The big show begins Wednesday under Colorado’s gold dome when our 100 state legislators begin their 120-day session. In 2005, the legislative session was all about money. This year it also will be all about money – and political power.
A year ago, Colorado was on the edge of a fiscal cliff. Now, thanks to voter approval of Referendum C, it is not, and the fight will be over how the money is spent.
While the language of C did not specify the precise distribution of additional revenues, the tone of the campaign left the impression in many minds that K-12 schools, higher education and health programs would equally divide the extra money provided by C. A companion measure, Referendum D, was designed primarily to increase transportation spending. Despite the narrow defeat of D, some leaders, including Gov. Bill Owens, still want additional spending for roads.
Beyond the expected fight over transportation spending, Colorado’s budget process has been so complicated by both citizen-initiated and legislatively enacted laws as to make an even distribution impossible. Lawmakers will have their hands full juggling the dictates of current law, the funding demands of a host of interests and the expectations of voters. The greatest challenge will be to explain decisions to the public.
When legislators convene, they also will grapple with a host of serious issues ranging from water, health care, Medicaid and immigration to auto insurance, transportation and municipal condemnation authority. They will do it with the help of scores of interest groups and hundreds of lobbyists.
And every move will be made with eyes on the November election. For most of the past half-century, Republicans controlled the legislature. Now Democrats do, and the Republicans want it back. Since 1998, Colorado has had a Republican governor. The governor’s office also is on the ballot this year, and the seat is open because Owens is term-limited.
Republicans desperately want the legislative majority back, and Democrats are equally determined to maintain control. The current Democratic margin is just one vote in the Senate and five in the House. We can anticipate enormously costly campaigns as the parties target the relatively few truly competitive districts.
Legislative business and the fall election will be mixed in a political soup. Republican leaders spent the 2005 session blasting Democrats as promoters of the “nanny state” and enemies of business. The Republican leadership will do it again this session, only more so, with the election just months ahead. What’s more, party precinct caucuses are now scheduled for March, right smack in the midst of the legislative session, and county and district nominating assemblies follow not long thereafter. This unfortunate timing will inevitably divert the time and attention of members and raise the political temperature.
Democrats will seek to capitalize on the success of Referendum C but will have to walk a tight line. If they are insufficiently responsive to the budgetary demands of those who supported C or helped bankroll their 2004 victories, they’ll lose some support from their political base. If they are overly responsive, they’ll confirm a Republican charge that Democrats can’t be trusted to spend prudently.
And they’ll have to work with a governor who was their pal on C and D, but who is already working overtime to beat them in November.
The challenge for the Democratic leadership will be to temper pressures for program expansion and spending, stay united and on message, deflect Republican attacks and explain in simple terms very complicated budgetary processes and decisions.
Their pre-session talk of five-year budgeting may forecast a Democratic strategy of appearing budget-savvy and prudent.
Republicans have been split for some time, and Referendums C and D made it worse. For Republican leaders to attack Democrats on budget matters could risk further alienating colleagues who worked with Democrats on C and D. If the GOP is feuding, and if more conservative members press legislation on social issues, the Republicans risk looking like a party uninterested in such bread-and-butter issues as jobs, roads, schools and health care.
In election years, and especially this one, legislative politics are all about winning in the fall.
The majority party controls all the levers of power – the House speakership, the Senate presidency, all committee chairmanships, the schedule, floor business and the Joint Budget Committee. The parties and members look to create legislative records that bolster electoral success, and this means accomplishing your legislative goals and thwarting those of rivals.
Legislators do care about good public policy. But to every bill and every vote is attached political meaning and political consequences.
It would be unnatural for both parties, both chambers and the governor to waltz through the 2006 session affectionately, hand in hand.
Legislatures are properly and by their very nature confrontational bodies; after all, their assignment is to represent widely disparate interests in a pluralistic society.
But an excessive injection of election-year politics can shift the focus away from the policy needs of the state and toward individual and party self-interest.
In 2005 a sufficient dose of bipartisanship and legislative-executive cooperation served to steer the state from the brink of fiscal disaster. Perhaps the residue of that political love affair can temper natural election-year tendencies in the 2006 legislative session.
John Straayer is a professor of political science at Colorado State University and supervisor of CSU’s internship
program in the legislature.
