“Thicket” of promise
Talk of bipartisanship blooms, although roadblocks loom
Gov. John Hickenlooper will look beyond the 100 lawmakers in the audience at his State of the State address Thursday and make his pitch directly to Colorado as he seeks to frame the new legislative session.
The Democrat faces a difficult task as he touts Colorado’s economic fortunes at the same time he highlights what he sees as significant needs in the state — to improve roads, expand broadband access, address college affordability and alleviate an affordable-housing crisis.
Unlike his other addresses, the second-term governor said, “I’m going to try to speak to the whole state, and that’s always tricky.”
The move will put pressure on the General Assembly, which opened the 120-day session Wednesday with talk of bipartisanship despite an election year with deep ideological disagreements.
Republicans hold a one-vote majority in the Senate, while Democrats maintain a three-vote edge in the House. The chambers are expected to serve as roadblocks to the other, as they did a year ago, and the chief question is whether the two sides can find compromise on major issues, particularly the $27 billion state budget.
“All of us have Colorado in common,” Senate Democratic leader Lucia Guzmán said in her opening-day remarks. “But we all know that we have severe differences in how we think about getting to a stronger state.”
Senate President Bill Cadman expressed optimism in his opening day remarks as he focused on the bipartisan compromises from the prior term.
“We can be proud of what we did together,” the Colorado Springs Republican said. “We sought the right answers, not the Republican answers, not the Democratic answers.”
Hickenlooper’s top priorities don’t deviate significantly from those of the lawmakers in both parties, but everyone differs sharply on solutions.
The governor spent the months between sessions touring the state promoting his message, but his legislative agenda is facing setbacks from the start.
Republican lawmakers produced a legislative legal memo that argues Hickenlooper’s push to reclassify the $750 million hospital provider fee program and remove it from TABOR revenue limits is unconstitutional. On two other priorities, Democratic leaders are expressing little interest in advancing the major items in the administration’s water plan and an overhaul of the construction-defects law.
Hickenlooper said he still plans to push forward on all three fronts, most notably the provider-fee issue, which he argues will help ease the state’s budget crunch.
He disputes the legislative legal memo and requested a formal opinion from Republican Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, whose office, he says, has greenlighted the move to convert the fee to an enterprise fund.
Even if he faces opposition in the legislature, Hickenlooper’s broad focus in his address may help lay the groundwork for ballot measures in 2016 to address the state’s “financial thicket,” as he said in his 2015 speech. The Building a Better Colorado initiative, an organization with close ties to the administration, is trying to create momentum for a remake of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights as well as other constitutional changes.
“His legacy and his story is going to be less focused on legislative action and more focused on the success he’s had in selling Colorado, the success he’s had in addressing big-picture problems like water management,” said Ben Davis, a Democratic consultant and Hickenlooper ally. “I think he’s never … put his hopes into the legislature as the only solution to the state’s problems.”
On opening day in the House, the question of how to improve roads and bridges highlighted the divide between the parties.
House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst said infrastructure is one of her top areas of focus. “Our state government must be involved in building a robust infrastructure — roads, bridges, public transportation and telecommunications,” the Boulder Democrat said. “Now, more than ever, it is critical to upgrade our transportation systems so goods and services, tourists and regular Coloradans on their daily commutes can get where they’re going without having to spend hours stuck in traffic.”
Republicans are pushing a measure to create $3.5 billion in transportation bonds, but Democrats blocked the measure in 2015.
House GOP leader Brian Del-Grosso called for a serious discussion.
“Members, we may differ on our approach to solving the problems before us, and on the most appropriate use of taxpayer dollars, but reasonable people can differ,” the Loveland lawmaker said in his opening address.
In the Senate, Cadman avoided policy specifics, opting to honor military and law enforcement officers in a speech that connecting their oaths to the one recited by lawmakers.
He welcomed to the chamber Rachel Swasey, the wife of officer Garrett Swasey, who was shot and killed in the attack at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs.
“Our military members swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Our law enforcement officers, our sheriffs swear an oath to support the Constitution,” Cadman said.
“In their jobs, they are willing to die for it. In our jobs, we must be willing to live for it.”