Colorado legislature: RTD reform bill dies, with a whimper, as session enters final day
The Colorado legislature’s 2024 session is ready to finish Wednesday evening, and the Home and Senate convened for a closing day of debate and votes to wrap up payments on quite a lot of priorities, together with property tax reform and land-use coverage modifications that can have an effect on native governments.
This story will probably be up to date all through the day.
Up to date at 10:08 a.m.: The much-discussed and much-rewritten invoice to reform the Regional Transportation District was unveiled this session with a roar — maligned by critics however backed by supporters as a wanted rework of metro Denver’s transit company.
It died this week with barely a whimper, blinking out on the Senate’s calendar within the closing days.
Home Invoice 1447 handed the Home late final week, after it had been stripped of its most controversial provisions, together with a plan to overtake RTD’s elected board and governance. It then handed an preliminary Senate committee however languished on the calendar of the Senate Appropriations Committee; it wanted to get out of that committee and go a primary full vote on the ground earlier than the top of Tuesday.
That didn’t occur, that means it’s unattainable for the invoice to go now, on condition that the session ends Wednesday evening. The invoice would’ve nonetheless required higher coordination between RTD and a regional council of metro-area governments, and it included methods to bolster RTD workers, funds transparency and planning for transit service to particular occasions.
It wasn’t the one invoice to die procedurally Tuesday. Among the many different casualties was a Home invoice to review the potential of launching a common well being care system in Colorado, plus one other Home invoice that will’ve required gun house owners to carry legal responsibility insurance coverage.
Each of these measures had already handed the Home, although the insurance coverage measure cleared by the narrowest attainable margin.
The research invoice’s loss of life was notably grating to its Home sponsors, Democratic Reps. Karen McCormick and Andy Boesenecker, as a result of an identical invoice died on the Senate’s calendar final 12 months, too. Home members have grumbled concerning the Senate’s calendar in current days, and the research invoice’s loss of life additional infected these frustrations Tuesday evening.
However because the Home gathered for the ultimate day Wednesday morning, the feelings have been completely different.
The day began with lawmakers paying tribute to departing colleagues — these termed out or operating for different places of work. That included emotional help for Republican Rep. Rod Bockenfeld, who’s been absent for a lot of the session as he battles most cancers; Bockenfeld appeared nearly to listen to his colleagues tearfully thank him for his service.
Different departing members embrace Democratic Rep. Mike Weissman, whose potential to recall actual statutory language off the cuff is famous; Republican Rep. Mark Catlin, the one member of the minority who serves as vice chair of a committee within the Democrat-dominated Home; Rep. Chris deGruy Kennedy, the speaker professional tem and the Home’s level particular person on tax coverage in recent times; and Rep. Leslie Herod, who’s helped spearhead felony justice reform throughout her eight years within the constructing.
Weissman and Catlin are each operating for the state Senate, so their time within the Capitol will not be carried out but.
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