? Well, Hickenlooper says in Ashby’s story that it could take a very long time to find a “replacement” for Heidi Hess–maybe even all the way though the end of her would-be second term in 2021. Colorado Republican Attorney General Cynthia Coffman has washed her hands of the situation, saying only that there might be a legislative remedy to consider in an upcoming session if GOP Senators don’t like Hickenlooper’s response to their misguided vote.

In the end, we rather doubt Republicans are going to push the matter any further under Hickenlooper’s administration. Whatever their motives were for this action–which we’ve heard credibly attributed to revenge over a vetoed bill, Tony Gagliardi’s outsize influence on the caucus, and yes, straight-up bigotry against LGBT people given a rare moment to lash out–it has definitely backfired. There’s nothing to be gained by perpetuating a conflict caused entirely by their own incompetence or enmity (or both).

Time to walk away.

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