{"id":95191,"date":"2019-03-11T17:03:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T23:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-republicans-halt-state-senate-proceedings-in-protest\/"},"modified":"2019-03-11T17:03:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T23:03:26","slug":"colorado-republicans-halt-state-senate-proceedings-in-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-republicans-halt-state-senate-proceedings-in-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Republicans halt state Senate proceedings in protest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Republicans
Republicans brought the state Senate to a crawl Monday with the reading of the full text of bills in an effort to slow majority Democrats from passing measures that are unpopular among conservatives and in many rural areas.<\/span>Associated Press file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Republicans shut down the Colorado Senate floor Monday morning as they read a 2,000-page bill in an effort to halt controversial legislation they say has been rushed through committees and to the governor\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n

The effort is the latest of several backlashes against Democratic-backed measures that have rankled Colorado\u2019s conservatives and rural residents. Earlier this month, Montezuma County commissioners declared they wouldn\u2019t enforce a \u201cred flag\u201d gun bill working its way through the Capitol, and petitions in other parts of the state have been circulated to oppose a measure that would have Colorado join the national popular vote interstate compact.<\/p>\n

In November, Democrats claimed a trifecta of power in Denver with the election of Gov. Jared Polis and by securing majorities in the House and Senate. They have set the tone for a progressive session with bills to tackle high health care costs, gun control, expanding school sexual education, repealing the death penalty and expanding local control of oil and gas development.<\/p>\n

But Senate Republicans are particularly protesting the past two weeks of legislation, which have seen bills repealing the death penalty, rewriting the state\u2019s oil and gas regulations and mandating family leave all introduced and assigned to committees within days.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 181, a broad rewrite of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission\u2019s mission that drew hundreds of oil and gas workers to the Capitol last week, has particularly rankled Republicans, said Sage Naumann, a spokesman for Republican senators.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou will be hard-pressed to find any legislation that has the impact that does going through three committees in one week,\u201d Naumann said Monday.<\/p>\n

At 9 a.m., Senate staff began reading House Bill 1172 \u2013 a \u201crecodification of title 12 of the Colorado Revised Statutes\u201d \u2013 and by 2 p.m., gibberish filled the chamber as multiple computers were added to read the bill at 650 words a minute.<\/p>\n

The goal of the reading is to simply slow the legislative process down, Naumann added. A spokesman for the Senate Democrats could not be immediately reached for comment.<\/p>\n

With a Democratic majority to secure votes and no filibuster, Republicans have few tools of protest at their disposal \u2013 except for reading a bill, Naumann said.<\/p>\n

Democrats in both chambers have repeatedly faced criticism this session for ignoring rural Colorado residents. In the House last month, Republican lawmakers delayed for hours a vote on a bill that expands comprehensive sex education, claiming that Democrats hadn\u2019t given rural residents the chance to testify \u2013 although legislators had heard nearly 12 hours of testimony in committee.<\/p>\n

rhandy@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

to protest Democrats\u2019 rush to pass agenda<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":95192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[15,13,265],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-95191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado-state-senate","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95191","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=95191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95191"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=95191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}