It has been another busy week at the legislature. Two of my bills were heard this week, one on the House floor and one in committee.

I also ran about 30 amendments to the supplemental budget bills to try and reduce state expenditures. Regarding my legislation, the commercial rafting bill, HB1188, passed the House on Tuesday on a 40-25 vote count, after more floor debate. This bill will now be heard in the Senate, but has not yet been assigned to committee or calendared.

I expect that the debate will be very heated since the opponents to the bill have hired additional lobbyists to fight the bill, at last count there were 10 lobbyists being paid to kill it. My hope is that everyone will actually read the bill and vote based on its merits, not on the rhetoric.

One of my other bills was heard in Judiciary Committee today, HB1271. If this bill were to pass, it would change the registration requirements for unaffiliated candidates for office from the current 17 month requirement to 10 months before the election. Colorado has the strictest requirements in the country for unaffiliated candidates to get onto a ballot.

If the bill passed, we would be the second strictest – only California would set a higher bar for ballot access. The committee laid the bill over for a vote on Monday. If it passes as introduced, it would take effect in the 2012 election cycle, so it doesn’t apply to my election.

Yesterday, the House considered a package of bills to balance the current fiscal year’s budget. You may recall that I took a position against a number of bills eliminating tax exemptions because I felt that the legislature had not done everything possible to cut spending. Well, nothing has changed on that front.

The thirty or so amendments that I ran to reduce spending by cutting personal services line items in every department failed on party line votes with one exception. The cut to the Agriculture Department was miraculously the only cut that the Democratic majority members did approve on the first vote. The proposed cuts to all of the other 19 departments failed.

I also ran an amendment to make a statement of intent to the Governor’s office that vacant positions should not be filled during the rest of the fiscal year. Those amendments failed as well. It was discouraging, but at least I gave it a shot. The House ended up stripping off the cut to the Ag Dept.

I feel that we need to look at all of the options, and as hard as it is, we need to reduce the personnel expenditures at the state level (just like the private sector has been doing now for a long time).

I will continue working on all of these issues. I want to thank the members of the legislature that supported the cuts I brought forward – Wes McKinley on the democratic side and all of the republicans stood firm.

Thanks, Kathleen