Sponsors of a bill that creates a legislative committee to study potential changes to how Colorado judges are investigated and disciplined on Friday stripped from the measure a 12-member advisory panel in favor of a mandate the committee instead seeks a wide array of opinions.

The advisory panel that was tacked onto Senate Bill 22-201 at a House hearing Tuesday was removed in that body’s appropriations committee because there wasn’t enough time for it to do the work required, co-sponsor Rep. Mike Weissman, D-Aurora, said.

“We reviewed the interim committee deadlines … and realized there would have been considerably less time for the (advisory) panel to operate than first envisioned,” Weissman said. “The panel likely also would have driven additional cost to the state.”

He said a requirement that the 8-member legislative committee reach out during its summertime work to a broad cross-section of people – judges, lawyers, bar associations, and experts on judicial discipline among the list – is “a simpler way” of accomplishing the same end.

The House passed the bill on a voice vote Friday and its final passage could come this weekend. The Senate will need to revisit the bill.

The committee will study potential changes to how the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline does its job, including whether voters should decide on a constitutional change that would make it wholly independent.

Currently, the commission is overseen by the Colorado Supreme Court, which makes its rules and approves its funding. The bill changes the source of that funding, instead having taxpayers foot the commission’s expenses.

Proponents pushed the concept of an advisory panel without any input from the commission, according to its president Elizabeth Espinosa Krupa, who told legislators they were surprised by it.

Legislators have privately said they were of the impression the panel idea came with the approval of the Judicial Department and the commission, which had cobbled an agreement to work together on any changes to the proposed legislation. That impression largely came from people working on behalf of the department, several people with knowledge of the discussions said.

“Once I testified (in committee) that wasn’t the case, apparently that caused a lot of concerns,” Krupa told The Denver Gazette in an interview. “We had an explicit agreement with the Judicial Department (to work together). We stopped talking to the bill sponsors because we didn’t think we had a fight anymore.”

The Judicial Department, according to a spokesman, continued to have conversations with legislators thinking “the sponsors were receiving input from the (discipline) commission on the interim committee process.”

“Had the department known that was not happening, it would have notified the commission that the discussions were taking place,” spokesman Rob McCallum wrote in an email to The Denver Gazette. “It would make no sense for the department to breach the trust of the commission and legislators in order to advance a minor amendment that simply helped ensure an inclusive and meaningful interim committee process.”

McCallum said that “at no point” did the Judicial Department make any representations about the commission’s position.

He added: “Moreover, it is incomprehensible that the department would attempt to mislead legislators about the commission’s position immediately before a public hearing where the commission would be providing testimony.”

Once the dust settled, lawmakers scratched the advisory panel – it would have been required to meet a half dozen times and tasked with issuing a report in October of its recommendations – and left the original committee to solicit input instead.

The commission and judiciary branch of government have been at odds since February 2021, when news came to light that a former judicial department official who faced firing was instead awarded a no-bid multi-million-dollar contract, allegedly with the approval of a sitting Supreme Court justice.

As the story unfolded and several investigations were launched, the commission learned it couldn’t pay its own investigator because the court wouldn’t approve the funding. That caused the normally secretive commission to tell legislators it needed to be more independent, prompting the current legislation.

In all the bill would add about three more employees to a one-person office and fund any special counsel the commission would need, including the one hired to look into the judicial scandal.