Thirty Years Ago This Week: In a measure aimed to cut at least $75 million from the state budget, Rep. Phil Pankey, R-Littleton, urged cutting health care for Colorado’s medically indigent.

House Bill 93-1290 was sent to the House Appropriations Committee where it joined a slew of other money-saving proposals that had been compiled by the Joint Budget Committee.

Perhaps a realist, Pankey told the House State, Veterans & Military Affairs Committee, “This bill will go down in infamy as the slash and burn bill.”

Pankey had long been considered one of the General Assembly’s most frugal members, and in the bill’s 203 pages, he proposed cutting the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, the Citizen’s Advocate Office, the State Council on Arts and Humanities – and all state funding for the arts, the Advisory Committee on Family Medicine and all student aid.

The bill also proposed cutting the lieutenant governor’s salary from $48,500 to $17,500 and recommended that legislators stop getting reimbursed mileage for trips within their districts.

“Slash” indeed.

The Joint Budget Committee’s own proposal advocated for the cutting of 100 programs that it proposed the state didn’t need as well as closing the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind. The JBC also agreed with Pankey that all state funding for the arts be halted.

In what he called an effort to save the state more money, Pankey, who was chairman of the House Health, Environment, Welfare and Institutions Committee told three Democratic legislators; Bill Thiebaut, D-Pueblo, Gloria Tanner, D-Denver, and Ruth Wright, D-Boulder, that he wouldn’t consider their bills in committee unless they could justify a call for state money with “extra figures.”

When informed that his action would violate the GAVEL (Give a Vote to Every Legislator) Amendment, which states that all bills be heard in committee, Pankey relented. Tanner and Wright’s bills mandated insurance coverage for prostate cancer and neurobiological disorders, respectively, and Thiebaut’s bill would have mandated that HMO customers could go elsewhere if they couldn’t get services within their coverage areas.

In other news, the new catchphrase going around the El Paso County Republican Party was “inclusive politics,” but GOP moderates were voicing their concern about the increased numbers of “religious right” and pro-life party members joining their ranks.

Party insiders said they were keeping track of leadership changes, even in seemingly minor party positions, but El Paso Republican Party Chair Carley Johnson said she saw the combination of religious values and minority involvement as “healthy and inclusive politics” at its best. 

“It might be the right political ammo to insure Republican wins and even snare back Daphne Greenwood’s HD 17 seat,” Johnson said.

But newly-elected El Paso County Democratic Party Chair Sharon Berthrong was effusive about Greenwood’s work, and the security of the Democratic party in HD 17.

“Daphne is a very powerful legislator and very bright,” Berthrong said. “To beat her would be very difficult. She’s been very responsive to her constituents in her district – and she looks after the interests of the people who elected her.” 

But Berthrong was incredibly concerned by the actions of Focus on the Family, which had published a newsletter the previous November lamenting the loss of a state house seat to a pro-choice candidate, a reference to Mary Morrison’s, R-Manitou Springs, victory over attorney Ken Gray.

“Mary and Daphne becoming targets of the religious right worries me,” Berthrong said. “They have resources above and beyond the party. And we don’t have that kind of money to put in a legislative race. Whatever happens, Daphne will continue to run a grassroots campaign. I don’t know how anyone could go about beating her.”

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.