Legislative leaders open 2024 legislative session with hopes of civility

Lawmakers have returned to the State Capitol for the 2024 legislative session. The first two days were full of pomp and circumstance and drama.

Legislative leaders led off day one with remarks on how they’d like to see the 2024 session progress and all struck a very similar tone on civility.

The end of the 2023 session, as well as the special session in November on property taxes, both produced behavior that has troubled lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Two House Democrats resigned in December, both citing the toxic environment in the House. On the last day of the special session, a House Democrat — Representative Elisabeth Epps, Denver —joined pro-Palestinian protesters in disrupting the House business for about an hour. 

House Speaker Julie McCluskie, Dillon, took action, both after the special session and days before the start of the 2024 session, stripping Epps and another Democrat of their assignments on the prestigious House Judiciary Committee. She formally reprimanded Epps with a warning to her to cease violation of House rules.

In her opening day remarks, McCluskie asked members to make civility a priority. 

“Each member represents thousands of Coloradans in just one district, each of us equal in our role as State representative. The House rules are here to guarantee that each member has one vote and one voice and to ensure that no member's vote or voice is more important than another’s.”

Civility “means listening and appreciating members’ responses, putting down your phone, getting off of social media and having real conversations with one another,” she said.

McCluskie also spoke of the Democrats’ priorities for 2024, listing education — a signature issue for the former teacher — as well housing and public safety, including reducing gun deaths.

House Minority Leader Mike Lynch, Wellington, who announced he is running for the 4th Congressional District seat held by the retiring United States Rep. Ken Buck of Windsor, also called for civility. But he also asked Democrats to allow the voices of the minority party to be heard.

Republicans have complained that Democrats are using House rules to shut down debate, which happened numerous times during both the regular session and the special session.

“We are easily tempted to put party over the people and service takes a second seat to our personal ambitions,” Lynch said. “I implore you to remember it is not you that sits in those seats, it is the thousands of people who put you there …The voices you may not agree with but are still there to be heard from, in each one of your districts. I ask only one thing of you, please let those voices be heard.”

While the Senate has had much fewer problems with civility, that chamber has had its share of discord. Senate President Steve Fenberg noted that among the threats to democracy is that an “enormous amount of political debate no longer occurs primarily in the physical boundaries of these marble walls — or even in face-to-face conversations of any type. More often than not, it’s happening on our phones,” he said.

It’s also lawmakers who think about “quippy social media post” that score points with followers instead of walking across the room to talk to colleagues. “Too often our words and actions breed cynicism, feed hate for those we disagree with, and encourage more yelling, and less listening.” 

Fenberg asked his members to fight the urge to be performers. “We need to legislate for constituents, not for twitter. We must live up to the same standards that every man or woman who sat in our desks before us over the last 150 years has lived up to.”

As to priorities, Fenberg listed climate change, education and affordability in housing and other costs. 

Fenberg noted that 2024 is likely to be the year when the State pays off the debt to K-12 education, which reached more than $1 billion just a few years ago, but now stands at $141.2 million. Governor Jared Polis asked lawmakers to pay that debt off in his 2024-25 budget proposal, a request endorsed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

But that payoff is the bare minimum, Fenberg said, not the end goal.

In his comments, Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen also addressed the incivility that has marked the State Capitol in recent months, with a request for lawmakers to remember where they are and who they represent.

“It is critically important we be actively attentive to the perspectives of the people who sent us here with the expectation that we would serve them,” Lundeen said.

“Decorum is fundamental to the success of our work, and fundamental to achieving the goals created in representing the sovereignty of the people whom we represent,” Lundeen added.

“We must be able to bring disparate conflicting ideas together in a way that is rich with the values presented and equally rich in respect for the process in the people in whom we engage with that process.” 

The day, however, was marred with some of the same drama that surfaced during the special session. Pro-Palestinian protesters took over the House gallery, shouting at lawmakers until they were removed by the Colorado State Patrol and the House sergeants. McCluskie stood stone-faced as they halted House business for several minutes.

In his sixth State of the State address, Polis outlined an agenda focused on affordable housing, transit, education, public safety and the environment. 

He also voiced support for an income tax rate reduction, which he’s advocated for in every legislative session since first becoming Governor.

Republican lawmakers have brought forward bills every year to do just that, but those bills have been dead on arrival in the legislature every year and Polis has never advocated for their support among his Democratic colleagues.

In 2023, the Governor highlighted water as one of the key issues facing lawmakers that year. In the 2024 address, it was little more than an afterthought. 

Agriculture also received scant attention in his remarks, other than to thank lawmakers, including Sen. Rod Pelton, Cheyenne Wells, for their work on an agricultural training program to teach young people how to farm, and the introduction of wolves in Grand and Summit counties in December.

He advocated for non-lethal conflict minimization that he said would help farmers and ranchers “thrive.” That’s despite claims by a rancher in Jackson County that wolves that migrated from Wyoming have now killed almost dozens of his livestock and other animals. Don Gittleson, who ranches near Walden, recently said Colorado Parks and Wildlife are refusing to allow for lethal takes of two of those wolves.

In addition, the wolves brought to Colorado from Oregon come from a pack with a history of killing livestock, despite a promise from the state they would not seek wolves with that history.

Those remarks — and the lack of attention to the State’s second largest economic engine — did not sit well with Pelton’s cousin, Senator Byron Pelton, R-Sterling.

Pelton said he was all in for an income tax rate reduction. “Love them,” he said. “I’d love to see more of that,” because that puts money in people’s pockets, he added.

But the Governor’s advocacy for wolves that could kill livestock didn’t fly with Pelton. “What I can’t get behind is depredation with wolves,” he told this reporter. “For him to just point out non-lethal, there comes a point when there has to be lethal take” because eventually the wolves ignore the non-lethal conflict tools. “There was a promise made.” The Governor should not be touting this as a good thing, he added.

“It’s another year where we get to see our agriculture get slapped in the face again by our current Governor.”

Pelton also pointed out that Polis’ solution on housing leaves out regulatory reform. “We need to cut the regulations that have been put on construction over the last 30 years,” Pelton, an electrician, said. He cited recent modifications to energy codes that he said are driving up the cost of construction or stifling it altogether.