March 31, 2007 12:16 AM UTC

Rep. Merrifield Resigns House Education Committee Chair

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• by: Colorado Pols

Resignation just happened, but was the product of this story in today’s Rocky Mountain News:

An e-mail written by the House Education Committee chairman saying there must be “a special place in hell” for charter school supporters has some top lawmakers hopping mad.

A political Web site called Face the State touched off a firestorm Thursday when it posted an e-mail written by Rep. Mike Merrifield, D-El Paso, to Sen. Sue Windels, D-Arvada.

“There must be a special place in hell for these Privatizers, Charterizers and Voucherziers. They deserve it!” he wrote.

Merrifield made his comments during an e-mail exchange in which he and Windels, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, discussed whether to push for a full repeal of the State Charter School Institute, provided they could get Gov. Bill Ritter’s backing.

“It shows there’s absolutely no good faith on the Rep. Merrifield’s part, who is clearly more concerned with defending a crippled and ineffective status-quo public education system then creating opportunities for all kids,” said Sen. Peter Groff, D-Denver. [Pols emphasis]

Merrifield made no apologies Thursday for the e-mail…

Though he evidently did today. This was reportedly a decision made within the House majority leadership for Rep. Merrifield, though Groff’s stinging comments didn’t help him. Our understanding is that this was an email exchange from one private account to another–which most people would consider a CORA-safe venue. Guess not–as it turns out, official state.co.us email addresses only forward to personal emails in many cases. If this records request campaign by GOP operator Brad Jones keeps up, it’s all but certain to be answered by a liberal counterpart–in the end, there will likely be more Reps of both parties going under the CORA bus.