Colorado Editorial Roundup

The Denver Post, March 20, on the failure of a ban on bump stocks:

Last October Americans witnessed too vividly the dangers of “bump stocks,” relatively cheap devices used to turn semi-automatic rifles into weapons nearly as automatic - and deadly - as machine guns. The devices, which helped a gunman murder 58 concert-goers in Las Vegas with startling efficiency in a matter of minutes, are an easy target for gun reform.

Perhaps the Las Vegas atrocity would usher in a saner discussion of gun reforms. Perhaps the obvious dangers semi-automatic rifles equipped with features to make them more deadly would spark reconsideration of their permissive regulation. Or perhaps at least bump stocks could be outlawed and any similar modifications would also face serious scrutiny.

Even the National Rifle Association voiced support for a review of bump stocks, saying in the aftermath of the Vegas shooting that “devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.” President Donald Trump has asked the Justice Department to reconsider Obama-era decisions that allow them.

But so far efforts to outlaw the devices in Congress haven’t borne fruit, and now Colorado lawmakers have dropped the ball. This week Republican state senators canned a bill in committee that would have banned bump stocks here.

Yes, the move is not that surprising to even casual observers of what goes on year after year under the Gold Dome. Since the successful legislative battles of 2013 that enacted reasonable reforms, including capping ammunition magazines to hold no more than 15 rounds, Republican lawmakers’ main contribution to the gun-control debate has been to stick to hardliner talking points and attempt to roll back even the modest measures passed in the wake of the Aurora theater shooting and the massacre of elementary students in Newtown, Connecticut.

Still, we take the moment to condemn this failure. Banning these devices would have been a real service in protecting residents. Passage of such a ban also would have sent a clear signal to national lawmakers to stop dithering.

As Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle put it, bump stocks “present a tremendous challenge to law enforcement.” He argued the ban should be seen as a no-brainer.

And no wonder. Bump stocks allow a shooter to use the natural recoil of the firing mechanism to speedily fire off round after round with frightening ease. A New York Times analysis of the Las Vegas shooter’s fire rate found that he was able to shoot about 90 rounds in 10 seconds. A fully automatic weapon can fire nearly 100 rounds in seven seconds. Meanwhile, the rate achieved by the gunman who killed 49 in an Orlando nightclub with a standard semi-automatic rifle was about 24 shots in nine seconds.

Opponents to the Colorado ban mostly stuck to arguments based on Second Amendment freedoms, but there was also the claim that some gun owners with disabilities need bump stocks for ease of use.

We wonder whether amendments couldn’t have been crafted for those who legitimately need bump-stock assistance, and for the ability of gun ranges to offer them within their controlled boundaries to allow sport shooters with a taste for rapid-fire an outlet.

We get it that regulations on guns more often restrict law-abiding gun owners than criminals who could care less about our laws. But our laws say something about us, and this ban could have been a reasonable argument for restraint.

Editorial: http://dpo.st/2ptyjmL

___

The Durango Herald, March 19, on elected officials’ and staff’s response to constituents:

An important aspect of the decision-making process of governmental agencies is the gathering and analysis of public comments. Unfortunately, that essential component has experienced some significant failures lately, and that failure is a threat to participatory democracy.

Last fall, when the Federal Communications Commission was collecting comments about its plan to repeal net neutrality, at least - at least! - one million of the comments were from “bots,” automated programs that artificially multiplied support for the repeal.

Bots aren’t inherently bad. The same technology allows groups, from the NRA to PTA, to help their members communicate with an elected official at the click of a key. Sending one easily can be a good thing; sending many multiples unconnected to any constituent does not create an accurate picture of public opinion.

That’s one flaw in the public-comment system. Then, this week, when the Bureau of Land Management tallied comments on its report on amending rules for sage-grouse conservation, nearly 100,000 comments were missing. Approximately 267,000 individuals are reported to have submitted comments, on behalf of about 20 environmental groups protesting the revision. Only 170,000 comments came out the other end, and those organizations noticed their comments were missing.

The BLM contacted the National Wildlife Federation with assurances that the omission was the result of a technical error, not an intentional process. If that’s the case, the missing comments could just as easily have come from agriculture and energy producers wanting relief from the policy.

So we have bots, some benign, and some perhaps controlled by foreign powers, and we have computer foul-ups. There’s still more: intentional interference by the agency collecting the comments. According to The Washington Post, last December, the Department of Health and Human Services defended withholding comments critical of new abortion and transgender policies.

Then we have elected officials perpetually full office voice-mail boxes, those who avoid town hall meetings so they aren’t confronted, face to face, with constituents with something to say. We have problems. What we don’t have is a safe system by which Americans can submit comments to their government with considerable confidence that they will be received, counted and considered. That leads to the belief that government officials don’t really want to know what their constituents think.

That’s a hard belief to counter, because these problems could be fixed. They certainly should be, both with improved technology and with a universal insistence that public input must be valued and respected.

Americans should be represented by elected officials and by agency staff making sure the government actually runs. The FCC, BLM and HHS are among those agencies, and accurately accounting for public comment is among their responsibilities. If the processes intended to gather information from constituents don’t work well, it’s hard to see how the nation can.

Editorial: http://bit.ly/2IGuH93

___

Greeley Tribune, March 19, on Colorado’s GAVEL Amendment:

We like the GAVEL Amendment. It’s a step toward better governance and greater transparency.

