Forty Years Ago This Week: In an abrupt about-face, Gov. Dick Lamm, who had previously pledged his “wholehearted, enthusiastic support” for Lt. Gov. Nancy Dick’s candidacy for U.S. Senate, publicly announced that he would instead be maintaining a neutral position in the three-way Democratic primary.

But Barbara Charnes, interim campaign manager for Dick’s campaign, contended that Lamm, “…is absolutely supporting Nancy and has said that on a number of occasions. I don’t see any dent in that support at all.”

According to Charnes, Lamm’s public support had been contingent on Dick running a primary-free race against incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Armstrong, which was no longer the case.

“Since Steve Leatherman and Carlos Lucero have indicated interest in the race, Lamm has still indicated his support for Nancy,” Charnes said.

Adding even more confusion to the mix in a seemingly conflicting statement, Sue O’Brien, Dick’s press secretary, told The Colorado Statesman in an interview, “I wish you hadn’t asked me this. But the governor is no longer backing Dick over the other Democratic candidates.”

But, O’Brien said, Lamm remained steadfast in his support and his statement of “wholehearted, enthusiastic support” continued to be featured in its prominent placement on Dick’s campaign literature.

“We have not been asked to remove it,” O’Brien said.

Thirty Years Ago: In his opening day speech, House Speaker Chuck Berry, R-Colorado Springs, warned is colleagues that public faith in government was at an “all time low” and that their duty was to not “…allow partisan bickering to dominate deliberations.”

“If public support for our legislative system erodes,” Berry said, “the people will bypass us and turn instead to the ballot initiative, or to the courts, to make laws.”

Partisan bickering had indeed plagued the legislature’s July special session to address rising juvenile violence.

“But random violence has continued throughout the state,” Berry said. “We must restore the values of our society to combat the problem. No law we can pass will change what’s in the hearts of these young criminals. No law we can make can make them respect the value of human life.”

Berry spoke supportively of building new public and private prisons but lamented that the funds were not available.

“Can we cut the budget enough in other places to build and operate new facilities?” Berry queried. “Or will we need to ask the people of Colorado to vote for new revenues to build and operate these facilities, or to contract them?”

In his follow-up address, House Minority Leader Sam Williams, D-Breckenridge, said he strongly agreed with Berry that the legislature’s top priority was to regain public trust.

“The combination of last fall’s special session and the town meetings held by legislators have gone a long way to realizing this goal,” Williams said.

But Williams said he disagreed sharply with Berry over the proliferation of new prisons and the spending of public funds on them, and instead argued that the time for more laws and more prisons had passed and would not, on their own, curb the increase in juvenile violence.

“The Legislature would do more good by focusing, instead, on the crime prevention and family intervention measures it promised over the the special session,” Williams argued. “Coloradans know that the true solutions to the problems facing them today are not glamorous. They know that the growing prison population is the result of what happens in the early childhood years.”

Both House leaders agreed that education was key to limiting the influence of gangs on Colorado youths and pointed to the first bill of the legislative session, HB 94-1001, which would re-write the 1988 School Finance Act.

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.