This week in the Legislature

Agenda

Monday: The House is scheduled to debate whether the limited entrances and metal detectors that have greeted the public since a July shooting at the Capitol should remain.

Thursday: The Senate Health and Human Services Committee takes up the centerpiece of Gov. Bill Ritter’s health care reform package, a bill to expand public insurance access to 45,000 uninsured children.

Also, the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee will consider a measure to withdraw Colorado’s consent to the U.S. government to acquire lands by use of eminent domain.

Disability funding

Gov. Bill Ritter asked for several changes in the current year’s budget and the proposed 2008-09 budget last week, including an increase in funding for developmental disabilities. The Joint Budget Committee could consider the request as soon as this week, though nothing is scheduled.

Ritter has asked to add $6.6 million to his already significant increase in the budget to get Coloradans with developmental disabilities off of a waiting list for state services, meaning he is seeking a $14.9 million increase for services next year. His request comes at the same time that Rep. Bob Gardner, who Ritter thanked in a news release, is pushing a bill to add an extra $2 million funding for the developmentally disabled next year.

Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, said he will continue to push HB1101 because it also has provisions about future funding and the creation of a specific fund for new development-disability monies.

Legislator to know

Rep. Wes McKinley is the cowboy of the Capitol.

A rancher whose district encompassing six southeastern Colorado counties is one of the state’s largest, the Democrat can be spotted easily in the House as the only man wearing a cowboy hat and bandana around his neck. His political views also tend toward those of a maverick, as he’s known to break frequently from his party and push or back measures that sometimes get little support from either party.

McKinley grabbed the spotlight last year when he passed a bill removing Colorado’s standing permission to the federal government to take land for military use, a debate that centered on the Army’s proposed expansion of Fort Carson’s Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. This week he returns with a more ambitious plan that would remove consent for the national government to condemn land for its use for any reason.