by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
The Daily Sentinel
The Colorado Legislature can only meet for 120 days a year, every legislator can only introduce five bills, bills must be passed by the 90th day, new programs must have a sunset clause, all meetings must be public and documents available for everyone to read. Except for the exceptions. Forty states have similar constraints, because they understand that limiting the legislature’s size, scope, and time is one way to guard against legislative misbehavior.
The Colorado Legislature, composed of exactly 100 members, limits senators and representatives to five bills each, implying that a maximum of 500 bills could be considered during any two-year session. But the Legislature regularly considers 700 bills or more, because there are exceptions. The five-bill limit does not include bills that come from committees rather than individual members, nor appropriation bills, nor any bills for which the leadership decides to make an exception. Worse yet, the leadership can waive all the deadlines and grant “late bill status” at their sole discretion.
That is the source of untold chicanery every year. The House and Senate both have a “Committee on Delayed Bills” composed of three people: the top two leaders of the majority party and the minority leader. Permission to waive deadlines and introduce legislation at the last minute requires approval of only two, so it has become a common tool for the majority party, often used to short-circuit the public process otherwise required.
This session, House Speaker Julie McCluskie (D-Dillon) has introduced nine bills, for example. In addition, she has been posturing to introduce legislation that would change Colorado’s historic laws governing ownership of streambanks and riverbeds. Under Colorado law, the waters of the state belong to the people, but the land under rivers belongs to the adjacent landowner. This is an issue state leaders grapple with every few years, because some organizations demand the “right to float” on streams crossing private property.
