The state Senate OK’d an effort today to step up penalties for vandalism of oil-and-gas hardware like pumps and pipelines, but it first eased up on one provision in the measure.

Republican state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg’s Senate Bill 35 would upgrade from a class 2 misdemeanor to a class 6 felony the crime of knowingly destroying, breaking, removing or otherwise tampering with oil and gas equipment, or attempting to do so. The penalty for a class 2 misdemeanor is three months to a year in jail and a fine between $250 and $1,000. A class 6 felony is a year to 18 months in prison, a fine between $1,000 to $100,000.

Before voting on the bill, the GOP-controlled Senate amended it to leave it a misdemeanor if anyone “alters, obstructs, interrupts, or interferes with” the operation of oil and gas equipment. That clause in the current law is construed in part to address blockades and protests at pipelines. The amendment didn’t placate Democrats, however, who criticized the bill as unnecessary and misguided.

A press statement issued by the Senate GOP this morning contends that the potential for havoc is real:

Several nearby oil producing states have seen similar acts of vandalism which often result in hazardous destruction of property and possible ecological danger to the community. In Colorado, over $250,000 in oil and gas equipment were recently stolen from a site in Weld County and in Routt County, two teens were killed in an explosion while vandalizing oil tanks.

The statement also quoted Sonnenberg:

“Peaceful protests and free speech are among the bedrock rights of our society,” said Sonnenberg. “However, it is our duty as public servants to practice environmental stewardship and take action against those who seek to harm our communities through destructive disregard of our safety and laws.”

As if it weren’t already clear from the context, the bill’s supporters are particularly worried about monkey-wrenching motivated by politics. As ColoradoPolitics.com’s Joey Bunch noted in a report on SB 35 earlier this month:

In September Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was charged with misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief for spray painting equipment at a pipeline construction site near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.

Stein responded by calling on authorities to “press charges against the real vandalism taking place at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation: the bulldozing of sacred burial sites and the unleashing of vicious attack dogs.”

Democrats who voted against the bill, meanwhile, questioned the need and the priorities:

“Why carve out something for oil and gas when we’re not adequately protecting people?” state Sen. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, said in comments released by the Senate Democrats. “We should be focusing our attention on protecting Colorado families around oil and gas industrial operations, not oil corporations.”

Jones and fellow Boulder County Democratic state Sen. Steve Fenberg have been jousting with state Attorney General Cynthia Coffman over her lawsuit demanding the county drop its moratorium on new oil and gas drilling permits, which she said is illegal.

State Sen. Rhonda Fields, an Aurora Democrat, meanwhile suggested the bill could have a chilling effect on political dissent:

“This is a felony in search of a protester to convict. In Colorado, we do not live in a dictatorship nor do we have an authoritarian form of government. We live in a democracy that should not suffocate but protect our right to protest, our right to free speech, and our right to assemble to safeguard our community.”