March 29, 2016 01:21 PM UTC

Hospital Provider Fee: Principle or Politics?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday, Democrats in the Colorado House rolled out long-awaited legislation to reclassify the state’s hospital provider fee into a TABOR-exempt enterprise: a technical fix that would allow to the state to avoid painful budget choices: if not this year as revenue forecasts change than in future years. And as the Colorado Independent’s Corey Hutchins reports, there’s a twist:

What’s the big takeaway? That a Republican is a sponsor in the Senate, bucking both his party’s leadership and the conservative group Americans for Prosperity— on an issue that’s been framed since January as the biggest political battle of the year…

[Sen. Larry] Crowder, the Republican sponsor and an Alamosa farmer, was the only Republican to buck his party in 2013 when he voted in favor of expanding Medicaid.

In the days leading up to today’s introduction of the bill, Crowder had been coy about whether he would vote to reclassify the hospital provider fee into an enterprise if he had the chance. While he’s been clear on some aspects — he believes, for instance, unlike other Republicans, that reclassifying the fee is constitutional — he said as recently as last week that he’d have to wait and see a bill before committing to how he’d vote.

Now his name is on the bill.

GOP Sen. Larry Crowder’s very public spat with conservative group Americans for Prosperity over the hospital provider fee earlier this session turned a lot of heads–but as the Denver Post’s John Frank reports, Crowder’s support for the “fix,” which technically gives it the votes to pass the Senate, means nothing if Senate President Bill Cadman never allows it to reach the full Senate:

The co-sponsor of the bill is Sen. Larry Crowder, a Alamosa Republican who is breaking ranks to sponsor the bill. The Republican-controlled Senate remains opposed to the bill — Hullinghorst called it a “stalemate” — meaning it is unlikely to advance to the governor’s desk this session, despite Crowder’s support which gives it enough votes to pass if it made it to the floor.

Senate President Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, declined to comment on the legislation Monday.

Politically however, there may be more going on here than meets the eye. Crowder’s SD-35 seat is relatively high on the list of Democratic pickup opportunities this year, with a strong Democratic challenger in Las Animas County Sheriff Jim Casias. There’s a nagging possibility that Crowder’s support for the provider fee fix is nothing more than political theater, creating an illusion of “independence” from Crowder’s own GOP Senate leadership.

We would be happy to be wrong about this, and there certainly are ways Cadman and/or Crowder could prove us wrong. But if Crowder goes back to SD-35 voters with the story of how he tried to get GOP leadership to pass this fix, those voters just might realize how voting out Crowder could change Senate leadership too.

And that could make more of a difference to them than anything Crowder can say.