GOP STALLING ON VACCINE BILL

Hearing set for Sunday; aim is to boost state’s low rate of vaccinations

Republican opponents began engaging in stall tactics Friday on Senate Bill 163, the bill aiming to increase Colorado’s vaccination rates. The legislation is scheduled to get a House hearing Sunday.

When Colorado Rep. Kyle Mullica returned to the Capitol to resume this year’s legislative session, officers approached him about a 911 call they received.

Someone had called to report him, saying he should be quarantined after treating patients with COVID-19 at the Cook County Jail in Chicago.

The incident shows just how contentious — and personal — Colorado’s fight over a vaccine bill has gotten. Mullica, an emergency room nurse by occupation, is one of the sponsors Senate Bill 163. The bill aims to increase Colorado’s vaccination rates — the lowest in the nation — by making it harder for people to claim nonmedical exemptions.

The bill is scheduled to get a House hearing Sunday at noon, but the chamber’s Republicans, who mostly oppose it, began engaging in stall tactics Friday to slow down the vaccine bill and other legislation they oppose.

When lawmakers returned May 26 with a goal of finishing their work as quickly as possible, Democrats said they would focus on bills that had little opposition or cost. That led to doubts about whether the vaccine bill, which passed the Senate before the recess, would survive, but this week Democratic leadership added it to the calendar.

“So far, friendly and free has been a lie, so we thought we’d finish the job and slow things down a little,” the House Republican caucus tweeted Friday.

Republican lawmakers asked for bills to be read at length and

sought frivolous amendments such as renaming a bill after the Tom Selleck show “Magnum, P.I.,” among other tactics.

“If you thought we’d roll over and give in, you were wrong,” the GOP said in another tweet. House Democrats also had their say on Twitter, tweeting Friday: “Democrats are governing responsibly in the middle of a pandemic and all the GOP can do is waste the people’s time.”

The vaccine bill, Mullica said, is good for the community given Colorado’s lowest-in-the-nation vaccination rates, and is backed by medical professionals as well as a majority of Coloradans.

“It’s disappointing,” he said. “I think we should be better than that and debate the merits of the bill.”

Supporters and opponents of the bill will have the opportunity to do that Sunday.

“PLEASE SHOW UP!! WE NEED THOUSANDS of people!!” the Colorado Health Choice Alliance posted to its Facebook page Thursday.