The 2015 legislative session, which opens Tuesday, looks to be a quiet one. And that’s not a bad thing, given how Colorado’s economy seems to be humming along in fairly high gear.
Yes, there will be controversial bills from both parties that seize public attention and headlines. But with control of the General Assembly split between the parties, no bill can pass without at least some bipartisan support.
Moreover, there is a lot that can be accomplished even in a quiet session, as officials of both parties realize. Because of the recession, Colorado underfunds K-12 education by about $900 million from what had been expected under Amendment 23. As House minority leader Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, told us Monday, this “negative factor” is a form of debt “that we need to pay back and we can’t just be making the minimum payment. We have to actually start buying it down.”
“We bought down $100 million of it last year on a permanent basis,” he recalled.
The fastest way to pay down this debt would be for lawmakers to ask voters if the state can keep an impending surplus under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, both Republicans and Gov. John Hickenlooper are opposed to asking voters this year, so there is no chance of it happening unless a citizen-led group collects signatures for a ballot measure.
Given what legislative leaders from both parties have told us, it’s clear there are several areas of potential common ground besides K-12 education. They include:
• A felony DUI bill that targets incorrigible drunk drivers.
• Workplace development measures that facilitate training for people who don’t seek traditional four-year college degrees.
• Boosting higher education funding to offset revenue lost during the recession and to help keep tuition hikes at bay.
• Addressing the appearance of edible marijuana products.
• Finding solutions to the alarming lack of condo construction of the past few years.
Other important issues on which lawmakers must strive to reach consensus include finding a compromise over local control of oil and gas drilling, tackling abuses in the medical marijuana caregiver system, and providing more money to transportation — just to cite three.
House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Boulder, reminded us Tuesday that despite the image of lawmakers as always at each other’s throats, “90 percent, sometimes 95 percent of the bills we pass are bipartisan.”
So let the bipartisan work begin.
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