Gov. Hickenlooper has had it with the state’s attorney general acting like an attorney general so he is taking her to court in an effort to prove that he in fact holds the power to be all attorney generalish.
After yelling at Cynthia Coffman to get off his lawn, Hickenlooper complained to the Denver Post’s editorial board that she has no business doing her job unless he gives the okay.
“This notion of everyone suing all the time every time you disagree with a specific remedy, a specific statute, is part of what makes people so frustrated with government,” said Hickenlooper.
Hickenlooper is suing Coffman in the Colorado Supreme Court, by the way, because he disagrees with her specific remedy.
Hick is upset that Coffman joined 23 other states to challenge the EPA’s latest bureaucratic bungle, CO2 emissions. The states argue that the federal government is trying to usurp state control over the power grid.
“Except in very rare circumstance, generally the governor is supposed to make that decision in concert with the attorney general,” Hickenlooper said of the lawsuit. “But the governor should have that final say.”
Really? Did Hick have the final say when former Attorney General John Suthers fought against a same-sex marriage ban? No, Suthers moved forward without him. Hick also didn’t support Suthers when he sued to block Obamacare.
Coffman maintains that as an independently-elected attorney general, it’s her job to protect the state against unlawful exercises of federal power. The last time Hickenlooper disagreed with Coffman, it was over a challenge of the federal fracking rules. Which, by the way, the court ruled in Coffman’s favor.
Former Attorney General Gale Norton told the Post that disagreements between the governor and attorney general are typical, it’s Hick’s reaction that is not normal.
In almost all cases where a governor challenges an attorney general, Norton said, rulings are in the attorneys general favor.
Let’s hope so.