{"id":33509,"date":"2023-06-07T16:29:42","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T22:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-wildfire-camera-bill-repeatedly-fails-secret-survey-results-at-the-capitol-might-explain-why\/"},"modified":"2023-06-07T22:29:42","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T22:29:42","slug":"a-wildfire-camera-bill-repeatedly-fails-secret-survey-results-at-the-capitol-might-explain-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-wildfire-camera-bill-repeatedly-fails-secret-survey-results-at-the-capitol-might-explain-why\/","title":{"rendered":"A wildfire camera bill repeatedly fails. Secret survey results at the Capitol might explain why"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The remains of a trailer after the Missionary Ridge Fire ripped through the area near Florida Road (County Road 240). The Missionary Ridge Fire resulted in about $50 million in direct costs, which included property and timber losses, according to the Colorado Water Conservation Board. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

It\u2019s a 4-year-old mystery at the state Capitol.<\/p>\n

Why does a bill that would deploy high-tech cameras to scan for potentially deadly wildfires fail year-after-year despite universal praise from lawmakers from both sides of the aisle?<\/p>\n

Equipped with artificial intelligence and heat sensors, the cameras are steadily replacing an older warning system used in wildfire areas that relied on humans scanning the horizon from watch towers.<\/p>\n

State Sen. Joann Ginal, D-Fort Collins, said the new technology can give firefighters a key advantage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can detect just a wisp of smoke, and it\u2019s that type of situation in remote areas that could save forests and homes and properties and lives,\u201d she said at the bill\u2019s first hearing this year.<\/p>\n

Colorado lawmakers have tried and failed three times in the last four years to pass a bill to purchase the cameras. They\u2019ve also struggled to explain why such a bill has not passed.<\/p>\n

Democrats blamed Republican filibuster attempts of other bills at the very end of last year\u2019s session for its death, but that didn\u2019t explain why Democrats didn\u2019t schedule it for a key vote after it passed its first test unanimously two months earlier.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s revived version of the camera bill unanimously passed the Senate in April. But just like last year, the bill never got scheduled for that key vote in the House Appropriations Committee.<\/p>\n

Republican Rep. Mike Lynch sponsored the bill and said he wasn\u2019t told why it was being killed before a public vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s backroom stuff that went on with it, I wasn\u2019t privy to it,\u201d he said last week.<\/p>\n

KUNC discovered there was some \u201cbackroom stuff\u201d that Lynch and the public weren\u2019t aware of at the time. And it might help explain what happened.<\/p>\n

In late March, Democrats who control the Legislature privately ranked the legislation in a secret ballot process they call quadratic voting.<\/p>\n

Democrats in the Senate, which passed the bill unanimously, ranked the bill as their No. 2 priority on a list of 25 bills requiring one-time payments. On that same list, the House ranked the bill 15th of 25.<\/p>\n

The results are anonymous though, so it isn\u2019t clear which House members didn\u2019t vote to prioritize the camera bill, and why.<\/p>\n

Lynch said Republicans don\u2019t participate in the survey and aren\u2019t given the results. Only Democrats received links to this year\u2019s survey.<\/p>\n

The results of the survey weren\u2019t released to the public until almost a month after it was taken in response to an open records request.<\/p>\n

Lynch says if he had known earlier that the cameras ranked at the bottom half of the House Democrats\u2019 list of priorities, he would have fought harder to pass it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that that\u2019s a pretty scary way of legislating,\u201d he said of the anonymous bill-ranking process. \u201cYou know, when you start putting something into a calculation, you now have taken some of the human aspects \u2026 or the subjectivity out of there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Chris Hansen, D-Denver, introduced the secret bill ranking survey to the Capitol in 2019 as a way to help Democrats decide how to spend a limited budget. He told KUNC last year that bills that rank higher tend to get scheduled for votes earlier in the session.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the earlier something gets moved, the better chance it has of success,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it gets held up or delayed, there\u2019s always more risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some lawmakers have downplayed the influence of the secret survey, saying it doesn\u2019t determine what legislation lives or dies.<\/p>\n

A KUNC analysis of the outcome of the bills included in the secret survey shows a pattern.<\/p>\n

Bills with higher price tags that ranked at the bottom of the survey typically had funding removed, were voted down or left to die without a public vote more often than the bills that ranked at the top of the survey.<\/p>\n

Rep. Lynch says the Democrats\u2019 survey process raises questions and could help explain why his push to buy wildfire cameras suddenly died this year without a public vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cEspecially a bill that (passed) unanimous out of the Senate,\u201d he said. \u201cThat kind of raises an eyebrow going, \u2018wait a minute, where was the pushback on this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawmakers did pass several other wildfire-related bills this year, including a new military-grade firefighting helicopter and investments in flame-resistant building materials.<\/p>\n

Rep. Junie Joseph, D-Boulder, co-sponsored the failed camera bill with Lynch.<\/p>\n

She said it was unique because it was one of the only policies focused on preventing fires from getting out of control.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know, for instance, the Marshall Fire actually spread pretty quickly,\u201d she said. \u201cImagine if we had more of (the cameras). \u2026 Could we have gotten to it quick, much (more) quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joseph says she\u2019s committed to sponsoring the wildfire camera bill again next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m disappointed that community members do not have that extra tool or, you know, in their toolbox to help them when it comes to mitigating a wildfire,\u201d she said last week.<\/p>\n

The wildfire detection camera program would have cost $2 million, while the new firefighting helicopter lawmakers ordered will cost $26 million.<\/p>\n

Some wildfire-prone places aren\u2019t waiting for the Legislature to pay for the cameras. Officials in San Miguel County in Southwest Colorado announced they are installing four of them this year to scan for fires.<\/p>\n

The state forester\u2019s office estimated in 2019 that 2.9 million Coloradans, or more than half the state\u2019s population, lived in areas that are prone to wildfire.<\/p>\n

KUNC\u2019s Northern Colorado Center for Investigative Reporting (NCCIR) is dedicated to investigating topics, issues and stories of concern to the people of Northern Colorado. We are an ethical, experienced, audience-focused team of journalists empowered by the First Amendment and driven by a commitment to public service and the pursuit of the truth. NCCIR is nonprofit and nonpartisan. We produce fact-based and fact-checked journalism that is accessible and valuable to the communities we serve<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawmakers on both sides of aisle praise legislation, but then it goes nowhere<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[394,14,15,350,28,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-33509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-colorado-state-house-of-representatives","tag-colorado-state-senate","tag-fire","tag-headlines","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33509"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=33509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}