Some Black Friday thoughts on a week of disorganization, dysfunction and a massive, missed opportunity by Colorado Democrats.

Let us ponder the Lost Weekend Special Session, a Friday-to-Monday miasma in which the bar for substantive action was set lower than an ant’s shoulder. And the Democrats couldn’t climb over it. 

The Democrats’ continuing denial regarding the devastating defeat of Proposition HH resulted in them ducking – again – Colorado’s very real property tax crisis. Stuck in the first of the seven stages of grief, they played small ball, passing measures wholly divorced from the alleged emergency Gov. Jared Polis proclaimed in his goggle-wearing, glass-smashing news conference. 

The bills passed were as insubstantial as a thin morning coating of champagne powder that blows away in the first breeze. And serious, lasting solutions, such as tax rollbacks and revenue caps that would particularly help lower-income homeowners, were shredded into confetti. 

There’s no reason to analyze the special session substance because, from the perspective of the average taxpayer, there was little. 

The governor, who is eager to be viewed as a fiscal moderate, refused to lead, or even cajole, his party into heeding the message of the HH defeat. Even though a landslide of this size required a lot of Democrats to color in the “no” circle on their ballots.

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Polis publicly declared an emergency, and then pointedly refused to do anything to match his rhetorical flourishes. He broke the glass, and instead of grabbing the fire extinguisher, he sauntered away from the state’s fiscal house fire, while taxpayers were clamoring for a rescue.

This, however, should not have been a surprise. In his Proposition HH television debate with Advance Colorado’s Michael Fields, Polis made it clear he wasn’t interested in crafting a compromise. He said, in essence, he would sign whatever the legislature sent to him.

Sitting in the big corner office at the Capitol with a catcher’s mitt is not leadership. 

This passivity created a vacuum. And nature abhors a vacuum.

Here is the result:

The tax tsunami that has been headed for Coloradans for two-plus years will slam onto shore early next year. Counties will begin shipping bills for the largest property tax increase in state history. 

There will be many Coloradans who will be hit with a sledgehammer-level surprise when, like many homeowners, they receive a revised escrow statement from their mortgage company showing an eye-popping new payment number.  

We are faced with two facts about the governing Democrats.

First, the special session was never to be a serious attempt to grapple with the reality facing average Coloradans. It was showbiz, from the governor’s glass-breaking gimmick to the bills that ducked reality and deferred discussion of the inevitable. 

Secondly, the liberal super-majority in the legislature, abetted by the governor, does not want to significantly cut your property taxes. In fact, they believe government doesn’t have nearly enough of your money and are offended to their core when the Constitution requires the state to send you excess money back. 

They honestly believe they know how to spend your money better than you do, and they have a never-ending conveyor belt of buckets to fill with tax dollars. 

In their pre-session press statements, both the Senate president, and the House speaker – the two most senior legislative leaders – pointedly omitted the word “homeowner” from their litany of constituent concerns aimed to address.

But 69% of Coloradans own their own homes, and many are of limited means, and their homes are their largest asset. Their household budgets are already stretched, a problem deepened by the tax crisis. Many of them have voted Democrat. 

This is a governing majority utterly out of touch with the taxpayers they represent.

A few days ago, Gov. Polis got into the pre-Thanksgiving turkey pardoning business, mimicking a tradition presidents have engaged in for decades. Three birds eluded holiday dinner tables.

But no gubernatorial powers are broad enough to pardon the big butterball turkey of a special session we just witnessed.

The Democrats flipped us the bird.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.