Lawmakers in a House committee rejected a proposal Wednesday to begin identifying links between legislation and poverty in Colorado; the measure  would have set up a pilot program attaching a poverty-impact statement to a limited number of bills.

The Democratic proposal seemed to mirror a Republican counterpart initiative—killed in the majority-Democrat Senate but still alive by way of another bill in the GOP-led House—that would would have required the legislature to include a business-impact assessment with any bill affecting the private sector.

House Bill 1138, sponsored by Rep. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, would have allowed up to six bills per session, beginning in 2013, to receive the poverty analysis. Factors considered in the poverty-impact assessments would have included a bill’s effect on household income, education, employment, taxes, child care, health care, transportation and utility costs.

Kefalas told the House State, Veterans, and Military Affairs Committee that the statements allowed for an opportunity to harvest information about poverty in Colorado.

“This will help us to look at issues by a more holistic way, and I think that makes more effective policy,” said Kefalas.  “It helps us see how things are connected and how we shouldn’t necessarily look at things in isolation or in silence.”

Yet, Rep. Mark Waller, R-Colorado Springs, said implementing the approach to understanding poverty merits more scrutiny than the measure allowed for.

“If we create all these new ways at measuring and looking at poverty, in my mind that is not a small step, that is significant,” said Waller.

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