…Twenty Years Ago This Week in The Colorado Statesman … The Colorado General Assembly seemed to have lawmakers’ heads stuck in the corporate law section of the Colorado Revised Statutes. At the start of the 1997 legislative session, the Colorado Bar Association pushed two measures in the Legislature that would have far-reaching impact in corporate law, and would likely help corporate lawyers make a little extra cash too. One bill revised the Nonprofit Corporation Act and another changed Colorado’s partnership law, while still another helped define the role of partners in a business entity should creditors come knocking.

Senate Bill 97-091, sponsored by Sen. Doug Linkhart, D-Denver, and Rep. Tambor Williams, R-Greeley, was 194 pages long and included 15 pages of conforming amendments for nonprofit corporations. Though it didn’t become law until July 1, 1998, all nonprofit Colorado corporations incorporated since 1968 would be governed by the new statute.

The bill even included language that was thrown out of the 1996 nonprofit corporation law that allowed such an entity to give “notice by radio or television” when “notice” is required under the law.

Under clause 7-126-401, in order for a stockholder to bring a “derivative action” measure against the officers, directors or other stockholders, the stockholder had to be a member with five percent voting power in the corporation.

The Nonprofit Corporation Act Colorado operated under before 1998, forbid lending corporate money to directors and officers, but SB97-091 allowed loans to a director or a director’s relatives as long as a majority of disinterested directors approved it.

Another bill, SB97-018, sponsored by Sen. Jim Congrove, R-Arvada, and Rep. Doug Dean, R-Colorado Springs, passed the Senate in early 1997, and contained language allowing charter schools to become nonprofit corporations.

Proponents of the bills stated that if SB97-018 and SB97-091 passed without amendment, it was possible that money scheduled for use by charter schools for education could instead be loaned to individual charter school directors.

HB97-1237 by future Speaker of the House, nut then just plain-old Rep. Russ George, R-Rifle, and Sen. Dick Mutzebaugh, R-Highlands Ranch, and promulgated by the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, changed precedent regarding entities. Historically, a partnership was an entity as well as an aggregate of the individual partners. That meant that creditors could get at a partner’s personal assets along with partnership assets. But under the bill, partners were off the hook to creditors except for their interest in the partnership.

All of the bills were good news for groups running continuing education courses at “modest fees” to retrain attorneys. But those attorneys would regain whatever they had to spend on retraining courses, and more, by notifying clients that their partnership articles would have to be revised.

For attorneys with clients operating nonprofit corporations, they would be retrained by the Colorado Bar Association with the added plus of profitable fees.

The CBA was also knee-deep in working on the “Universal Business Entity Act,” which was designed to replace corporations, partnerships and limited liability companies with a “one-size-fits-all” law that would be ready in 2002.

Mike Beaty, former chairman of the Colorado Democratic Party, stated in the American Bar Association Journal of April 1994, “Lawyers, like the airlines, will be far better off as soon as they realize that the public wants to get from one point to another in the cheapest way possible.”

… Ten Years Ago … Fast forward 10 years to the “Iraq War Troop Surge of 2007” and the Colorado Legislature had a magnifying glass on active duty military and veterans policy. Rep. Joe Rice, D-Littleton, and Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, spoke out for members of the military at a press conference, joined by representatives of the United Veterans Committee, members of the Colorado National Guard and retired veterans, all there to support of a number of pro-military bills, dubbed the “Help Our Heroes” package.

The package, which included nine bills altogether, ranged greatly in scope and aim. Senate Bill 07-146 would create a $300,000 mental healthy program to assist servicemen and veterans returning from Iraq. House Bill 07-1163 would require state institutions to offer in-state tuition to servicemen transferred to Colorado on a temporary basis.

Rice said he saw all the bills as vital support measures for a military that was increasingly burdened by lengthening tours of duty and other demands. He pointed out that Colorado spends an estimated 97 cents per veteran per year, a “dismal” amount that needed to be increased.

“I want to look at specifically what types of things make sense to do and what will have an impact,” Rice explained. “The (Iraq) war has increased the current need for aid.”

Most of the bills garnered almost total bipartisan support. Four of the nine bills were sponsored or co-sponsored by Republicans.

Rice, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, served multiple tours of duty in Iraq himself, but denied that his background and the fact that he sponsored four out of the nine bills in the package made him a new spokesman for the military community in Colorado.

“There’s a few of us here that have a military background. I’m not more (of a leader) than anyone else,” Rice said. He attributed the success of the package’s roll-out to a common understanding of the need to support Colorado’s troops.

“It shows that these are very reasonable and necessary measures. I just hope that support translates into support for the little bit of money required in the Long Bill,” he said, referring to Colorado’s coming budget bill.

Rice estimated the total cost of all of the bills to be around $500,000, and pointed out that a majority of them were simply added mandates and didn’t require any funding.

“Many of the bills don’t cost money and the ones that do cost money, it’s a lot of bang for the buck,” Rice said. The most expensive, SB 07-146’s new mental health program was a “direct response to the shortfall of federal funding and support for the issue.”

“We can spend time arguing, but while we are, there are servicemen who need help now, and if they don’t get it, the consequences can be dire,” Rice warned and pointed to a rise in suicides and domestic violence incidents due to post-traumatic stress disorder and other common ailments of battle-strained veterans.

Many of those incidents, Rice said, were occurring around Fort Carson, in Colorado Springs, which housed over 10,000 military personnel.

Rice said he hoped to use monies from the Tobacco Fund to finance the program.

The “Help Our Heroes” packaged included: