The Denver Post dinged Senate Republicans after a trio – Sens. Ray Scott, John Cooke, and Randy Baumgardner – refused to vote during special session for the legislative fix presented today. Here’s what the Post wrote:
“Colorado’s Republican lawmakers blew off responsibility on the first day of a special legislative session Monday, when three GOP lawmakers cast a spiteful, obstructionist vote to score political points and punish innocent government entities with small but significant erroneous budget cuts….
…Without a word of explanation in the first public committee hearing on the issue, Sens. Randy Baumgardner, John Cooke and Ray Scott voted against a bill that would have solved a legislative oversight from last session and allowed several special districts across the state to resume collecting sales taxes on recreational marijuana sales.”
Actually, the Post sounds pretty spiteful themselves. And what about “without a word of explanation”? That’s also false. Senate Republicans have been sounding the alarm on their discomfort with the legislative fix for about a week now, saying that they believed it violated TABOR, a constitutional amendment.
So, for the Denver Post, it’s either vote for what the Governor wants even if it breaks the law, or be “spiteful” and “obstructionist”. We’d probably take option two, too.