Legislative Update

By Bill Clayton & Tony Lombard

The 2008 Legislative session has come to end. There were over 750 bills introduced this year. We monitored more than forty bills for the CPPA. This years bills ran the gamut from truant students, retention of DNA evidence, residential picketing, death penalty for child rapists, increasing DUI penalties, graffiti, wiretaps and mandated new trials for convicted felons. Following are a few of the more interesting bills that we worked on for the CPPA:

HB08-1208 was a bill to take away the District Attorney’s ability to direct file charges into district court on juveniles and give that determination to a judge.  There were many in the legislature who believed that this power was being abused by the District Attorney’s. The law in question was passed in the summer of 1993 in which a special session was convened to deal with juvenile violence. Governor Ritter was the District Attorney in Denver, at the time, and was instrumental in creating the legislation that allowed the direct filing of felonies on juveniles that passed that year.  The Governor informed the sponsors of HB08-1208 before the session convened that he would veto the bill if it passed. Governor Ritter vetoed the bill on May 22, stating that the juvenile justice system is not defective in this area. He is a strong believer in strong law enforcement and he believed that HB 08-1208 would diminish the District Attorney’s ability to effectively deal with violent juvenile offenders.

SB 08-205 was a bill that mandated a new trial when DNA evidence ordered retained by the court had been destroyed by a law enforcement agency. This was dubbed the “free Moses El” bill. He was a man convicted in Denver of a savage rape and had been through several appeals and lost. There was another attempt to get him a new trial by the Public Defender and they asked for the DNA evidence and never picked it up. After several weeks the evidence was disposed of. Denver Senator Ken Gordon a former Public Defender was convinced that he was innocent so he ran a bill to get him a new trial. Again Governor Ritter the former DA from Denver got involved in this bill and it was re-written to allow for a new trial if the judge deems those actions by the law enforcement agency to be reckless in nature.

SB 08-60 is a bill that extends the Colorado Auto Theft Prevention Authority. This bill supported by the CPPA is ground breaking legislation. It sets up a funding mechanism that places a $1.00 per policy charge on autos insured in Colorado into the auto theft prevention authority fund. This amounts to more than $4 million per year. The board will issue grants to law enforcement agencies to conduct enforcement efforts to curb auto thefts. These may include multi-jurisdictional task forces to conduct enforcement efforts; prosecution grants to improve conviction rates for auto theft suspects; and educational grants to promote auto theft awareness to the public. This is currently working in several other states and now Colorado will also have a fully functioning grant process to deal with the burgeoning auto theft problem.

There were three bills this year that dealt with labor issues; HB08-1187 prohibited public employee strikes; SB08-056 dealt with labor union participation; and SB08-086 prohibited employee partnership agreements. All three were postponed indefinitely. However, at the time of writing this article, there are about 125 issues that could appear on the November ballot for a vote of the people. There will likely be two competing issues dealing with labor and management. There is a group that is trying to diminish workers rights in the work place including disallowing payroll deductions. These initiatives will be finalized during the summer and we will need to be cognizant of what ultimately makes the ballot.

The big law enforcement issue for the summer will be the DNC convention in Denver. This is an event that will involve the participation of numerous law enforcement agencies from around the state and Wyoming. From a labor standpoint it has been it’s been interesting watching the city of Denver deal with the Federal government in procuring the $1.8 million necessary to purchase the workers compensation and liability insurance policies to cover all of the officers that are participating from agencies outside of Denver. In addition, there are equipment purchases and training needs that are to be met. The training has started and is proceeding on schedule. This is a huge event involving hundreds of peace officers.   

As you know this is a presidential election year. It will be very busy for the next five months. All of the members of the House of Representatives are up for re-election as are many seats in the senate. In addition, all 22 elected district attorneys’ are up for re-election. We encourage members to get involved in their local races and make sure that those people being elected to the state house are ones that are strong supporters of law enforcement.

Please contact us if you have information or questions about a candidate:

Bill Clayton: 303.884.7618, Tony Lombard: 303.884.9113 or Terry Campbell: 303.549.4630.