Not much to report from the legislature, as three days into the 2021 session they took a month off. They left, but not before they twisted the legislative rules into something I find deeply troubling. Now, during a declared medical emergency, which the governor seems willing to keep in perpetuity, legislators can legislate from home, including all voting authority.
I have two significant problems with this arrangement. First, the legislature must meet as a body to be able to properly debate, discuss, amend, be observed by the public, conduct public hearings, and have access to all the other means of interaction that occurs during the intentionally slow and methodical process of legislation. To put it all online eliminates too much of the deliberation that is an essential part of proper legislation. When I reviewed the Colorado Constitution, the statutes, and House and Senate rules I saw that the legislature probably can twist the rules around to allow remote legislating, but only because previous legislators could not envision the legislature doing anything but meeting in person as a legislature. I am certain our state’s founders would be appalled to see what has been done to the Colorado Legislature.
Secondly, if grocers, doctors, policemen, and fire fighters are “essential,” legislators can and should be as well. There is no valid excuse for the people’s representatives to abandon their responsibility to represent the people to the best of their ability during this protracted “emergency.” I get it if the legislature took off a few weeks in a once in a lifetime emergency, but we are approaching the second year and have already begun the second general session in this “emergency” and it is starting to look like this is the legislature’s new normal.
The 73rd General Assembly needs to go back and read the opening paragraphs of Article V of the Colorado Constitution, which establishes the Colorado legislature. It is my opinion that they are not fulfilling the oath they took just ten days ago to defend and obey that constitution. Instead they are creating a power vacuum which the governor and his bureaucrats are only too happy to fill.
