Lawmakers willing to talk on the record about bills they have planned for the legislative session set to open Wednesday mostly have been touting economic-development measures — the kind of bills their constituents expect them to introduce and that tend to gather headlines whenever the legislative session is about to open.

What about the bills that will generate passion among the public and throw sparks at the Capitol? Some of those have been reported on for months. Some are just coming to light — the kind of bills that highlight ideological fault lines and conflicting interest-group support, the kind that will fail to pass, given the divided power in the Legislature but that can succeed on a host of different levels by making a moral stand, moving the needle on the issue, prepping the ground for the next session, staking out territory in a legislative swing district, satisfying campaign donors, fulfilling campaign promises or wooing would-be constituents of the future.

House Minority Leader Brian DelGrosso, R-Loveland, said leaders on both sides of the aisle this election year would prefer to preside over a smooth and predictable session, but that that never happens. People will become enraged. Politicians will posture. Testimony will get ugly. Ideologies will clash. And candidates will raise plenty of money based on the debate under the dome.

“Everyone here is allowed to run five bills,” DelGrosso said. “It’s not my job as a leader to tell them what they can and cannot run. I didn’t elect them. Their constituents elected them. I try to honor that. No one representative here is more important than any other.”

“I think myself and my colleagues [in leadership], we like predictability because, you know, when stuff gets a little crazy, you never know what’s going to go on here,” he chuckled.

Among the potentially controversial legislation, at least two bills this session will touch on oil and gas development and local control. Others address the rights of the unborn, education policy — including school testing — gun control, senior citizen tax breaks, marijuana clubs and Obamacare.

State Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton, plans to run a bill that would make oil and gas companies liable for any property damage or physical injury caused by earthquakes, which have been tied to the industry’s waste-water injection wells. Residents of Salazar’s Adams County district have been outraged by plans to set major drilling operations in crowded neighborhoods.

Republicans, who control the Senate, have said that Salazar’s bill will never make it out of their chamber, referring to it as a “nonstarter.”

House Minority Whip Perry Buck, R-Windsor, is for the second time running a bill that would require cities and towns that pass bans on oil and gas drilling to compensate affected mineral rights owners.

“Our government should not have the authority to deprive an owner the use of their property without just compensation,” she said in a statement issued by House Republicans.

Last year’s version of her bill was killed by Democrats before the session hit the halfway mark.

Capitol sources say Republicans will also run a bill that wades into the messy terrain of the state’s senior homestead exemption. The exemption is a tax break, equal to 50 percent of the first $200,000 worth of a home’s value, meant to help out struggling seniors and disabled veterans, but critics say it has generally helped seniors on the wealthier end of the spectrum.

The program has been plagued by lack of oversight and some fraud. The Denver Post reported last year that some $25.3 million of the nearly $117 million the state paid to counties for the exemption in 2014 couldn’t be verified as legitimate. The state auditor reportedly found 10,335 exemptions worth $5.1 million paid that year to applicants who were deceased.

Reports suggest Sen. Tim Neville, R-Littleton, is considering sponsoring the bill. Neville is also running for the U.S. Senate this year, hoping to replace Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet. Seniors are a strong voting bloc and Neville would likely pitch the bill if he does sponsor it as a way to protect elderly and disabled residents from fraud, sources said.

Rep. Janak Joshi, R-Colorado Springs, again plans to introduce a fetal homicide bill that would allow prosecutors to bring murder or assault charges against people who kill or injure fetuses, or, as he has worded it in past iterations of the bill, any “unborn member of the species homo sapiens.”

Joshi is facing a primary challenge from former state Rep. Larry Liston, R-Colorado Springs, in one of the more conservative districts in the state.

Joshi’s bill will likely draw additional heat this year, coming after the shootings at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs stoked passions around abortion politics in the state. In addition, this spring a trial is scheduled to start for a woman accused of brutally stabbing a pregnant woman in the abdomen and removing a 7-month-old fetus. The woman who was attacked survived the assault but the fetus did not, and critics are outraged that the alleged assailant isn’t facing murder charges.

Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt, R-Colorado Springs, said he has signed on as co-sponsor of Joshi’s bill along with “many other members” of the caucus, because “Rep. Joshi is a strong pro-life conservative, and because the bill is a good way to protect women and innocent children.”

Klingenschmitt is running in a tough primary of his own against former Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, to replace term-limited Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs. Klingenschmitt, a former Navy chaplain and an Internet preacher, is selling himself as the true conservative in the race.

This session, Klingenschmitt said he plans to introduce a bill to “repeal Obamacare in Colorado statutes.” He said his proposal would effectively nullify a bill passed in 2013, HB-1266, which brought state insurance laws into line with the federal Affordable Care Act.

“That state bill made it illegal to sell cheap insurance in Colorado,” Klingenschmitt said. “All insurers had to offer plans with the basic Obamacare requirements, and because it’s a state law, Colorado was never eligible for a waiver.

“There were 33 Democratic co-sponsors of the bill. There was only one Republican. Can you guess who it was?” Klingenschmitt asked rhetorically. “It was Bob Gardner and he was a prime sponsor with Beth McCann.” (State Rep. Beth McCann is a term-limited Democrat from Denver and is running in a heated primary of her own for district attorney.)

“This is the centerpiece of the campaign for Senate District 12,” Klingenschmitt said, referring to his primary. “I’m asking voters if they want a liberal Republican who wrote Obamacare into our statutes, or do they want conservative who will work at the Legislature to repeal Obamacare in the state?”

Klingenschmitt also said he plans to support an education bill opposed to Common Core testing and the involvement in Colorado schools of PERC, “a multi-state consortium of test-writers,” as Klingenschmitt put it.

Education politics has drawn crowds to the Capitol and to the polls in recent years in Colorado. The clashes pit unions against free-market reformers looking to boost school choice and privatization. School testing has riled up students, parents and teachers across the political spectrum and lawmakers have taken notice.

“We want local control,” said Klingenscmitt. “Why trust distant bureaucrats who may not have the best interest of our children in mind, particularly when compared to local teachers and parents?”

Sen. Andy Kerr, D-Lakewood, said he is introducing a bill to move the state toward providing universal, all-day kindergarten. Last year Kerr sponsored a bill that would have sought voter-approval to keep tax refunds over the course of five years to pay for full-day kindergarten.

Kerr will also introduce a bill to increase from $40 million to $50 million the state’s contribution to the B.E.S.T. matching grant program, which pays for school refurbishment and new school construction.

Rep. Justin Everett, R-Littleton, said he will again sponsor his “Make My Day Better” law, which would allow business owners and employees to use firearms in defense of their businesses. Everett picked up the torch on the Make My Day bill from now-U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, who originally proposed the bill as a state representative.

“I think we can expect a more lively debate this year when it comes to civil liberties and Second Amendment rights,” Everett said.

Rep. Lori Saine, R-Firestone, is also set to introduce a bill to repeal the current 15-round limit on ammunition magazines that was passed in 2013, Everett said.

In the wake of President Barack Obama’s emotional announcement Tuesday calling on lawmakers and citizens to push for more gun control measures, Everett said the climate at the Capitol may be more favorable for proposals that would expand gun rights, as it was in 2013, after Democrats enraged conservatives in the state by passing gun-control legislation.

“I remember cars drove around the Capitol and honking horns in opposition to the (gun-control) bills and it was hard to hear the speaker at the podium on the floor,” he said. “You could barely walk through the Capitol from all the citizens that showed up to testify against those [gun-control] bills.”

Rep. Kit Roupe, R-Colorado Springs, is teeing up a bill that would establish cannabis clubs in the state. Smoking weed is now legal in Colorado, of course, but only in private spaces. The Legislature in the past prohibited the establishment of Amsterdam-style smoking clubs and cafes, in part because the clubs would violate indoor clean-air regulations. It’s unclear how Roupe plans to pass her bill this year. She was reticent to go into detail on Wednesday but is holding meetings asking for input later in the week.

John Tomasic contributed to this story.

— ramsey@coloradostatesman.com

— john@coloradostatesman.com