Sate Sen. John Cooke, a Republican from Greeley, played point-man Thursday in an effort to kill a popular Colorado energy efficiency program, which he argued was an absurd waste of money and a form social engineering.

But House Bill 1227, which would reauthorize the ten-year-old program, isn’t dead yet, and its bipartisan supporters didn’t submit meekly to the surprise legislative jiu-jitsu Cooke let loose in the Senate Agriculture and Energy Committee.

The bill was up for “action only” — no witness testimony, just sponsor and committee comment and a vote. The bill was scheduled to head next to the Senate floor for consideration. Cooke sidetracked it, sending it instead to the Senate Finance Committee, a kill committee. How that happened is worth reading as a revealing slow-motion take on this particular version of legislative wrist locks, heel hooks, kicks and feints.

The sponsors of the bill, Republican Kevin Priola from Henderson and Democrat Steve Fenberg from Boulder, introduced the bill and then Committee Chair Jerry Sonnenberg, a Republican from Sterling, was ready to quickly move on. He appeared to be taken by surprise.

“Questions for the sponsors?” Sonnenberg asked. “Seeing none, would someone like to make a motion? The correct motion is — ”

“Mr. Chair,” Cooke said.

“Oh, I — I’m sorry,” Sonnenberg said.

“I don’t have a question, but would you indulge me for a minute to say a few words?”

“Senator Cooke,” Sonnenberg said.

“Thank you, Mr. Chair.”

Cooke proceeded to make a version of the arguments against the bill that his wife, Amy Oliver Cooke, has been making in columns at the website of the Independence Institute, where she works as the director of the Institute’s Energy Policy Center.

She argues basically that the efficiency program is costing ratepayers money and rewarding energy companies for not producing energy, that Colorado has a surplus of energy, and that the efficiency program is mainly about turning Xcel and Coloradans away from fossil fuel-based power.

Oliver Cooke, like many Coloradans, doesn’t trust a system that hands over power-generation to a protected monopoly company like Xcel and, like many Coloradans, she doesn’t believe climate change and fossil fuel carbon pollution are serious problems.

“Xcel shouldn’t be getting millions of dollars not to produce energy,” said Sen. Cooke.

“I have here the PUC commission’s report from 2014,” he continued. “What this says is that [Xcel] is currently at surplus capacity generation and the prime purpose of [the efficiency program] in the early years of the 2015 to 2020 planning period is to reduce fossil fuel use. It doesn’t say anything about customer savings. It talks about reducing fossil fuel use, which means coal, which means gas…

“What this does, it’s an anti-coal bill and an anti-oil and gas bill. It puts coal workers on the Western Slope out of a job. It puts people in oil and gas out of work.”

Cooke pointed out that the PUC report also says the program provides an incentive to Xcel to encourage energy efficiency because “saving energy runs counter to its usual business practice.”

“Xcel gets $30 million for not producing energy. It’s like social engineering or behavior modification,” he said

Fenberg suggested Cooke was acting as if he had uncovered some dark secret, but that he was misreading the documents.

Yes, encouraging energy efficiency is not something Xcel would do on its own, Fenberg explained. But it only runs counter to its business model precisely because Xcel is a monopoly with a corner on the market.

It’s also counter on some level to the business model of a gas station to sell gas cheaply — unless of course there’s honest competition set up across the street.

The efficiency program, Fenberg said, acknowledges that many Coloradans for now are stuck with a monopoly power-generation system. That doesn’t mean they don’t want their utilities to be part of the growing movement — on the part of residents and businesses — to do as much or more as they’re doing now but using less and less energy to do it, which will mean paying less to Xcel and, in a best case scenario, never again having to pay for a new billion-dollar power plant and hundreds of millions of dollars in transmission upgrades, especially as the population in the state keeps exploding.

Fenberg, one of the Agriculture and Energy Committee members, finished his remarks by making a motion to move the bill to the Senate floor. Sonnenberg didn’t bite.

Cooke then moved it to the Senate Finance Committee, making a substitute motion.

Sen. Kerry Donovan, a Democrat from Vail, asked Cooke to explain the reasoning behind the substitute motion.

“Because it needs to go to Finance,” Cooke said.

“Why?” Donovan asked again.

“It goes to Finance,” Sonnenberg said.

“If the good senator from Weld County could just clarify for me, especially as a member of the Appropriations Committee,” said Sen. Leroy Garcia from Pueblo, a city wracked by high electricity rates. “Mr. Chair, Why would that motion would be in order?” he asked.

“That motion like any other motion would be in order,” Sonnenberg said. “If it has enough votes to go to Finance, it would go to Finance. If we had a motion to go anywhere else that would be in order as well.”

“I think we all understand that,” Garcia said. “I do understand the decorum of this committee and the expectations, and I would hope that the Senator from Weld County would express why this bill is being requested to go to a substitute committee.”

“Senator Garcia, I appreciate that, uh, um, Senator Cooke, as I understand it, there is a desire for those in Finance Committee to hear the bill, for whatever reason,” Sonnenberg said. “The motion is to Finance Committee. Obviously that is a proper motion I just can’t ignore, so I will allow the vote to happen.”

Sen. Matt Jones, a Democrat from Louisville, said he thought it was pretty obvious why Cooke was motioning the bill to the Finance Committee — to be killed.

“And yet this bill is going to save ratepayers money,” Jones said. “Our neighbors will buy lightbulbs at a cheap rate and save money. It’s a great idea in my mind.”

Fenberg, a freshman legislator, wasn’t ready to give up.

“I understand we’re a political body, that the move to Finance is an attempt to kill a bill that cannot be killed here. I would argue, let’s not play politics on a bill that literally will result in potentially tens of thousands of jobs lost or jobs that move out of our state. Let’s do that on other things, fine. But this is an action that will hurt Colorado, hurt Colorado families trying to save energy, will hurt Colorado families employed in this industry — there are 40,000 of them. Let’s not play politics with a program that is incredibly successful and has met the goals this body set out for it.”

Jones recalled the big businesses that had come to testify in support of the bill the week before. He mentioned Johns Manville and Honeywell. “These are big businesses making a lot of money and [providing] good jobs.”

The Republican majority on the committee then sent the bill to the Finance Committee.

“Congratulations gentlemen, you get another committee hearing,” Sonnenberg joked.

— john@coloradostatesman.com