Notes Archives - Page 20 of 20

A former Senate Republican leader, who carried legislation to enact a campaign-reform amendment approved by voters in 2002, says his bill was fundamentally different from a now-pending attempt to exempt large groups of people from voter-approved Amendment 41.

Mark Hillman, who served as Senate majority leader in 2003-04 and as minority leader in 2005, was Senate sponsor of a 2003 bill that implemented Amendment 27. Hillman disputes current claims that the bill made substantive changes to Amendment 27 in the way that some now propose for Amendment 41, the government-ethics law voters adopted last November.

“Legislators are in a real bind. Either they uphold the plain language of the constitution, which is the first oath that they take, or they do what is politically popular and ignore the plain language of the constitution.”
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How Colorado turned blue

January 24, 2007July 19, 2016 Mark Hillman

What a difference eight years makes – or even four, for that matter. Bill Ritter’s inauguration as governor on Jan. 9 marks a milestone in a political transformation that seemed unlikely, if not virtually impossible, just a few years ago.

Hand it to Colorado Democrats: they’ve done a remarkable job turning our state’s political landscape upside down, despite trailing Republicans in voter registration by some 170,000.
Now, activists and analysts are studying this transformation to see if the Colorado model can be exported to other states, particularly those in the West.

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Jargon

January 17, 2007July 19, 2016 Mark Hillman

During my eight years at the State Capitol, I found that, for people who have a life, one of the more difficult aspects of following news about the Legislature is making sense out of the peculiar vernacular of the Capitol.

Legislators and lobbyists speak in strange tongues about “fiscal notes” and “legislative declarations” or converse in acronyms (like JBC, DORA, CDE, FTE). Such jargon gives legislators an unparalleled ability to cure insomnia.
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