This week marks the halfway point of the 120-day legislative session, and House and Senate leadership called upon the press to show off their accomplishments and talk agendas for the next 60 days.

Speaker of the House Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, D-Boulder, kicked off two days worth of meetings with reporters on Wednesday morning, discussing the budget and bills that will set up the last half of the 2015 session.

Topping that agenda: the rollout this week of a package of 10 bipartisan bills on workforce development. Hullinghorst said the package pushes forward plans made by majority Democrats in the House to help small business and the middle class.

The crafting of the 2015-16 budget is likely to dominate much of the second half of the session as well, but recent fights over supplementals make that process arduous.

The first half was dominated at times by ideological bills from the Senate and from House Republicans. Hullinghorst said she was disappointed that so many of those bills came from House Republicans this year. “We’ve had personhood, repealing gun safety” and others, but they “go to [the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee] and they die,” she said. “I hope we’re done with that.”

Hullinghorst is hopeful that the ideological fights of the first half won’t carry into the second half. “We’ve had some good bipartisan work in the first two months of the session. Those of us in leadership are working very hard to stay in communication” and she lauded Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, for his willingness to work with the House leadership. “We seem to be agreeing to disagree, and in most instances, fairly respectfully,” she said. But they also have agreed to work on the big issues that impact the state of Colorado.

A bill to deal with the TABOR refund from marijuana sales tax revenue is still likely this session, but it will be a referred measure to the ballot, Hullinghorst explained. It probably will be carried by Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Longmont, Speaker Pro Tem Dan Pabon, D-Denver, and members of the Joint Budget Committee.

Less likely is legislation on fracking, arising from the recent report from the governor’s Oil and Gas Taskforce. That group published nine recommendations last week, but Hullinghorst was reportedly less than thrilled with the lack of attention to local control in the group’s report.

Among the priorities for the Republican led Senate is Senate Bill 15-177, but Hullinghorst indicated it is a nonstarter in the House. “We’re willing to consider” how to define the problem and amend the bill to solve that, but she called the Senate bill “terrible”, and said that it takes away homeowners rights. “This is a market issue,” not a construction defects problem, she opined. “The impact of construction defects as it relates to builders is highly exaggerated.”

However, Hullinghorst left the door open for work on the issue in the future, given the actions taken by local municipalities such as Lakewood, which passed its own construction defects ordinance last year. “If these laws work, we might be more amenable” to a construction defects bill in a year or two, she said.

– Marianne@coloradostatesman.com