It’s safe to say no one is happy with the special legislative session that convened Monday and concluded Tuesday at the Colorado Capitol.

Gov. John Hickenlooper has faced nearly unified opposition from Republican lawmakers since calling the special session in order to come up with a “simple fix” to a drafting error in complicated legislation he signed earlier this year.

Everyone missed what everyone agrees was an unintended consequence of Senate Bill 267, an omnibus fiscal measure – passed in a flurry in the final days of the regular session – that changed how the state handles all sorts of fees and taxes. The bill boosted the state tax on recreation marijuana sales but didn’t change the wording to let some special districts collect their tax on the same sales.

The goof, discovered in July, costs metro Denver’s Regional Transportation District around $500,000 a month, for instance – in all, nine districts around the state stand to lose a total of roughly $1 million a month. All it takes is a quick, common-sense fix to restore the tax, Hickenlooper and Democrats said, but Republicans disagreed, declaring that the Taxpayer Bill of Rights prohibits lawmakers from putting a tax in place once it’s been erased from the law, whether intentionally or due to an oversight. Democrats argued the contrary, citing court decisions and legal opinions, but Republicans weren’t moved.

After plenty of pre-session jousting, the GOP stood firm and killed a pair of identical bills to correct the expensive mistake, with some maintaining that the Legislature needs more time to determine whether any proposed fix passes constitutional muster.

While Republican leaders got what they wanted – no legislation emerged from the session – that doesn’t mean they’re smiling about the roughly $50,000 cost of the session. “Two days of taxpayer dollars down the drain,” Senate President Kevin Grantham lamented.

Winners

Americans for Prosperity-Colorado

Senate Democrats

Losers

Gov. John Hickenlooper

RTD, SCFD and others

Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg

The chief Senate sponsor of the sprawling Senate Bill 267 lined up in opposition to Hickenlooper’s proposal as soon as the call went out, and can claim some victory in the session’s final outcome. But there’s enough grumbling and dissatisfaction with the original bill from conservatives that a fresh spotlight on the measure doesn’t make its author look any better. What’s more, when it emerged that Sonnenberg had already drafted legislation for the January session that did exactly what Hickenlooper’s proposed bill would do, another bill with his own name on it helped undermine the Republican arguments – inconsequential for the session itself but providing Democrats with the basis of a message portraying Republican lawmakers as obstructionists. Depending on who runs for what in next year’s election, Sonnenberg could find himself in a congressional primary, and the more attention his history sponsoring Senate Bill 267 gets, the more that could be a problem with hard-core Republican voters.