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April 26, 2019 02:11 PM UTC

Lawmakers' Final Weekend Gets Pulled

  • 9 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: The heart-shaking drama goes on:

Finally, Republicans have found their hill to die on. The coat rule.

—–

Courtesy Rep. Matt Gray (D)

Colorado Public Radio reported this morning on the legislative logjam at the Colorado State Capitol with just one week left before the body is constitutionally obligated to adjourn–and with literally hundreds of bills left either to consider or allow to “die on the calendar,” options are quickly narrowing:

Colorado’s 2019 legislative session has already seen its fair share of drama: graphic debates lasting in the wee hours of the morning, a committee hearing in the middle of the bomb cyclone, the Senate’s minority caucus suing Democratic leaders for using a robot choir to read a bill.

And to cap it off: the first weekend session in more than a decade.

Theatrics aside, lawmakers have managed to pass several major Democratic priorities. Despite a well-funded and vocal opposition, Gov. Polis signed the most significant update to Colorado’s oil and gas regulations since 1951. He also approved a controversial “red flag law,” which gives judges the power to temporarily remove firearms from people believed to be a threat to themselves or others. Not to mention a bill that could someday award Colorado’s electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote.

As it’s become increasingly plain in recent weeks that an end-of-session pileup was likely, minority Republicans in the Colorado Senate tried to shift the blame:

The problem is, there’s only one reason for the huge number of bills left to be debated in the session’s final week: an unprecedented campaign by minority Republicans in the House and Senate to jam up the works by slow-walking through every debate and forcing bills and journals to be needlessly read at length. The GOP obstruction campaign reached its peak on March 22nd when Republicans forced debate to continue late into a Friday night, only to discover that five Republican Senators had already left the building–resulting in a brief State Patrol search for the missing Senators before an agreement was reached between the parties to mark them absent. Since that embarrassing spectacle for Republicans, the standoff has cooled enough to allow for the passage of major Democratic priorities like oil and gas regulation and the “red flag” law.

Given the huge amount of unfinished work remaining, this weekend’s legislative overtime might not be enough to prevent a mass calendar die-off one week from today. But even though one of the chief obstructionists this year in the Senate, Republican Sen. Owen Hill of Colorado Springs says he has “no desire to work on Saturday,” the GOP minority’s actions are the only reason it’s happening.

So we’ll save our pity for the staffers and reporters there through no fault of their own.

Comments

9 thoughts on “Lawmakers’ Final Weekend Gets Pulled

      1. Reading the full bill tactic that the article talked about.  But now that you   mention it, how about the recall trick, too.  I've lived a lot of places, but never known any other state to use either of these gems.

  1. Why can't Polis just call a special session?

    And why can't the Dems change those ridiculous rules, given their majorities?

    I never remember this "bill reading" action ever in the 30 years I've followed Colo. politics…….if it was, it must have been a very rare event.  Shows how strident and radical the GOP here has gotten……….. RIDICULOUS and maddening!

    What will it take?  A supermajority to stop this?

    1. He can. They cannot. 

      Hick called a special session in 2011 when the Republicans in the House gummed everything up at the end of the session to kill the civil unions bill. Remember that? Civil unions!

      They cannot simply change the rules because I believe it is in the constitution. It may have been part of the GAVEL Amendment.

    2. Ending the "reading" issue will apparently take a rewrite of the Constitution — where it specifies the parliamentary procedure of required readings in each Chamber unless there is unanimous consent to "just" read the titles.

      Or, the legislators could simply continue to have unanimous consent (as usual).

      Or, if they keep using the tactic, making it into a campaign issue and asking if their constituents support wasting time in that fashion.

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