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Colorado Senate President Ted Strickland and House Speaker Bev Bledsoe, both Republicans, during a hearing on industrial banks Jan. 6, 1988. (Duane Howell, The Denver Post)

In searching the archives for stories on the , I came across a gem of an article about how much the general assembly had changed with more women, less drinking and fewer practical jokes.

Among those featured in the story by the legendary Capitol reporter John Sanko: Sen. Bill Owens, who went onto become governor, and Sen. Dennis Gallagher, now the Denver city auditor.

With the 2015 session ready to convene on Jan. 7, here’s an interesting look back:

Legislature tamer, duller, better, lawmakers a lot less wild, much drier than they used to be

By John Sanko


The Rocky Mountain News


Oct. 23. 1991

The Colorado legislature is a lot tamer than it used to be — thank goodness, insiders say.

Drinking has been cut way back. The practical jokes have almost disappeared. Everyone seems a lot more serious.

Sen. Dottie Wham, R-Denver, listens to a bill being heard in the Senate chambers. (The Denver Post)

“It’s awfully dull,” says Sen. Dottie Wham, R-Denver. “It’s just not like it used to be. But it’s for the better.”

Less wheeling and dealing may mean the wheels of government grind more slowly, though.

Colorado lawmakers, who couldn’t wrap up their 25-day special session two weeks ago, trudge back to the statehouse today, hoping to finish what they began: work on the sensitive issues of school finance and congressional redistricting.

Those chores would have been handled differently in bygone days.

Ten years ago, legislators tossed three different districting maps at Gov. Dick Lamm. He vetoed them all before the fight wound up in federal court. This year, legislators haven’t agreed on a single map to send to Gov. Roy Romer.

A decade ago, the unsettling fight over school funds would have been settled in a caucus, with some gentle arm-twisting and not-so-subtle threats.

“The day of the all-autocratic leader is gone, never to return,” said . ”And that’s good in my judgment.”

Why this kinder, gentler legislature?

Many credit the 1972 “sunshine law” as the start. It slowly has forced open meetings and caucuses. The final blow to blatant secrecy was the “Give A Vote to Every Legislator” amendment approved by voters in 1988. GAVEL made sure each bill got a vote and budgeting was done in the open.

Colorado Sen. Dennis Gallagher, D-Denver, in 1995 holds up wires he uses to keep his messages in his office at the state Capitol. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

But changes in personalities have had an effect, too.

Rep. Wayne Knox, D-Denver credits first-year House Speaker Chuck Berry, R-Colorado Springs. Berry replaced , and was applauded at the end of the regular session in May for integrating Democrats.

said he’s seen his minority party play a role in budgeting for the first time since he came to office in 1971.

Strickland points to the departures of and , two of the more conservative elements of the Senate who tried unsuccessfully to dump Strickland from power. Dodge, a former member of the Joint Budget Committee, left in 1987 to become Denver’s lobbyist; Durham didn’t seek re-election the following year.

Sen. Cliff Dodge, a Republican, takes a stretch as the 1983 session nears the end. (Denver Post file photo)

“They’d go down to The Profile and try to figure ways to prevent things from happening,” Strickland said. “They’d try to gum up the works.”

The Profile, a local bar, used to be packed with legislators. But that’s changed, too. Drinking is down. The poker table in the press room and the refrigerator stocked with beer have vanished.

With 120-day limits on sessions and with issues more complex than ever, Wham, who was first elected to the legislature in 1984, says the legislators are just too busy to spend their evenings carousing. Her husband, Bob, also previously served in the Senate.

“You’d have to be some kind of a sot to go out drinking until midnight and be at your desk next morning,” she said. “It’s not like it used to be. And you don’t see anybody drunk on the floor anymore.”

The legislators are changing, too. Lawmakers are more likely to be city folk now, and a good number of them are from the Denver area.

Also, 32 of the 100 legislators are women. The “good ol’ boy” network is pretty much gone.

Instead of going out at night, and families to occupy their spare time.

With three children, ages 8, 5 and 6 months, Owens said his wife, Frances, ”is always eager for more assistance at home” in the evenings.

“I think the legislature reflects changes in society,” Owens said.

, attributes some change to the fact that legislators now have offices at the statehouse. Until the late 1960s, only legislative leaders had their own offices. Other lawmakers had only a desk on the House or Senate floor and shared a file cabinet with colleagues.

“We were forced to communicate, forced to have a camaraderie, forced to know one another on a personal basis,” Kopel said. “That’s not true now. Now everybody takes off and goes off on their own. Sometimes a few legislators go out together. But it’s isn’t the old-boys fraternity that it used to be.”

That means there’s less kidding around on the legislative floors, fewer hijinks — such as the time the flags in the Senate were rigged to stand at attention when superpatriot Sen. Sam Zakhem spoke at the podium. Or when jokesters filled Senate president Freddy Anderson’s water pitcher with vodka. Or the plastic tube hidden in a plant so cigar smoke could be blown at tobacco-hating Sen. Hugh Fowler.

Kopel, a former legislative staff bill writer and archives staffer, said one thing already had changed when he arrived in the mid-1960s — lobbyists no longer were allowed on the legislative floors.

“In the ’50s, when I was an employee here, I remember a guy from CF&I, the steel plant in Pueblo, one of the most powerful lobbyists at the time, sitting in the back of the House chambers. He would go up or down with his thumb like Roman emperors in the Colosseum.

“Heads would turn his way.”

Those were the bad old days.

“It’s such an open process anymore that it’s really hard to think that skulduggery is going on,” said Wham.

But more democracy takes more time.

“There’s no getting around it. If you want shorter sessions, you have to have stronger arms to twist,” Owens said. “Everything takes longer today than it used to.”

Colorado State Treasurer Bill Owens, announces on Jan. 6, 1998, in the State Capitol in downtown Denver that he is seeking the GOP nomination for governor. With him is his wife, Frances, their sons, Mark, 11, and Brett, 6, and their daughter, Monica, 14. (AP)