May 11, 2011 02:36 AM UTC

All Over But The Shouting?

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: House GOP map killed tonight by the Senate State Affairs Committee, making a special session of the legislature, or the courts, or both, a certainty.

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FOX 31’s Eli Stokols updates on redistricting as the clock runs down to sine die tomorrow:

Last night, after a Republican-drawn map passed the GOP-controlled House, Senate Democrats waited until after 8 p.m. to begin debating their own proposed map and then, despite the snark and outrage from their Republican colleagues, effectively filibustered their own bill in order, which died as the clock struck midnight, leaving them without enough time left in the expiring session to pass it in both chambers.

Senate Republicans returned the favor Tuesday morning, engaging in their own stalling tactics by forcing every bill to be read at length on the Senate floor until Democrats agreed to hear the GOP’s redistricting proposal that passed the House Monday afternoon…

“Brandon Shaffer insists on drawing a congressional district to serve his own ambitions,” McNulty told FOX 31 Denver Tuesday afternoon. “And we’re not going to support ripping the eastern plains apart to draw him a congressional district.”

Shaffer, meanwhile, continues to portray McNulty and Republicans as the main obstacle in the way of a deal based around Democratic proposals, which seek more drastic changes to district lines in an effort to make congressional districts more “competitive.”

“Whenever I sat down with Speaker McNulty on the Democratic maps, he just dismissed them out of hand,” Shaffer said Tuesday. “He didn’t want to even discuss those maps or negotiate off the Democrats map. I think those Democratic maps are very fair, they’re both competitive and the serve the interests of the people of Colorado.”

We do think a point is worth clarifying here: as we’ve said all along during the “Kumbaya Committee” process, and other points along the way where it seemed like the situation had degenerated into meaningless prattle, all of the testimony in the traveling committee hearings around the state, as well as the hours of debate in the legislature, including last night, serve a very important purpose: establishment of a record that the courts will reference in the increasingly likely event the legislature can’t make a deal. So that, given the immediate fate of Senate Bill 268 as soon as the Senate was done debating it, helps explain what Democrats were doing more accurately than “effectively filibustering their own bill.”

As the story is told to us, Democrats were defending it on the record, in a way that will matter more than turning it over to McNulty for summary execution.

But despite the growing arithmetical probability of ending the session with no deal on redistricting, there are fresh rumors going around of continued negotiations in the Senate. Whether it’s clever parliamentary procedure to fudge deadlines, or major revisions to the Republican map sufficient to please Democrats, remains to be seen–but we think you all know at this point to not get your hopes up, don’t you? We’ll update as needed, but only until bedtime.