February 08, 2010 07:11 PM UTC

El Paso County's Utterly Useless Legislators

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• 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.