Fifty Years Ago This Week: Mike Swift, executive director of Voters Organization to Effect Reapportionment (VOTER) told The Colorado Democrat that he hoped to get seventy thousand signatures on his proposed amendment, which called for a commission to reapportion state legislative seats based on population.

VOTER was backed by the League of Women Voters, the Colorado Labor Council (AFL-CIO) and the Colorado Education Association. Herrick Roth, president of the AFL-CIO, had paid for the entirety of the amendment’s advertising.

“I believe that the rival federal plan which calls for redistricting within counties, would increase political power in the hands of a few,” said Rep. Allen Dines, D-Denver. “It seems to me that if we had representative districts in Denver composed of two or three elections districts that you would concentrate political control … in a few party leaders to such an extent that you would have your elected representatives literally on a string.”

Denver Democratic Party captain Ed Lashman said, “From a purely partisan viewpoint, districting would decrease the number of Democrats in the legislature.”

When asked by Colorado Democrat reporters whether Republicans were right and redistricting would allow city voters to know their legislators better, Lashman laughed.

“Denver voters don’t know the councilmen in their districts. How would they know three times as many representatives and senators?”

Thirty-Five Years Ago: Former Colorado Republican Party Chair Phil Winn narrowly lost out on being posted as chair of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, a federal agency overseeing the United States’s (then) 3,000 chartered savings and loans institutions.

The appointment instead went to Danny Wall, Republican staff director of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Wall’s selection was backed by committee Chair Sen. William Proxmire, D-WI. Winn however had been supported by Colorado U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong, and was reportedly better liked and more qualified.

But according to one Washington D.C. lobbyist interviewed by reporters, Wall’s backers had more clout with President Ronald Reagan than did Armstrong.

Twenty-Five Years Ago: Denver Mayor Wellington Webb was joined by members of boards of commissioners in Adams, Boulder and Jefferson counties at a press conference where he demanded that any welfare legislation passed by the Colorado General Assembly must include statewide minimum cash benefits.

Jefferson County Social Services Director Nelson Nadeau said that minimum benefits of $356 would serve to prevent Colorado county officials with “philosophical or budgetary concerns” from buying recipients bus tickets to the metro area.

“One of the counties to the southwest of the metro area bought bus tickets for a family of seven,” said Nadeau. “They reached Jefferson County and I had to put the kids in the hospital. It was Mom and Dad and five kids; they had measles.”

Denver City Councilwoman Debbie Ortega said, “The metro area numbers of recipients will only increase if some counties are allowed to drop benefits below a certain minimum. I went to a public forum on welfare issues. One woman there said that if we had 63 different programs in the state, recipients would go ‘benefit shopping.'”

Webb was sharply critical of recent Republican efforts to allow counties to seek waivers from state mandated minimums.

“Welfare reform is meant to be a tool for self-reliance,” said Webb. “The welfare myth supported by some legislators offers no compassion for real human suffering. These arguments are built on cheap rhetoric rather than an honest view of real human conditions.”

Rachael Wright is the author of the Captain Savva Mystery series, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Gazette.