That piece of law, passed 30 years ago this year by Colorado voters, requires that every bill introduced in the Legislature each year receive a public hearing and a vote. In most legislative bodies - like the U.S. Congress, for example - the chairperson of a committee has tremendous power. The chairman can kill a bill simply by sticking it in a desk drawer so that it never sees the light of day. That means there is no debate and no vote.

The amendment was pushed by Democrats in the 1980s, a time when Republicans routinely controlled both chambers of the Legislature. Today, with Republicans controlling the Senate and Democrats controlling the House, elected officials from both parties like the amendment.

Consider Rep. Stephen Humphrey, R-Greeley, who serves as a minority member of the State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee. That’s the place many bills that are unpopular with the House’s Democratic leadership go to die.

“On the one hand, it’s frustrating to know it’s going to get killed,” Humphrey said of the bills he routinely sees in that committee. “The silver lining is it does get to be heard publicly in a committee. . The public can tune in to that and learn.”

We agree, and that’s largely what we like about the amendment.

Even with GAVEL - which stands for Give A Vote to Every Legislator - the harsh mechanics of partisan politics have a way of intruding. As a response to the amendment, leadership of both parties have created “kill committees.” Like the one Humphrey serves on, these committees are stocked by House and Senate leadership with a solid majority from the party in charge. It’s their job to kill bills before they see a floor vote, saving their colleagues from taking potentially controversial or troubling votes.

Conservative in the Senate, or liberal in the House, the committees are generally stacked with politicians from “safe” districts. Many legislators in Weld County fit the bill.

Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, R-Sterling, for example, won election in 2014 by 70.6 percentage points. Sen. Vicki Marble, R-Fort Collins, won election in 2016 by nearly 16 percentage points. Humphrey won by 37 percentage points, though he is a member of the minority party on the minority in his committee.

In many ways, these kill committees serve much the same purpose as an anonymous desk drawer did in the 1980s. They get rid of bills leadership in each chamber doesn’t like before it causes problems for legislators from competitive districts who may have to take unpopular or awkward votes that could come back to haunt them at election time.

Two factors drive this. Politicians too often pick their voters - through the frequently politicized process of drawing electoral boundaries - instead of voters choosing their politicians. Also, both parties - driven largely by activists in their bases - have moved away from a large swath of voters in the middle. These voters frequently feel neither party represents them.

Still, the GAVEL Amendment does represent an improvement. In fact, we wonder what Congress would look like with such a rule. Perhaps the most important lesson of GAVEL is this: Things can change. If you’re unhappy with the way you’re being governed, take action.

Editorial: http://bit.ly/2GTAYOg

___

Aurora Sentinel, March 15, on the state GOP’s role in civil rights and gay wedding cakes:

To borrow from another meme and movement tripping up Colorado Republicans in the Legislature: Time’s up.

For weeks, state GOP elected lawmakers in the state House and Senate have been trying to fool everybody by saying they mean no harm or trouble to the Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission by holding its funding hostage.

At best, their story is a distortion. It’s more accurately an outright lie.

Here’s the truth:

A slew of state Republicans, but not all, have had it in for the state’s commission created to protect minorities ever since the panel ruled in 2012 that infamous Lakewood wedding cake baker Jack Phillips couldn’t legally pull the religion card when he told a gay couple he wouldn’t serve them because his religion compelled him to snub their request.

Both Phillips and legislative Republicans offered cliche responses, saying this had nothing to do with discounting the rights of homosexuals, but only the right of religious freedom.

That was the same distortion and lie that led to a lawsuit that has now wound its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Phillips was called on that lie by the state commission and forced to undergo education about civil rights and the law - if he wanted to stay in business.

Republicans who backed the right of business owners to refuse service to anyone whom they feel presses against religious beliefs clearly never got over it.

Earlier this year, they jumped at the chance to use the state’s Joint Budget Committee to feign an accounting ploy to withhold funding from the decades-old agency. State GOP leaders said they had no intention of doing harm to the entity, but they simply wanted to wait on funding until after a long-anticipated and standard sunset-review process took place later this year.

That’s the distortion. Clearly, Republicans are plotting to try and disarm the commission by blackmail, or defund it if they aren’t satisfied with changes.

It’s a foolhardy ploy. A likely U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of homosexuals could make the Colorado Civil Rights Commission perfunctory in the future. It would be hard to understand how previous case law couldn’t be applied to gays and lesbians against discrimination by businesses in the same way hotels, lunch counters and cake bakers can’t discriminate against blacks and use religious beliefs as a defense.

What Republicans are actually arguing for is a Colorado brand of Sharia law, permitting a state council of Republican guardians to impose their interpretation of Christianity on the entire state, and to the detriment of homosexual citizens, their families and friends.

Equality is not equivocal, and the Colorado Civil Rights Commission has long been the fair and respected arbiter of that dictum. Equal means equal even for gays, women and blacks.

The time is up for Colorado Senate Republicans to be equitable to victims of sexual harassment at the Capitol, referring to a national Time’s Up Now movement to force change, and the time is up for the same GOP leaders to be up-front about their true motivations to undermine or cripple the state civil rights agency.

The best choice would be to abandon their cruel and foolish push to sanction discrimination against the state’s homosexual residents. Those Republicans who can’t understand that must at least be honest so voters can remedy this problem at the November 2018 Election.

Editorial: http://bit.ly/2GbenP7