February 21, 2012 10:28 PM UTC

McNulty Outsmarts Self Again, Shafts Rural Legislators

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Durango Herald’s Joe Hanel reports:

Southwest Colorado’s representatives voted to fund a $33 per day increase in pay for rural state legislators last week.

The bill quietly passed the House on a 34-28 vote with no debate Wednesday, two days after it was introduced. The Pueblo Chieftain reported Saturday that the bill appropriates money for a pay increase next year – a fact that is not directly mentioned in the bill or summaries prepared by legislative staff.

Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio, and Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, voted in favor of the bill, House Bill 1301…

“Leadership felt like – for not just the legislators, but for the staff – that we needed to have enough votes to pass that bill,” Brown said. [Pols emphasis]

…Legislators in 2007 hiked the rural per-diem pay to 85 percent of the federal government’s standard rate, which worked out to $150 a day. But in 2010, when the federal government raised its rates, Colorado legislators voted to forgo their increase for two years as the state grappled with budget cuts.

And the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby reports:

The increase was inside House Bill 1301, introduced by House Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch. The bill, approved without discussion or debate, concerns the payment of expenses for the legislative department. It passed the House 34-28…

The bill was supported by 22 House Republicans and 12 Democrats, including Reps. Ray Scott, R-Grand Junction, Don Coram, R-Montrose, and Roger Wilson, D-Glenwood Springs.

The only local House legislator who opposed it was Rep. Randy Baumgardner, R-Cowdrey, whose district includes parts of Garfield County. Rep. Laura Bradford, R-Collbran, was not in Denver last week, so she didn’t vote on the measure.

As we suspected would be the case, though, the will among legislators to actually pass this per diem increase, now that reporters are asking questions about it, seems to be rapidly dwindling! Here’s the update from the Pueblo Chieftain’s Patrick Malone, who gets the credit for breaking the story last Saturday, and today reports on an unfolding backpedal:

Colorado lawmakers are likely to introduce legislation that would forgo an increase in daily pay for members of the General Assembly who live outside of Denver.

Legislative leaders in the House and the Senate said Monday they are considering a bill to delay the increase.

“My guess is there will be a bill” to postpone the per-diem raise set to take effect later this year, said House Assistant Majority Leader Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs…

“Any one of 65 (House) members could have proactively introduced that legislation,” Waller said. “In fact any one of the 100 of us (in the General Assembly) could have proactively run a bill this year to do that, but we didn’t, [Pols emphasis] so let’s fix it and move on.”

Perhaps the most embarrassing detail yet disclosed in this story comes from the Denver paper’s Tim Hoover–who writes today about McNulty’s odd behavior related to this bill when it came before the legislative council’s executive committee earlier in the month. According to Hoover, McNulty actually cut off an aide reading the bill before the aide explained the per diem increase. That’s the clearest indication yet that McNulty knew exactly what he was doing, and despite his protestations, fully intended to ram this per diem increase through under the public’s radar.

And folks, that’s where McNulty’s ship hit the rocks. Now, instead of a bipartisan action they could have taken in the proverbial light of day, it’s McNulty’s GOP-controlled House–and many more House Republicans than Democrats–who voted all sneaky-like for their $33-a-day per diem increase. Based on the unusual breakdown of the itself-unusual 34-28 vote on this normally uncontroversial bill, it looks to us like a number of legislators understood perfectly that this situation was quite likely to end in disaster. We’ve said repeatedly that we agree on the underlying issue of legislators needing reasonable compensation, and helping rural legislators with their accommodations is a completely appropriate place to start.

But now that it’s been turned toxic by McNulty’s too-clever-by-half gameplaying, we’d say the per diem increase is a political impossibility this year–and some will take damage for having already supported it. That’s a crucial point, because there are lawmakers who are going to eat a lot of negative press and campaign materials for something that didn’t go anywhere, and they’re not going to be happy with McNulty. And we’ll say it again: only one party is on record wanting more budget cuts, a big part of what makes pay raises for politicians toxic to begin with.

That’s Frank McNulty’s party.