Thirty Years Ago This Week: After several years of fruitless work, state Sen. Dottie Wham, R-Denver, said that a final version of the sexual harassment policy for the state legislature would be presented by Doug Brown, head of legal services.

Two years previously, Wham had been the prime sponsor of a joint resolution that requested legislative leadership develop a policy for the Colorado General Assembly and its employees. Officially no such policy existed at the state level because several members of the Colorado Legislative Council’s Executive Committee were displeased with the language in the original draft.

In a presentation to incoming legislators, Wham told the freshmen class that she had first introduced the sexual a harassment resolution because there had “been incidents.” Wham was also joined by Colorado Department of Personnel Director Joe Cooper who gave a presentation on sex discrimination.

“One factor in sex discrimination is a lack of company policy,” Cooper said.

Wham argued that the difficultly drafting the policy was due to state legislators being “unique parts of the workforce because they can’t be fired by the speaker of the House or president of the Senate, because they didn’t hire them in the first place.”

But once the sexual harassment policy was in place for the legislature, the responsibility for resolving complaints would be up to the speaker of the House and the Senate president.

“Complainants will also be given the option of taking their cases to the Colorado Civil Rights Commission,” Wham said.

Twenty Years Ago: Although he told the press in early November that he had “a lot of discussions” to have before he started “to narrow the possible field down to a few names,” Gov. Bill Owens said he knew very early on who he was going to select to replace outgoing Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar.

“John Suthers was the person I most focused on really from November 2nd,” Owens said.

Suthers was the current U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado and had unsuccessfully run against Salazar for attorney general in 1998.

Owens said that he had a list with around “six or seven names on it” including Troy Eid, Owens’s former legal counsel. Salazar had pitched a bipartisan list of 29 potential replacements to Owens.

At his own media conference on Dec. 6 Salazar had issued a strange warning, stating that the possibility existed that “there would not be a smooth transition” in the AG’s office and that there was the potential of a “logjam that could go on for several years.”

But three days later at a Dec. 9 media event where he introduced Suthers, Salazar said he was “delighted” with Owens’s choice.

“John Suthers is a person who is a professional, a person who has integrity, a person of humility. And he is a person who will make a great attorney general for the state of Colorado,” Salazar said.

Owens lauded Suthers’s achievements and record of service to Colorado, saying that his work “has really been above reproach.”

Before Suthers was appointed by President George W. Bush as U.S. Attorney he had served as the Owens administration’s executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections and in the 1980s and 1990s he had served two terms as district attorney for the 4th Judicial District.

State Senate Democrats said they were eager to begin the confirmation process.

“We should be able to get through this process without a whole lot of fanfare,” said Senate President John Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden. “But we plan to look at Mr. Suthers’s career and background thoroughly.”

Senate Minority Leader Mark Hillman, R-Burlington, said that Suthers was a “very qualified candidate and I look forward to getting him confirmed and on the job quickly and efficiently.”

Rachael Wright is the author of several novels including The Twins of Strathnaver, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing writer to Colorado Politics and The Colorado Springs Gazette.