After concluding the 17th in-person town hall he’s held this year — more than every other member of Colorado’s U.S. House delegation combined — Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse vented frustration over the state’s Republican lawmakers’ refusal to schedule any public forums while the GOP-controlled House of Representatives remained shuttered amid what was by then already the second-longest federal government shutdown in history.

“Meanwhile, my Republican colleagues are off on a five-week paid vacation, and refuse to hold a single, in-person town-hall,” Neguse said. “The people of Colorado are fed up. Where is the representation for folks in our state’s Republican-led districts?”

The House last conducted business on Sept. 19 and has been out of session for the month of October. Speaker Mike Johnson has told members they’ll get 48-hours notice to return to the Capitol to gavel in once the Senate passes a House-approved continuing resolution to reopen the government.

Democrats, meanwhile, are demanding that Republicans first agree to restore enhanced subsidies for health insurance plans purchased under the Affordable Care Act, with millions of individuals in the marketplace facing premium costs that could double or even triple as open enrollment begins Nov. 1.

More than 70 of Neguse’s constituents showed up on a chilly evening for the hour-long town hall on Oct. 22 at a fire station in Granby, where the four-term lawmaker from Lafayette fielded the usual wide range of pointed questions.

Standout topics that night, Neguse recalled, were the Trump administration’s recent moves to bail out Argentina while easing restrictions on imported beef from the country — a sore point for his district’s cattle ranchers and consumers alike — and the impact of tariffs on outfitters, outdoor retailers and other small businesses in the Grand Valley.

“I heard a lot about those two issues in particular, as well as concerns about what’s happening in our land management agencies, the (Bureau of Land Management) and the Forest Service,” Neguse said during a phone call from the passenger seat as he made his way toward Berthoud Pass and the drive down I-70, intent on making it home in time to read to his daughter before her bedtime.

Neguse has made regular town halls a trademark of his tenure — earlier this year, he marked his 100th town hall since taking office in 2019 — and was recognized in his first term by the nonpartisan National Town Hall Project for his innovative “service town halls,” which involve arranging for constituents to perform volunteer work ahead of the traditional free-for-all discussions.

The 41-year-old son of Eritrean immigrants grew up in Highlands Ranch and earned undergraduate and law degrees in the first decade of the new millennium at the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he helped found New Era Colorado, a nonprofit devoted to encouraging young Coloradans to get involved in politics.

In 2008, while he was still in law school, Neguse won election to the CU Board of Regents at age 24. Following an unsuccessful run for secretary of state in 2014, Neguse was appointed by then-Gov. John Hickenlooper to head the state’s Department of Regulatory Agencies before running for the 2nd Congressional District seat left open in 2018 by five-term incumbent Jared Polis’ run for governor. He’s won election four times by landslide margins in the heavily Democratic district, which covers most of Boulder and Larimer counties and stretches along I-70 into Northwest Colorado.

Neguse joined the ranks of House leadership in 2022 and currently holds the Democrats’ No. 4 position, assistant minority leader, making him the highest-ranking House member from Colorado in almost 90 years.

It was his GOP colleagues’ overlapping inactivity that sparked the lawmaker’s ire after hearing from constituents in Grand County, which Neguse noted was carried by Donald Trump all three times the Republican has been on the ballot.

“It is shameful that House Republicans have refused to reopen the House,” he said, calling the extended hiatus a “paid vacation.”

“They’re not in Washington doing the people’s business, nor are they in their districts here in Colorado, hosting open forums and town halls with their constituents,” he said. “This was our 17th town hall — open to the public, offering our constituents an opportunity to be able to ask me tough questions. We don’t prescreen questions, we simply convene conversations with constituents, because that’s my job, and it’s time for Republicans to start doing theirs.”

“This is not what I’d call a vacation,” U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, told reporters days before Neguse held his town hall in Granby. Johnson, for his part, said on Oct. 27 in one of his regular weekday news conferences that House Republicans have been doing “some of the most meaningful work of their careers.”

Between them, the four Republicans who represent Colorado in Congress — U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert, Jeff Hurd, Jeff Crank and Gabe Evans — haven’t held any in-person town halls open to the public this year, though each has held a couple of telephone town halls since January. They’ve also been meeting with groups and touring facilities in their districts during the shutdown.

Like their fellow House Republicans, the Coloradans have been sounding the same note since the Senate took up the funding resolution, calling on Senate Democrats — including Colorado’s Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper — to vote to open the government before the House will gavel back in.

“The House did its job weeks ago by passing the same commonsense bill Democrats supported multiple times before to keep the government open,” Hurd said in an Oct. 22 post on X. “Now it’s time for my Democratic colleagues in the Senate to do the same. End the Democratic filibuster, end the shutdown, and let’s get back to work.”

Neguse said Johnson’s decision to keep the House out of session flies in the face of the GOP’s own stated goals of passing appropriations bills and considering other legislation, like the Senate has been busy doing, even amid the shutdown impasse.

“Part of the absurdity of what Speaker Johnson has done is he has literally shut down the House of Representatives — no committee debates, no legislative markups or hearings or considerations of not just the budget appropriation bills, but any number of other important priorities that members of Congress are pursuing,” Neguse said.

“It’s really theater of the absurd to have Republicans shut down the House while simultaneously refusing to do any public events in their districts, engaging with their constituents,” he said. “It’s just untenable.”