It’s that time of year again – the legislative interim – when our media friends and editorial writers draw sweeping but invariably distorted conclusions about “what the session really meant.” These are the same people who spent months largely ignoring the bipartisan successes while hyping partisan flaps, proclaiming that rancorous “partisanship” blocked passage of all the really good stuff, making the 2016 session a waste of time with little benefit to Coloradans.

But let me offer another perspective, as someone who was fully engaged in events every day and who reads these end-of-session laments with a sense of disbelief.

The General Assembly is evenly split, with Democrats controlling the House and Republicans controlling the Senate, so there’s no question things get partisan at times. Finding partisanship in a state capitol is about as surprising as seeing checkered flags at the Indianapolis 500. And partisanship isn’t always a bad thing, unless you work from the premise (as most reporters apparently do) that the General Assembly is just a political Pez dispenser of policies, programs and spending.

One alternative to “partisanship” is one-party rule, which we witnessed in abundance just a few years back, when totally dominant Democrats ran wild without any checks on their liberal appetites. I don’t recall reporters decrying “partisanship” when Democrats were running roughshod over Republicans, though that’s as partisan as it gets.

Democrats have their own session highlights to tout, but here is a sampling of the highlights from a Republican perspective. In 2016 the Legislature:

– Balanced the largest Colorado budget in history, which managed to fund the essentials while actually increasing funding for priority areas like education and roads, defying the doomsday predictions heard from doubters early in the session;

– Stood with taxpayers and the rule of law against a constitutionally dubious bookkeeping maneuver that would divert refunds meant for taxpayers to a statehouse spending spree (with no accountability);

– Provided seed funding for an initiative that has the potential to make Colorado the premier cybersecurity center of the United States;

– Fought to finally end funding discrimination against charter schools;

– Approved model student data privacy protections;

– Expanded higher-education opportunities for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities;

– Used the budget process to exercise greater oversight over often-mismanaged state agencies, forcing money-saving, service-improving changes in the way these agencies operate;

– Took a stand against wasteful spending on state compliance with Obama’s stalled and probably doomed climate mandates;

– Blocked efforts by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission to encroach into areas of telecom regulation from which it was expressly barred by previous legislatures, ensuring that redundant regulation doesn’t discourage investment in network expansion in under-served parts of the state;

– Continued our commitment to improving safety in public schools by funding an initiative designed to help close the communications gaps that can prevent the detection and deterrence of schoolhouse violence;

– Successfully fought to restore wildfire mitigation funds absent from the governor’s budget in recognition that the threat is still real;

– Sent the Obama administration a clear message opposing the relocation of Gitmo prisoners to Colorado; and

– Ended the diversion of severance taxes owed to energy-impacted counties, previously used to fill holes in the state budget.

That partial list isn’t too bad for a supposedly “do-nothing” General Assembly. And because doing nothing can sometimes be far better than doing the wrong thing, we also count as accomplishments the blocking of many terrible ideas put forth by the other side, which invariably focused on excessive spending, growing a fatter government, punishing businesses or promoting policies more suited to California than Colorado.

We stopped a barrage of anti-business bills that would have put a big chill on the state’s business climate and eliminated good jobs. Bills aimed at driving out domestic energy producers (who also happen to be major job and tax revenue generators in this state) similarly had to be thwarted.

Perhaps it would be fair to include in the measure of Republican Senate success not only what we see, but also what we don’t see post-session. Unlike the Democrats’ “Reign of Error,” we don’t see legislators being recalled by their constituents or forced to resign their seats. Unlike the Democrats, we didn’t generate a lawsuit against the state from over 50 of Colorado’s own county sheriffs. Unlike the Democrats, we didn’t drive any Colorado counties to seek secession from our state. Unlike the Democrats, Republicans aren’t pushing for record tax increases on citizens who are justly skeptical of government spending habits and often-questionable priorities.

All one has to do is look back a few years, to the liberal extremism that became routine under one party rule, to see how smart Coloradans were to vote in a split legislature, restoring a system of checks and balances the Founders saw as a cornerstone of a functional republic.

We naturally would have wanted to get more done on key issues like rebuilding decaying roads, dealing with the affordable housing crunch, and repealing some of the radical measures approved during the Democrats’ “Reign of Error.” But our efforts to move the ball on those important items were consistently thwarted by the other side.

Given those political realities, I believe Coloradans were well served by the bipartisan work – the nuts-and-bolts bills that address governing fundamentals – done at the statehouse during my time as Senate president.