The four-day special session on property taxes, which concluded this week, may have shown a lot more about what the future holds for the Colorado General Assembly come January. 

Here are some takeaways:

The end of a fragile peace in the Senate?

Unlike the House, where Republicans routinely use every tactic at their disposal to slow down agendas and House Democrats regularly shut down debate, senators, for the most of part, get along pretty well.

The special session, indeed, saw a cantankerous House, but the Senate also found itself in a rare, public dispute that seemed out of character for its members.    

A dustup on Friday night is now leading to worries that from folks within and without the chamber that tactics to shut down debate could also become the norm in the Senate once the the 120-day session starts on Jan. 10, barely 50 days away. Some senators and observers said that would not be productive, breaking what they described as the only fragile peace that exists in the state Capitol these days.

Indeed, during the special session aimed at offering property tax relief to Coloradans, the public saw plenty of time-outs, as lawmakers negotiated bills and amendments, but just as many breaks to argue about rules and process.

That started in the Senate on Friday.

Here’s what happened. A standard procedure in a special session is for the majority party in the Senate to issue a notice three days before the start to allow for the suspension of rules so that business can move quickly. Why that mattered was on display on Friday, when Senate Democrats tried to bring up a “special orders” calendar – one that had not been given a previous notice – so that they could proceed with the debate on Senate Bill 23B-001, the main primary property tax relief legislation. 

But to bring up a “special orders” calendar, the rules had to be suspended beforehand by that three-day notice. Alternatively, the Senate must agree to allow it with a two-thirds majority vote. That’s 24 out of the Senate’s 35 members.

Here’s the conundrum for Democrats – they hold 23 seats, so it means one Republican must cross the aisle and vote in favor of the motion.

That wasn’t going to happen in this special session. The first vote to suspend failed, 23-12, with a roll call vote requested by Republicans.  

Senate President Steve Fenberg then called for a second vote, and asked for “aye” votes before Republicans could move for a roll call. Sen. Bob Gardner, the Republicans’ rule master made that request as Fenberg was calling for the “no” votes. 

Fenberg nonetheless declared the motion approved.

Despite Fenberg telling Republicans the vote had been cast and “those are the rules,” the rules, in fact, don’t say when precisely that roll call vote has to be requested.

Denied the opportunity for the roll call vote, Gardner appealed the decision, which the majority denied on a 23-12 roll call vote. That turned out to be the last action the Senate took Friday night before adjourning.

Fenberg insisted – in a sidebar conversation that was not on camera but which drew a half-dozen members of the press corps – that both sides had agreed on a three-day session, and to push off the second reading debate for a day would push the session into a fourth day. Republicans, meanwhile, said they wanted the public to have more time to look at the legislation being proposed. 

After more than an hour of that discussion, Fenberg returned to the dais and Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez of Denver made the motion to “lay over” the special orders calendar until Saturday, in effect acceding to the Republicans’ request for a one-day delay. Fenberg did not say why.

Bad behavior abounds in the House without consequence

House Democrats have often complained in the last several years about what they deemed to be offensive comments made by Republicans and for which there were little to no consequences. The question now is whether they would apply the same standards to one of their own. 

More specifically, how will House Speaker Julie McCluskie and House leaders respond to the actions of Rep. Elisabeth Epps of Denver, who spent 45 minutes on Monday talking about the Israeli-Hamas conflict, claiming Israel was engaging in “ethnic cleansing” and eating up almost all of the time allotted for debate on a bill on a federal food and nutrition program. She ended her comments with “Free Palestine!” and then went into the House gallery and joined Pro-Palestinian protesters in shouting down at the House floor, calling Democrats “fascists” and claiming she’d rather sit with those who oppose “genocide.”

House Rule 23(b) says “no member shall engage in loud private discourse or commit any other act tending to distract the attention of the House from the business before it.”

The House has not invoked that rule in at least 25 years. 

Epps’s comments came while Rep. Ron Weinberg, a Loveland Republican who is Jewish, was given time to address her earlier comments.

“We are not enemies,” Weinberg said.

The standoff in the gallery lasted more than an hour. Protesters were asked to leave by the House sergeants, a request they refused to obey. 

Epps eventually returned to the House floor and left shortly thereafter.

House leaders said nothing publicly about her actions once the chamber resumed its business and lawmakers wrapped up their work for the special session.  

Will this become the standard in the 2024 session? McCluskie has yet to say whether she’s considering action to remind lawmakers about the rules and to avoid the actions that led to Monday’s disruption of House business. 

Amid an election year, will Colorado’s lawmakers ‘disagree better’?

If the disruptions that took place in both the House and Senate weren’t enough, 2024 is an election year, in which Republicans will try to claw back seats they lost to Democrats, who, in turn, will seek to main their supermajority hold of the House and extend that to the Senate.   

Senate Democrats need to defeat a Republican to claim its 24th seat, giving them a two-thirds majority. House Democrats already hold 46 seats – they just need 43 seats for a two-thirds vote.  

The contentiousness of this week’s special session could spill over into in 2024, when lawmakers are once again expected to clash over guns, abortion, property taxes, rent and drug use.

Interestingly, Gov. Jared Polis and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox held a forum at Colorado State University on the very issue of divisive political discourse last week, when they talked about statesmanship, the kind exhibited by the late Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The duo is pushing an initiative by the National Governors Association called “Disagree Better,” whose animating concept is to offer ways for people with disparate views to hold robust and difficult conversations about major problems without shouting at each other.    

“I think you have to get at what the reward structures are for politicians. And, currently, too many of them see the easy way, where you become part of the problem and the fire-throwing. You get millions of Twitter followers. You raise tons of money. You demonize the other side,” Polis told Colorado Politics after the forum. “And when that’s the route that propels you to power, you generally are going to govern accordingly. Because that’s the easy thing for you to do.”

“The political industrial complex is full of cowards and people who will just copy whatever works. If tearing the other side down gets you elected, then people will do that. But if we can show a different way – that, actually, (it works) treating people with respect, even if we disagree, the kind of John McCain model that you mentioned, you will see more and more people try and do that,” Cox added. “Even better, you’ll find more and more people that want to run for office who won’t do it now because it’s too toxic.”

Will Colorado’s politicians “disagree better” as Polis urged them to? Stay tuned.