Year after year, doomed bills return to Legislature

DENVER • Every year, El Paso County lawmakers lead legislative lambs to the slaughter: bills so unlikely to pass that they’re considered all but dead upon introduction.

The flock has only grown as the mostly-Republican delegation has fallen deeply into the General Assembly’s minority.

Many of the measures they offer up as sacrifices on the political altar have changed little, having been introduced for years at every session.

The exact number is hard to pin down, but lawmakers from here have penned about a dozen legislative proposals, knowing they will be killed by legislative committees long before reaching a floor vote.

Last week, in one example, Republican Rep. Kent Lambert offered up his plan to have the state guarantee some of its savings accounts by buying gold bars. His bill would have required the gold to be stored at the state Capitol.

“At least I got farther than I did last year,” he said with a grin after the measure was executed after a 30-minute hearing in the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.

Lawmakers go to such lengths, only to face inevitable failure, for a variety of reasons. For some, the bills offer a way to fly the party flag. For other lawmakers, the bills are in response to constituents.

Colorado Springs Republican Sen. Dave Schultheis, king of killed bills in a 10-year legislative career, says the doomed measures actually accomplish a lot in their brief lives at the Capitol.

One of the bills he has pledged to introduce would ban abortion in Colorado. Born out of a deep Presbyterian faith and support  in Colorado Springs, the annually introduced measure makes other lawmakers at least think about the unborn before they snuff out the bill in committee, he said.

“One of the reasons I tend to do this is others stay clear of it,” said Schultheis.

Another Schultheis bill would challenge federal gun regulations in what he calls a bid to expand state rights. Another would tighten state business laws in an effort to end the hiring of illegal immigrants.

He also filed a bill that would require schools to hand children a “religious bill of rights,” essentially telling them it is OK to pray.

Introducing such bills costs lawmakers. General Assembly rules cap at five the number of bills each of the Legislature’s 100 members can introduce, with a few exceptions.

That means the bulk of Schultheis’ General Assembly agenda could be spent on measures that will never see a vote on the Senate floor.

Each bill is reviewed by Capitol workers to put the measure into proper legislative language. Measures that cost money are examined by other employees to determine how much they’ll cost.

With the limit on how many bills each lawmaker can file, though, introducing unlikely bills doesn’t cost the state extra money, said Senate Majority Leader John Morse, a Democrat from Colorado Springs.

“It’s part of the business,” Morse said of bills introduced simply to make a statement rather than change law.

“We’ve had some of those bills, too,” he said of his Democratic colleagues.

Many lawmakers, though, have decided that 2010 isn’t a year to just make statements.

Republican Rep. Mark Waller of Colorado Springs isn’t entering the fatal fray of doomed bills.

“I’ve had four bills go through committee and I haven’t had a vote cast against them,” he said.

Democratic Colorado Springs Rep. Dennis Apuan said he won’t take the controversial path either, “because I’m focused on legislation that addresses jobs and the economy.”

But for other lawmakers, filing bills that will never become law is a method to reach voters who would otherwise feel left out, Schultheis said.

Josh Dunn, an associate professor of political science at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, said doomed measures are introduced for political reasons everywhere from city hall to the halls of Congress.

“Sometimes it can be effective, other times it may not be,” he said. “It’s a way of getting your message out.”

Lambert’s gold-buying bill followed the well-trodden path of much of the doomed legislation. In Colorado, all bills get a hearing.

For the House bills most likely to die, that hearing comes in the State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, a group hand-picked by party leadership.

Lambert knew his bill’s fate before he started speaking. The measure would have forced the state to invest a small amount of its emergency reserve money into gold, which he sees as a safer harbor in a country where the value of the dollar is increasingly threatened by rampant federal spending.

But gold alone isn’t what Lambert was driving at with his bill.

His main point was that Colorado needs cash on hand for emergencies, a tall order when the state faces a $1 billion shortfall for the fiscal year that begins in July.

The hearing was congenial. Lambert gave his lecture on the necessity of savings.

And, on partisan lines, the bill was rejected.

“I think the most important thing I got on the table is that we need an emergency reserve,” he said.

Schultheis said that even in defeat, there is a measure of victory for lawmakers who file controversial bills.

“There’s enough people here who are willing to tinker around the edges,” he said of those filing bills likely to pass, but representing only incremental change. “I’m looking to create the discussion.”