Maybe Colorado should move its Presidential caucus up to next week. Let’s just get it over with.
House Minority Leader Mike May apparently thinks that members of the state legislature do too much thinking. As Lynn Bartels of the Rocky Mountain News explains:
House Minority Leader Mike May ripped Democrats during the session, saying that they were “the driving force behind more than 25 new or expanded commissions, committees or task forces.”
“We can’t study forever,” he said at the time. “The people of Colorado sent us here to do a job.”
House Democrats are perplexed by the criticism because voting records show that an overwhelming majority of the 18 commission bills that passed the House did so with broad bipartisan support.
Five of those bills passed unanimously. And two of the bills had only one “no” vote. The commissions deal with issues ranging from education to veterans to forest restoration.
May initially said “wow” Wednesday when he read the vote results for the commission bills. Then he said he stood by his criticism, made in a news release issued last week.
“Legislature more interested in studying than solving” said the headline on the release.
But Democrats are wondering why, if Republicans are so opposed to studies, they supported so many of the bills.
“I think my friend Mike May should spend more time studying his own press releases before sending them,” House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, said Wednesday.
You know, I think May could be onto something here. The legislature could get a lot more done if they just put ideas on a dartboard and then threw darts to choose a solution. Studying and thinking are for losers.
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Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean is in Denver today for a benefit for the Colorado Democratic Party. Tickets are $30 for the 6:30 p.m. event at the Pipefitters Local 208 Union Hall in Denver. For more information, check out ColoradoDems.org.
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Bueller! Coffman!
The editorial board of The Denver Post has some harsh words for Secretary of State Mike Coffman:
In his campaign to become Colorado’s secretary of state, Mike Coffman pledged to uphold the integrity of an office that had been diminished by partisan rulemaking under previous occupants.
It was the right thing to say, and it’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately, he hasn’t practiced what he preached. Coffman misfired by hiring a political activist with a GOP consulting business as the state’s elections technology manager.
Now, Dan Kopelman, former president of Denver Metro Young Republicans, is being investigated after selling vote data to Republicans through a commercial website. The state auditor will launch a probe on the heels of a secretary of state investigation.
Coffman has reassigned Kopelman from some, but not all, of his elections duty. He needs to do more.
Coffman and Kopelman have been friends for more than a decade. Kopelman has worked on previous Coffman campaigns, and he was awarded a job in the state treasurer’s office under Coffman…
…Coffman campaigns have made past payments to Kopelman’s Political Live Wires firm, but Tee said Coffman didn’t know the business’ scope. It begs the question: When Kopelman worked in the treasurer’s office, wasn’t he violating personnel rules by operating an outside business?
“Dan told us that he did receive permission from Ben Stein,” then deputy treasurer, Tee said. “He alerted Stein to his business.”
Stein disagrees, saying he only spoke to Kopelman about separating his political activism from his work duties. “He may have thought he told me he did something for profit, but I have no recollection of anything of that nature,” Stein told us. “I never heard of that particular business.”
The secretary of state’s office must meet a high standard for integrity. Coffman erred by appointing a political activist and entrepreneur to the state’s election management team, and he erred again Wednesday by allowing Kopelman to continue working with the statewide voter-registration system. Coffman should consider the public interest and reverse course.
Wow. I didn’t know Ben Stein used to work for the state treasurer. I always wondered what happened to him after the demise of his game show, “Win Ben Stein’s Money.”
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Colorado Rep. Mark Udall has won a couple of major battles in congress, according to two press releases issued by his office. The first relates to the controversy over expansion in Pinon Canyon:
The House Armed Services Committee approved a measure offered by U.S. Rep. Mark Udall (D-Eldorado Springs) to place limits on the Army’s ability to use eminent domain to expand the Pi
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