Forty-Five Years Ago This Week: After House Bill 81-1542, which would have mandated detention for juveniles carrying concealed weapons, cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Paul Powers, R-Denver, said he had received 45 letters per day denouncing the legislation. And the House of Representatives’ Clerk, Sue Allen, reported an average of 300 calls a day.

Allen was the recipient of so many calls because of a mailer, titled “Legislative Alert”, which the National Rifle Association sent out to 36,000 Colorado NRA members. After the mailer, the bill was defeated on second reading.

“They beat it big,” said House sponsor Rep. Jack McCroskey, D-Denver. 

The NRA had formed its political action committee in 1975 to counter a growing pressure to curb gun ownership, and since then, the organization’s political action committee, the Institute for Legislative Action, had defeated firearms legislation across the country with unprecedented success.

Ted Lattanzio, who worked for the Institute for Legislative Action, told NRA members in Denver that the committee placed less emphasis on professional lobbyists and instead opted for the “personal touch,” or, in other words, inundating legislators with calls and letters from NRA members.

“The intent of the bill was to impose stricter penalties on juveniles who think it’s cool to carry guns,” McCroskey said. “The impetus for the bill came after consultation with the Denver Department of Public Services which believed it a growing problem.”

McCroskey was infuriated by the behavior of the NRA.

“The NRA is hypocritical as hell,” McCroskey said, “when they say they’re in favor of laws against gun abuse and then change their position when this kind of legislation comes up.”

ILA executive assistant, John Aquilino, told The Colorado Statesman that the problem was “in lax or insufficient penalties for violent crime offenders” and that the NRA’s position was “rigidly opposed to the promulgation of laws restricting the private ownership of firearms.” 

Twenty Years Ago: Colorado Republican Party chairman Bob Martinez told The Statesman that he was calling for an investigation into House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder, after a blog alleged that her sponsorship of a bill to fund an energy project was tied to personal benefit.

The story was posted on April 17 on former Rep. Rob Fairbank’s, R-Littleton, blog, Politically Direct.

The bill in question was House Bill 06-1317, which sought to use $316,000 from the state’s Severance Fund to fund a Colorado Energy Profile with the University of Colorado Law School’s Energy and Environmental Security initiative. 

“EESI is an internationally renowned project that has collected and analyzed every single international treaty dealing with energy that the U.S. has entered into,” said Director Lakshman Guruswamy.

The money would fund the first year of the study, during which an analysis of the state’s current and projected energy resources would be conducted. 

“By failing to disclose her membership in the EESI board prior to the House vote on HB 1317,” Martinez said, “she is showing that she does not think the Colorado Constitution applies to her.”

Madden graduated from CU Law School and confirmed that she had resigned from the EESI board and asked that her name be removed from their website when the blog was published.

“This whole thing is just baloney,” Madden said. “I just didn’t want the work EESI does to become a political battle about me.”

It turned out that Madden had no financial interest nor fiduciary responsibilities with EESI and therefore was not obligated by law to list her position on the financial disclosure forms submitted by legislators each January, Secretary of State spokesperson Dana Williams confirmed.

“What makes me mad is that they are using me … by trashing me they might trash this bill,” Madden said. “This is a good bill that would provide good energy information for the government, businesses and the public.”

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.