Colorado's 68th General Assembly Commences

The 68th General Assembly began its 120-day session yesterday morning. It was a historic morning for many reasons, not least of which being the most closely divided house in Colorado history.

The atmosphere was one of bipartisanship, pageantry and celebration with legislators and their families (including young children) sitting on the House floor. Chief Justice Michael Bender, prior to swearing in the House members, expressed his appreciation that the event was indoors (a not-so-veiled swipe at Governor John Hickenlooper's outdoor inauguration held the previous day). Outgoing Democrat House Speaker Terrance Carroll passed the gavel to incoming Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty with a gigantic bear hug.

Speaker Frank McNulty furthered the bipartisan atmosphere with his inaugural speech. However, the Speaker did point out the large budgetary problem the Assembly faces and insisted that working families and small businesses be spared the burden of closing the $1 billion gap (as recorded in the House Journal):

Our state faces an historic budget gap of more than $1 billion. On this, let me be clear. The days of balancing the state budget on the backs of working families and small businesses are over. We cannot treat the state budget differently than families across Colorado treat their own budgets. We have the next 120 days to learn how to do it.

The bill for kicking the can down the road has come due. We will not spend what we don't have, and yes, I recognize that this will require the State of Colorado to further tighten its belt. But that same belt tightening has gone on throughout Colorado by working families and small businesses for the past four years. If we refuse to make the tough choices now, these same choices will become more difficult for Colorado to bear down the road. These tough choices will require working in good faith.

Governor Hickenlooper; and my friends in the Senate: We stand ready to work with you and make the tough choices. But we must—and we will—adhere to our core principles and to the will of the people of Colorado.

Contrasting Speaker Frank McNulty's bipartisan, pro-business approach, Minority Leader Sal Pace took a partisan, pro-big government approach with a veiled swipe at Republicans.

To neglect programs or slash services without method; to penalize hardworking state workers and teachers to score political points; to demonize people because of their skin color or national origins; and to balance our budget on the backs of the poor, the elderly, the sick and the young – these are not acceptable solutions to the people of Colorado. And they should not be acceptable to any of us.

If cynicism and fear influence the choices we make in this room over the coming months, then we all have fundamentally failed the people who put us here.

In that spirit, I call on all of us in this room to set aside the partisan differences that divided us during the campaign, and to turn down the rhetoric.

Of course, Minority Leader Sal Pace works represents the labor unions and government workers exclusively in the legislature, so he is merely fighting for his constituency. His straw man arguments about the rhetoric (read: anything with which Sal Pace disagrees) effectively poisoned the bipartisan atmosphere and left a sour taste in the mouths of many of the attendees.

--David Carpenter