Today I had the opportunity to have lunch with Senators Brandon Shaffer and Rollie Heath after a town meeting they just held. So I got them coming off of 2½ hours of discussing what they are doing down at the legislature and answering questions. That worked really well as they were already focused on discussing their efforts down at the capitol.
Rollie mentioned up front that he gave everyone 5 minutes to speak and Brandon was the only one to live with that limit. I'm shocked, repeat shocked, that most of the politicians talked for longer than scheduled.
It started off with Brandon asking me about my blogging & my company. Rollie was impressive - he answered some of Brandon's questions based on his remembering our previous conversations. Rollie clearly has a sharp mind and remembers everything. They both definitely like hearing that we were a company that's growing in this economy - they hear that all too seldom right now.
So then we shot in to what they are doing. Brandon started off discussing how he put in a lot of time to make sure the transportation bill was lined up with the support it needed to pass. He saw that as job #1 and even got it the designation SB-1. He saw that as the biggest responsibility for this session and is justifiably proud of getting it passed.
Update from Brandon: I worked hard to make the transportation piece SB-1, but it didn't actually get that designation. We continued to negotiate with the Republicans and introduced it two weeks after the session started. It is SB-108. {Dave: my fault for misunderstanding.}
He also discussed how he worked really hard to pull in some Republican votes. He reached a point where Senator White had a proposed amendment and he had 4 Republicans saying they could support the bill with this amendment - but they had to caucus first. And when they came back the proposed amendment was withdrawn. As Brandon said, he does not know what occurred in the Republican meeting.
But I think the result speaks for itself - there was a GOP insistence on voting against the transportation bill - that there must be no GOP support. This is a clear sign of a party more focused on political advantage than actually legislating. And what I don't get is how is a unanimous vote against the transportation bill beneficial to the GOP? It only gains them support from their dead-enders and those people will vote for them regardless.
Funny comment - later on Brandon was talking about a discussion with a Republican legislator about his vote on something minor and he joked that he needed to call Pat Waak to find out how he was going to vote on it. Painful humor as it so clearly delineates the difference between the Democratic and Republican approach in the legislature.
Next came the discussion of the bill to overturn Arvsomething-Bird. First off Brandon was very complimentary of Marostica. Extremely complimentary, saying people needed to realize how brave he is politically and how he's trying to get the Republican party to actually govern.
Rollie talked about this more, about why they think it can be overturned in the legislature. And why it's so critical. Both went into the insanity of our present system where the cuts they are making today because of the economic crunch are locked in permanently due to the constraints of our laws. They brought up the fact that this discourages experimentation because you can't move some funding elsewhere to see if that elsewhere works better - and then move it back if that didn't work as well.
They then dove into how TABOR is the driving factor in everything the state can and cannot do. What's interesting is their response. First they are working on putting together a TABOR funding request for this November's ballot. So it will be a year late (due to TABOR, not the legislature) but they can then start responding to the present Great Recession.
But what was really interesting is both were discussing a constitutional convention. They are investigating if a convention can be called that is limited to financial issues. They know it will take 5 - 6 years for the whole process to run before we have a new constitution - if it passes. But they are discussing it. I think this is really good because our only long term solution is a constitutional convention where we can clear all the dreck out of it. It's only when problems are this large that people will consider something as game changing as a constitutional convention. Don't be surprised if we are electing convention members this November (that is the one office I might run for).
I was impressed that there was no bitching about TABOR, it was just what they had to do today, this November, and over the next several years to address it's restrictions. These are two guys that are busy getting the job done within the constraints they must work with.
We then had a passing discussion of Higher Ed. They are both happy with the funding levels they retained and passed on that the top people at C.U. had expected worse and so were also quite happy. Things are rough all around and we all need to do more with less, but in this case the less is not that bad.
Rollie then discussed legislation he had brought forward with bi-partisan support (Dick Wadhams cell phone must have been dead that day) to bring some significant improvement in the CSAP process. It will start tracking individual students throughout K-12 and provide the results immediately instead of months years later. Rollie is going to bring school measurement into the Internet age.
Brandon then closed out with a pair of really interesting observations. It can be summed up as the Republican members are claiming that the Democratic members are not willing to prioritize and are not willing to make the hard decisions. His reply was that the Democratic members are prioritizing, they just aren't the same priorities the Republicans hold. That the Democratic members are willing to make the hard decisions, they just aren't the same decisions the Republicans would make.
It's interesting, both Brandon & Rollie come across as very nice guys. Both clearly want to work with Republicans and find satisfaction when they do get Republican support. But both are also clearly going to do what is needed to get the state through the present economic mess. They take no joy in overriding Republican obstruction - but they are going to override it.
These guys are getting it done.
