April 28, 2009 04:31 PM UTC

Mike May Takes Gullible Dems To School

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• by: Colorado Pols

It’s been a little while since we last discussed Senate Bill 228, the much-debated repeal of the Arveschoug-Bird general fund limit statutorily enacted in 1991 in a misguided (and ultimately futile) attempt to forestall passage of the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. After some instructive spectacle from unserious Senate Republicans, not to mention an encouraging related decision by the Colorado Supreme Court, a compromise on SB-228 emerged that would repeal the limit, while making reasonable accomodation for the thing Republicans claimed they want “protected”–transportation funding. In the end it was possible to make that accomodation to the agreement of most parties, since the idea that any legislature would pass a budget that eliminated transportation funding (as the GOP insists is right around the corner) is kind of, well, ludicrous. Senate Bill 228 seemed, until yesterday, slotted in greased grooves for passage.

Until, as the Denver Post reports:

The House on Monday nearly torpedoed a deal brokered by Gov. Bill Ritter to eliminate a limit on budget growth in exchange for potential road funding.

Instead of going along with the Democratic governor’s proposal, the House initially amended Senate Bill 228 to take out the earmarked funding for highways and building projects and send that money to schools.

The Democratic-led House approved the amendment, offered by Republican Rep. Tom Massey of Poncha Springs, on a 32-31 vote, with six Democrats joining the effort.

But several hours later, the House reversed itself and stripped out the amendment on a 34-29 vote, with four of the six Democrats flipping.

After the debate, Rep. Lois Court, D-Denver, a co-sponsor of the bill, said the Republican amendment was an attempt to sabotage the bill by appealing to Democrats’ predilection for education funding.

However, House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker, said the amendment, which he co-wrote, was offered to prove a point. [Pols emphasis]

“It is extremely disingenuous for the Democrats to remove this spending cap under the guise of creating transportation funding,” May said. “We proved today just how easy it is to siphon those so-called transportation dollars right out of the bill and put them wherever you want.”

A couple of things happened here. First, the normally quite reasonable Rep. Tom Massey was apparently used as a Trojan Horse for this “gotcha!” amendment–this, we have to concede, was a really smart (if cynical and bridge-burning) move by Minority Leader Mike May. And as you can see, a bunch of Democrats swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker.

Seriously, didn’t any of these people stop to wonder why all the Republicans were suddenly lining up to vote for something they would never, ever normally vote for?

The fact that four out of the six Democrats realized they had been schooled in time to demand another vote helps a little, but they had already played right into Mike May’s hands by that time–producing this article, which was the whole point of the exercise. As for Benefield and Pommer? Our only explanation is that some people have trouble admitting when they’ve, you know, been had.

Bottom line? Hasn’t changed–blindly restrictive statutes that strip power from the legislature to do its job are bad. They’re bad when times are good, and disastrous in situations like today’s economic crisis. And no legislature interested in self-preservation is ever going to meaningfully deprioritize transportation funding in the Colorado state budget. Ever. All the rest of this is cheesy grandstanding, borne of the right-wing cultivated “axiom” that the people can’t trust those they elect to do their jobs.

Hats off to May though, on a purely tactical level we are forced to admit this was pretty good stuff. He got exactly what he wanted–which was really nothing more than a talking point–but he got it and a few Democrats handed it to him guilelessly. He seems to be better at game-face than most of his colleagues, we seriously doubt Dave “The Resume” Balmer (for example) would have been capable of this. Certainly better at it than his counterpart in the Senate.