May 13, 2012 06:53 PM UTC

Special Session Rhetoric Getting Ugly Fast

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• by: Colorado Pols

GOP Rep. Spencer Swalm shares a decidedly cynical view of the legislative special session convening tomorrow morning–writing in this weekend’s Centennial Citizen:

In this country, elections are the usual method for resolving important public policy issues.  However, given Gov. Hickenlooper’s decision to convene a special session to deal with what he must believe is a civil unions “emergency,” he has apparently come to the conclusion that such issues may now be properly resolved in response to a cursing, screaming mob making death threats in the chambers of the Colorado Legislature…

The governor attempted to cover his call for a civil union special session by including in the agenda a number of bills that had wide bipartisan support and which could have been dealt with during the last day of the regular session. Given that a three-day special session is going to cost taxpayers more than $70,000, this is a very costly smoke screen to circumvent the usual legislative and electoral process. Has he forgotten that we have an election this fall and that if voters don’t like what was done on civil unions they can elect new representatives? [Pols emphasis]

Moreover, it is not as if that this rejection of what is only the latest effort to advance the cause of civil unions came entirely out of the blue.  As recently as 2006, Colorado voters rejected the functional equivalent of civil unions when they turned down Referendum I by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent.

The governor has also apparently lost sight of the fact that having bills die on the last day of the session is nothing new.  In fact, Gov. Hickenlooper stood silent as Senate Democrats killed numerous important bills as time ran out on the 2011 session.  Was the difference last year the absence of a howling mob?

Pretty short on minced words, don’t you think? Gov. John Hickenlooper’s call for a special session to deal with a number of bills that died in Tuesday’s shutdown of the House, including civil unions, was of course not provoked by the outburst from the House gallery after it was announced the House would remain in recess past the midnight deadline. That is in fact a rather stupid and irresponsible allegation for a member of the legislature to make after the extremes House leadership went to last Tuesday night to ensure Senate Bill 2 didn’t get a vote.

And it doesn’t inspire confidence that this second chance given to Speaker Frank McNulty and his one-vote House GOP majority by Gov. Hickenlooper will be taken with the seriousness self-preservation interested politicians should feel. McNulty’s act to thwart to the majority of his own chamber has become a major public relations disaster, wrecking a narrative of bipartisan cooperation over other issues that was politically quite valuable. In that respect, the line from Rep. Swalm about voters taking care of the problem could be the truest part of his whole rant.

At the very least, you now know how constructive one of them is planning to be this week.