Colorado lawmakers will wrap up the 2006 session this week with sharply drawn party lines and deep wounds over ethics disputes.
Last year, a looming fiscal crisis galvanized officials across the partisan divide. Together, they crafted a budget-reform package that ultimately was approved by voters in November.
But this year is an election year. With control of the statehouse at stake in November, lawmakers engaged in bruising partisan battles over ethics and over policy.
Former Sen. Norma Anderson, R-Lakewood, who retired in January, said she noticed “a lot more hostility this year.”
She said shorter terms in office have caused lawmakers to focus more sharply on partisan differences.
“The process has become so partisan that it’s difficult to get things done,” Anderson said.
Sen. Dan Grossman, D-Denver, who is retiring this year after serving one term in the Senate, said the fights were typical of election-year lawmaking.
“I’ve been down at legislature for 10 years. It seems like every election year, these partisan battles come out and everybody puts on their political hats and plays a lot of ‘Gotcha.”‘
Almost every week of this year’s 120-day session, a new accusation emerged that raised questions about the behavior of elected officials.
Some ethics lapses were clear breaches of public trust, and some lawmakers did cross the line. And while most maintained they did nothing wrong, the fallout was felt across party lines.
Democratic Sen. Deanna Hanna of Lakewood resigned for demanding financial “reparations” from a lobbying group that supported her opponent.
Republican House Minority Leader Joe Stengel of Littleton stepped down after billing the state for workdays while he was in Hawaii on vacation.
Republican Rep. Jim Welker, R-Loveland, decided against a run for re-election a few weeks after forwarding a racially charged e-mail.
Democratic House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder, resigned as an unpaid board member of a University of Colorado law-school think tank after Republicans revealed she sponsored a bill that provided it funding.
And Republicans spent much of the session demanding that Democrats reveal who was behind the group Research and Democracy, an anonymously funded organization that provided $83,000 worth of constituent-support services.
The tit-for-tat spats didn’t eclipse the work of lawmakers but set a tone that spilled into many debates.
When a majority of lawmakers approved a ballot referendum that would ask voters in November whether the state should recognize same-sex domestic partnerships, some Republicans decried the effort as anti-marriage and proof that the Democrats in charge were pushing a social agenda.
“We were criticized when we were in the majority for God, gays and guns,” Rep. David Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, said at one point during the session. “Now, all they do is gays, gays and gays. That’s all they’re after. They literally have a fet ish.”
When lawmakers planned to celebrate the $4.8 billion school- finance act with a news conference, they waited for nearly a half-hour before they realized that Gov. Bill Owens was standing them up.
Democrats claimed they had a deal with Owens, but the governor wanted to ensure that the bill included a provision to punish schools that restrict the respectful display of the American flag.
When lawmakers were hashing out the $16.5 billion state budget, tempers boiled over.
During the negotiations, House Democrats resisted when Republicans insisted that lawmakers study ways to create a savings account for future emergencies.
Rather than simply saying no, House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, accused Republicans of trying to “trade votes” – a violation of the state constitution.
Republican House Leader Mike May lost his cool.
“Get out of my face,” May told Romanoff in the hallway and stormed away.
Still, lawmakers passed some high-profile bills.
Anti-smoking advocates won a hard-fought battle to make it illegal to smoke in most indoor workplaces, including restaurants and bars.
And the $16.5 billion state budget was a major accomplishment, thanks to the November passage of Referendum C, which let the state keep more tax revenues.
Without Referendum C, Owens said, the state would have needed to cut $407 million from some state programs to keep up with rising costs in schools, health care and prisons.
Instead, lawmakers crafted a budget that brought back funding to health-care programs, public schools, state colleges and universities, and transportation projects.
Although Owens vetoed a key Democratic proposal to let pharmacists dispense emergency contraception, Romanoff said the Democrats controlling the legislature were working harder to avoid Owens’ veto pen, which struck down 47 bills last year.
“It doesn’t do us much good by putting bills on his desk and have him surprise us by vetoing them,” Romanoff said. “We’re trying to be lawmakers here, not billmakers.”
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-820-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
