For the second time this year, Democratic Sen. Jeanne Nicholson has enraged the GOP by backing away from a bill she agreed to sponsor with a House Republican.
Last week, the Black Hawk Democrat asked a Senate committee to kill her bill on time-share resales. Earlier in the session, she withdrew her sponsorship of a bill dealing with the election of county commissioners.
In both cases, Nicholson said that after studying the bills, she couldn’t support them. They passed the Republican-controlled House but then died in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“The real story here is how Sen. Nicholson is double-dealing the Republican sponsors she is working with,” said House Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch.
The facts say otherwise, Nicholson said.
“Last year, I sponsored 16 bills — eight with Republican sponsors — and 15 of those were signed into law by the governor,” she said. “This session, I have sponsored 16 bills, nine of them with Republican sponsors.
“I have a strong track record of working with Republicans. It’s a rec-ord I’m proud of and one that stands up to any political attack.”
Nicholson worked with Rep. J. Paul Brown, an Ignacio Republican, on the county-commissioner measure and with Rep. Carole Murray, R-Castle Rock, on the time-share bill.
House Bill 1116 added disclosure requirements involving the resale of time-share properties, a complex proposal that Murray said she had invested a lot of time in.
The measure passed the House 42-21, with a mix of Republicans and Democrats voting for and against it.
The measure was scheduled to be heard last week by a Senate committee. Murray said she was surprised to get a call from Nicholson the day before, saying she planned to go before the committee and indefinitely postpone the measure, a procedural move that kills a bill.
“I went to her and said, ‘Can I get another sponsor? Can we work on an amendment?’ ” Murray said. “For a sponsor to kill it without the agreement of the other sponsor — people can’t remember if that’s ever been done before.”
But Nicholson said the more she studied the proposal and talked to people, the less she thought it would provide consumer protections, as it had been billed when she signed on.
“It protected time-share-resale entities in some ways. It protected the time-share associations in some way. But it didn’t protect the time-share owners sufficiently,” she said.
Nicholson added she wants to bring a bill next year that she believes offers those protections.
The other measure, House Bill 1159, changed elections for commissioners in counties with a population of fewer than 70,000. The House passed the bill in early February on a 61-4 vote, with the speaker being one of the “no” votes.
Brown had asked Nicholson to co-sponsor the measure because she has served as a Gilpin County commissioner, but as the bill came over to the Senate, she withdrew her sponsorship. Brown accused her of playing politics because he has a tough re-election bid.
Nicholson, however, said she worried that if counties elected commissioners by district, as proposed, there might be less of a willingness for all commissioners to work together.
