Leading Republican lawmakers told a group of GOP donors last week to expect some solutions to longstanding problems from the divided Colorado Legislature but said the party won’t be shy about waging a no-holds battle in the messaging war with an eye toward next year’s election.

Senate President Kevin Grantham, R-Cañon City, and his House counterpart, Minority Leader Patrick Neville, R-Franktown, along with Assistant House Minority Leader Cole Wist, R-Centennial, and state Sen. Kevin Priola, R-Brighton, engaged in a freewheeling, frank 90-minute discussion about the legislative session with about 75 Republican members of the state GOP’s Capitol Club on Wednesday, Jan. 25, at Maggiano’s Little Italy in downtown Denver.

Grantham began by talking about the two topics – transportation funding and construction litigation reform – that Capitol-watchers say have resolutions in sight, but he warned that Democrats, who control the House, will have to bend a little if they mean business.

“When they talk about prioritization on the other side,” Grantham said, “they talk about education and health care and transportation, but they have committed no extra money (to transportation), so there is no priority there, at least on the other side.” Instead, he charged, when Democrats have decided where to spend money, they’ve spent it on expanding Medicaid and Obamacare.

Grantham, who has been in negotiations with House Speaker Crisanta Duran, D-Denver, since before the session launched in January, said he’s hopeful that money can be found to fund an estimated $9 billion in unmet transportation needs, but stressed that some money will have to come out of the state’s general fund.

“We’re trying to twist arms and getting that money reprioritized is a top priority for us,” he said.

As for the other hot topic – unraveling a mess created by construction litigation legislation nearly a decade ago, leading to a tangle builders have said makes it too costly to provide entry-level housing – Grantham said a package of bills set to drop by late January will hold the bipartisan solution.

“If we can fix that in statute, I think we’re going to be giant-killers this year,” he said.

Neville said he was excited to see Grantham running things in the Senate, where the GOP holds a one-vote majority. “Because we’re going to see a slew of crazy liberal bills,” he added with a smile.

Pointing to Senate Bill 1, dubbed the “Regulatory Relief Act of 2017, legislation he is sponsoring with his father, state Sen. Tim Neville, R-Littleton, Neville dared Democrats to vote against it, noting that Republicans would be happy to contrast the parties on the issue.

“If we get some folks on record with that and use it in 2018 elections,” he said with a grin, “all the better.” (The bill passed out of a Senate committee later that afternoon with bipartisan support.)

Neville also vowed that House Republicans aren’t going to back down.

“We’re going to make sure we push some good red-meat bills,” he said, listing school choice, religious freedom, Second Amendment rights and abortion as topics his caucus planned to debate. “We have to start showing who we are. We have to define ourselves so the Democrats aren’t defining us.”

Republicans, Neville said, should be unafraid to draw sharp contrasts with the rival party, mindful that what transpires under the gold dome this year will be fodder for next year’s campaign season.

“Everything we do is looking at November of 2018, to get that majority,” he said with a determined nod.

Priola, whose win in a battleground Adams County district kept the Senate gavel in Republican hands, said he was optimistic the parties can bridge some divides. “This is the year there is more of a meeting of minds,” he said with a smile, adding that the chances will decline next year with an election looming.

At the suggestion of Colorado Republican Party Chairman Steve House, Priola mused briefly about the Legislature’s “kill” committees, each chamber’s State, Veterans and Military Affairs committee. “It’s a 99-percent certainty it’s not going to make it out of that committee,” he said. Then he noted that the committees, which are nearly always populated with lawmakers from safe districts – representing one of the state’s more closely divided Senate districts, Priola doesn’t sit on the Senate State Affairs Committee – serve a purpose beyond giving leadership a quick way to dispense with bills they don’t like.

“A lot of legislation that is pushed by our opponents is there to put our members on record and help create mailers in the election, so it also helps protect some of our vulnerable members in the next election,” Priola said.

Wist, who was appointed to his seat just over a year ago and won election to his first full term in November, pointed to Priola and CU Regent Heidi Ganahl, who won election statewide by a comfortable margin, as examples for Republicans.

“If we learned anything in the 2016 election, it’s that candidates like Kevin Priola and (CU Regent) Heidi Ganahl can win,” he said. “Republicans can win in Colorado if we put out authentic candidates that can speak about the issues and remember the one most important point of government,” he said, looking across the crowd, “that we work for you.”

Shaking his head, Wist rejected the argument Democrats are already making about transportation funding, that there isn’t enough money in the general fund without making drastic cuts to health care and education.

“Government has failed you,” Wist said. “Our infrastructure is falling apart. And the answer we get from the Democrats is to spend more on health care.” He continued: “Unless we start having difficult discussions not about what government can be but about what government should be, we can’t begin to fix things.”

Then he dove into the hot topic of construction litigation – Democrats refer to it as construction defects – and didn’t pull any punches.

“We have the most dysfunctional construction litigation law in the United States,” Wist said. “Bar none.” Noting that he’s an attorney who’s spent a career litigating some of the most complicated issues before the court system, he said lawmakers can figure it out. (Wist and his counterpart across the aisle, Assistant House Majority Leader Alec Garnett, D-Denver, are two of the key negotiators working on the topic.)

“I think we all believe that if someone harms you, the court system exists for you to take advantage of that, for you to sue, for you to get relief,” he said. “But that’s not what’s happening. It’s far too easy for builders to get hauled into court, to get tied up in litigation for years.”

Noting that a number of bills addressing the subject would be introduced shortly, Wist said it would be easy for Republicans to frame the results, whether the Legislature succeeded or failed.

“If we don’t get this done this session,” he said, “Democrats need to be asked the hard question, ‘Why are you more concerned about lawyers making money than you are about people being able to buy affordable housing?'”

– ernest@coloradostatesman.com