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February 08, 2010 07:11 PM UTC

El Paso County's Utterly Useless Legislators

  • 13 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

We have to believe that the Colorado Springs Gazette’s Tom Roeder was at least a little bit embarrassed as he wrote this report:

Every year, El Paso County lawmakers lead legislative lambs to the slaughter: bills so unlikely to pass that they’re considered all but dead upon introduction.

The flock has only grown as the mostly-Republican delegation has fallen deeply into the General Assembly’s minority.

Many of the measures they offer up as sacrifices on the political altar have changed little, having been introduced for years at every session…

Last week, in one example, Republican Rep. Kent Lambert offered up his plan to have the state guarantee some of its savings accounts by buying gold bars. His bill would have required the gold to be stored at the state Capitol.

“At least I got farther than I did last year,” he said with a grin after the measure was executed after a 30-minute hearing in the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee…

Colorado Springs Republican Sen. Dave Schultheis, king of killed bills in a 10-year legislative career, says the doomed measures actually accomplish a lot in their brief lives at the Capitol.

One of the bills he has pledged to introduce would ban abortion in Colorado. Born out of a deep Presbyterian faith and support  in Colorado Springs, the annually introduced measure makes other lawmakers at least think about the unborn before they snuff out the bill in committee, he said.

“One of the reasons I tend to do this is others stay clear of it,” said Schultheis…

Introducing such bills costs lawmakers. General Assembly rules cap at five the number of bills each of the Legislature’s 100 members can introduce, with a few exceptions.

That means the bulk of Schultheis’ General Assembly agenda could be spent on measures that will never see a vote on the Senate floor.

Now as the article goes on to point out, Democrats are not immune to the practice of introducing silly, time-wasting legislation–we’ve criticized one such bill this year. But it’s Republicans like Kent Lambert and Dave Schultheis who take the art of stupid bills to this level, where it’s their primary contribution as a legislator. Particularly troubling is the fact that they are proud of wasting the legislature’s time, but in that regard they’re unfortunately only accountable to their districts.

As for the part about the number of these kinds of divisive time-wasting bills growing larger as Republicans “fell deeply into the minority”…it’s not a coincidence, folks.

Comments

13 thoughts on “El Paso County’s Utterly Useless Legislators

  1. Not only is this wasteful from a political standpoint, drafting and running these bills costs money. Good thing Colorado has lots of wiggle room in the budge this year…  Oh wait….

  2. Glenn Beck and his band of paranoid schizophrenics drove the price of gold through the stratosphere, but it’s now backsliding like an LA McMansion in a rain storm.

  3. I’ve worked with drafters on bills from Legal Services and I can tell you they are hard working people (paid by the taxpayers) whose time should not be wasted.

    Lambert and Schultheis lead the charge in decrying government waste, yet they waste the drafters time (and taxpayer’s money) with frivolous bills.

    I was raised a Presbyterian so I can assure you Dave Schultheis’ “Presbyterian faith” is his personal representation of Presbyterianism and not that of the mainstream laity.  

  4. you are reduced to continuing the culture wars and retaining power through fear of the “other”.

    The ultimate irony in all this is that these Colorado Springs Republicans who hate government to the max live in a town that is totally sustained by government expenditures on the military industrial complex.  Colorado Springs would be a much smaller town if the big government military and all those paychecks went away.  How ironic they run against wasteful government spending when they are the prime beneficiaries of government cornucopia military spending.

  5. You guys are so transparent. What a joke this site has become. Bash the Springs continually because they are basically right leaning.

    ColPols used to be somewhat left, but now it is nothing more than a sandbox for wacko liberals to point at the other side in a vain attempt to make their tired Socialist agenda look better.

    What these legislators have or have not done is not my point. My point is you, ColPols have sunk to the bottom of the pit. Ever try being fair and balanced? Or is that a concept that extreme lefties can’t fathom?

    I’m  done here

    Gecko

    1. Because if you want the story to be “balanced” by saying the legislators aren’t that useless, shouldn’t there be evidence that they’re not?

      And if you want to argue bias, shouldn’t you say something like, “Actually what you said is not true.”

      If you see a traffic sign that indicates “The left lane is for turning left only,” do you also consider it to be biased toward Socialism?

    2. is coming from a fool who gets his news from Fox?  Talk about the kettle calling the pot black.

      You gotta love this bit of logic:

      What these legislators have or have not done is not my point.

      Like dude that is the whole point of the post and it comes from a Colorado Springs newspaper.  What lizard brain doesn’t want to talk about is the uselessness of anyone who comes out of bipolar Colorado Springs where government is king and reviled all at the same time.

      Don’t worry folks.  We still have GOPWeenie and tabpole to tell us that we are bad people and they wouldn’t associate with us except to tell us that and they know we are bad because they said so.  There’s some real conservative logic for you.

    3. When has Schultheis ever had a bill pass, or at least make it out of committee?

      Try using reason instead of screaming “leftie, pinko, commie, socialist” all the time.  

  6. This is in the fine English tradition of the “shadow cabinet.”  One way to make the case that you should be elected the next time around is to show voters what kind of legislation you would have passed if you were in power.

    The problem here is not that Colorado Springs legislators are introducing legislation that won’t pass.  It is that Colorado Springs legislators are offering stupid legislation that won’t pass.  

    Gold backed savings accounts stored at the state capitol are stupid in multiple ways.  First, the gold standard isn’t a hot issue with anyone but conspiracy theorists anymore.  Second, insisting on putting real gold bars in the security challenged state capitol rather than, for example, taking receipts for gold bars stored in the U.S. Mint (where the U.S. government does store gold bars for use in currency transactions) is expensive misguided paranoia.  Third, the law is probably pre-empted by federal law which narrowed the authority of non-mint entities to issue dollar denominated, gold backed financial instruments.

    Similarly, proposing legislation that would be ruled unconstitutional before the ink dried (the abortion ban) also shows a decided indifference to governing.  

    In a campaign, any Democrat can explain not supporting this legislation by saying: “I didn’t want to waste everyone’s time on passing laws that wouldn’t make a difference to anyone, I would devote my time to passing laws that have some chance of being held constitutional.”  If you think Roe v. Wade is wrong, offer a resolution for a constitutional amendment (which state legislatures can), not a proposal for a law that won’t be upheld.

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