A plan to make the legislative session 20 days shorter died in committee Monday after lawmakers questioned whether the bill was necessary.
The bipartisan team supporting Senate Concurrent Resolution 9 said the current 120 days provide too much time for their colleagues to introduce superfluous legislation and prevent lawmakers from spending time in their districts.
Leaders of the House and Senate already can shorten the session at will, though they rarely do so by more than a few days.
The proposal would have required both a two-thirds vote of the legislature and a vote of the people in 2010.
Co-sponsor Sen. Gail Schwartz, D-Snowmass Village, said lawmakers who hail from far off locales don’t get the same contact with their constituents that Front Range legislators enjoy.
“Those citizens need to be heard as well,” Schwartz said. “This is less about money. This is about how we can be responsive to our communities,” she said.
The resolution died on a 3-2 vote in Senate State Affairs Committee. It would have given lawmakers a 120-day span in which they would be limited to 100 days of actual work.
Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, could not see the point of adding additional restrictions to the state Constitution.
“There’s nothing that prohibits us from adjourning early or starting late,” Bacon said. “We already have that prerogative.”
