Forty-Five Years Ago This Week: In a guest column published in The Colorado Statesman, House Minority Leader Rep. Federico Peña, D-Denver, wrote that his greatest disappointment with the legislative process was “the inability, or unwillingness, of the General Assembly to address major issues in a forthright manner.”

One of the most serious issues was Colorado’s school finance reform. In 1973, the Colorado General Assembly had rewritten school finance law, which in effect added more money for public education and shifted significant financial support to the state. But the Colorado Department of Education cautioned in multiple annual reports to the legislature that inequalities persisted under the 1973 act and recommended corrective action.

Peña wrote that the legislature had failed to respond and, by 1977, spending in school districts ranged from $3,101 per pupil in the wealthiest districts to $1,004 per pupil in the poorest. 

“In sum, public education in Colorado continued to be a function of local property wealth, or lack thereof,” Peña argued, “and children were not experiencing equal educational opportunities across the table.”

In 1978, a group of parents successfully sued the State Board of Education, arguing that their children were not receiving an equal, competitive education compared to those in high-wealth school districts. Judge Joseph R. Quinn ruled on March 13, 1979, that the Colorado school financial system was unconstitutional because of large disparities in the funding of Colorado children’s education.

“The day the district court’s ruling was issued, one would have thought that the ‘gold dome’ had fallen upon the state legislature,” Peña wrote. He described members of the legislature accusing Quinn, widely regarded as the best trial judge in Colorado, of not understanding the law. And no one, he wrote, spoke of the children, equality of opportunity, or basic fairness.

“No one admitted that the Department of Education had been warning us of these problems since 1973,” Peña wrote.

When the furor eased, Peña argued that legislators embarked on a “strategy of delay” and the eight-member Legal Services Committee, without consulting any other legislators, filed an ‘amicus brief’ with the Supreme Court to defend the current statute.

“To date, no major surgery has been performed on our school’s finance act and we nervously await the Supreme Court’s decision,” Peña wrote. “If we had addressed the school finance challenge when we had a sizable surplus in our state budget, perhaps we would not be worrying as we are today.”

Twenty-Five Years Ago: Controlling growth in Colorado’s metro corridor was listed as a top priority for both Gov. Bill Owens and legislative leaders of both parties, but House Bill 01-1225, co-sponsored by Senate President Pro-Tem Ed Perlmutter, D-Golden, and Rep. Joe Stengel, R-Littleton, was the subject of furious debate.

“Imagine what a developer would put in a bill to protect his interest, and this is what you’ve got in HB 1225,” said Susan LeFever, Director of the Sierra Club’s Rocky Mountain Chapter. “It reads like a developer’s wishlist.”

HB01-1225, which had broad support from developers and even the Colorado Livestock Association, would require most populations and the fastest-growing cities and counties to enact binding master plans, with an outlined process for public input that would direct housing to areas with sufficient infrastructure to accommodate new growth. 

Executive Director of the Colorado Environment Coalition, Elise Jones, said the bill was “sprawl as usual” and that the legislation was “long on burdensome, costly mandates for Colorado’s communities and short on relief for the critical problems of sprawl and traffic jams.”

Stengel vehemently disagreed with his critics, “This bill is a ‘homebuyer’s bill of rights’ … in that it will keep down the price of housing, particularly in the Denver metro area.” 

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 columnist to Colorado Politics, the Colorado Springs Gazette, and the Denver Gazette.