Democrats suffered significant failures this legislative session including Gov. Polis’s prized housing priority that mercifully went down in flames as tthe House and Senate fought amongst themselves.
Disguised as an affordable housing measure that neglected to include any language pertaining to affordable housing, the bill sought to strip local government of land use and zoning power and hand it over to the state.
It was such a glaringly troublesome session, not even the media could ignore it.
From Colorado Politics:
The bill’s failure marks the biggest defeat for Polis, who has been able to persuade the General Assembly’s Democrats to support his major policy proposals every year since he took office in January 2019.
From Axios Denver:
Standing behind a sign that read “Real Results,” Gov. Jared Polis and Democratic legislative leaders on Tuesday touted the just-finished lawmaking term as “transformative.”
Reality check: The 120-day term is marked as much by the Democratic majority’s failures as it is the successes — and it ended in complete chaos with a GOP walkout, Democratic infighting and the failure of major legislation on housing.
Cue the sad trombone and laugh track.
While Democrats are taking a victory lap bragging about how awesome they all were this session, many are hoping voters will quickly forget the party’s failure to pass key measures including their absurdly unconstitutional assault weapons ban.
Our favorite moment was afterwards when bill sponsor Rep. Elisabeth Epps self-imploded and demanded the media use her photo in reporting the news of her bill’s failure.
Good times.
Perhaps the greatest downfall of the progressive platform was a repeat performance — the death of a bill legalizing the injection of illegal drugs at government-run facilities, to which we bid good riddance!
Although affordable housing was a key priority for Democrats, they failed to pass any meaningful legislation while all their really bad ideas thankfully went nowhere.
Rent control, which would have crippled the housing market even further, was thankfully put to an end along with Polis’s zoning control measure. Just cause of eviction also went down in flames.
The R.I.P. list of bills that would have crippled small businesses, but which mercifully died included:
By bipartisan votes, legislators put down proposals to overhaul scheduling in the retail and restaurant sectors, allow local governments to implement rent-control measures, require unprecedented record sharing in the gig-transportation sector and offer expanded unemployment benefits at a time when the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund remains insolvent. A bill to study implementation of a single-payer healthcare system died on the Senate calendar near the end of session, and a circulated proposal that could have added nearly $200 million in costs to the state’s workers’ compensation system never received introduction.
Don’t get us wrong, Democrats and Polis managed to inflict a lot of damage on our economy and public safety this session, especially with the bait-and-switch tax “cut” measure that defunds TABOR while jacking up property taxes.
Expect to see a months-long campaign to defeat that measure, which we will follow closely.