April 28, 2015 11:37 AM UTC

Get More Smarter on Tuesday (April 28)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Hey, there it is! Welcome back, Sun. It’s time to Get More Smarter with Colorado Pols. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example).

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► Prosecutors are scheduled to call their first witness today in the Aurora Theater Shooting trial. The Aurora Sentinel provides a handy update for Day Two.

► As the Supreme Court begins hearing arguments over same-sex marriage, experts on both sides of the argument seem to think equality is a foregone conclusion. Or…maybe not?

► So-called fetal homicide Personhood legislation limped out of the State Senate yesterday. Senate Bill 268 is unlikely to make it through the State House, especially after running into all manner of political problems in the Senate. 

Get even more smarter after the jump…

SHOULD YOU FIND YOURSELF STANDING NEAR A WATER COOLER…

► Three pieces of legislation dealing with police oversight are moving through the State Senate.

► “Construction defects” legislation came to a predictable end in the State House, as Ed Sealover of The Denver Business Journal sums up well:

Construction-defects reform is dead.

A two-year effort in the Colorado Legislature to jump-start stalled condominium construction fell Monday on party lines in a state House of Representatives committee.

Senate Bill 177 — an idea of one senator which had gained the backing of a 55-organization business/nonprofit coalition — died because backers could not convince six Democrats that increasing the difficulty in filing a class-action defects lawsuit also would increase the portfolio of affordable housing in the Denver area. [Pols emphasis]

House Democrat Joe Salazar voiced a common concern: That homebuilders would gain further protection from shoddy work at the expense of homeowners.

► The runoff election for Mayor of Colorado Springs is underway, with ballots due by May 19th (the runoff is an all-mail ballot election). Former Attorney General John Suthers is the overwhelming favorite against former Mayor Mary Lou Makepeace. 

► The State House approved a proposed ballot measure for November that is necessary because TABOR is dumb. As Charles Ashby explains in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel:

The Colorado House on Monday approved a proposed measure to this year’s ballot asking voters if all of the retail marijuana taxes they approved in 2013 should go only to those things they approved in that ballot question two years ago.

Lawmakers said they need to ask voters that question because that’s not what’s happening now.

Under that 2013 ballot question, Proposition AA, excise and sales taxes from retail marijuana were to go to fund crumbling schools and marijuana impact grants and to regulate retail marijuana stores. But because of a quirk in the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, some of that money will end up being included in TABOR refunds because the state collected far more in marijuana taxes than it had anticipated.