Reporting of school violence
The family of Contrell Townsend, the student slain in the cafeteria of Montbello High School in 2004, came to the Capitol on Thursday to ask lawmakers to improve the way schools report acts of violence to the state.
Townsend’s slaying, like other known incidents of violence in Colorado schools, was not properly reported.
“Nothing we can say or do here today can bring back our son,” said the Rev. Calvin Hall, Townsend’s stepfather.
But the reform offered by Senate Bill 55 “could lend itself to sparing future young lives as well as their families,” he said.
The Senate Education Committee postponed its vote on the bill after some lawmakers questioned whether it was written correctly.
Democratic Sen. Ron Tupa of Boulder said the committee wants to make sure school administrators deliver accurate reports on violence to the state.
“You can’t game the system to make the school look better,” Tupa said.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Ed Jones of Colorado Springs, complained about having the vote postponed.
A free apple a day
A Senate committee on Thursday unanimously approved Senate Bill 127, which creates a pilot program to make free fruit and vegetables available to students at participating schools.
Also of note…
The Senate approved House Bill 1200 Thursday to provide $24 million to help low-income residents pay their heating bills and increase their homes’ energy efficiency.
The legislative Joint Budget Committee on Thursday unanimously approved funding for the Senior Citizen Property Tax Exemption.
The program gives some seniors over 65 a property-tax break. The exemption has not been funded for the past several years because of budget cuts.
In-kind donations on table
Gov. Bill Owens wants in-kind political donations to be outlawed, he said in a letter to a Boulder Democrat who has been pursuing campaign-finance reforms.
Owens, a Republican, vetoed last year’s campaign-finance reform bill from Sen. Ron Tupa because it allowed legislators to receive money that other elected officials could not accept, he said. Tupa has changed that in this year’s version, Senate Bill 51. Now Owens wants Tupa to add an in-kind gift restriction.
“If we ban monetary gifts but fail to address in-kind contributions, I predict we will see substantial increases in this type of contribution which, as we have seen, can be just as questionable and can be nearly impossible to track,” Owens wrote.
Owens is reacting to recent reports about Democratic lawmakers receiving gifts from a group known only as Research and Democracy, spokesman Dan Hopkins said.
Democrats have denied Republican charges of impropriety. Tupa could not be reached for comment Thursday night.
