That didn’t impress state Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora.  If a privatized Pinnacol, the state-chartered workers compensation carrier, issues stock down the road, the options available to CEO Ken Ross alone would make him “more money than the state would make off the sale,” she maintained.

Not to mention more than the parachutes. The existing severance benefits for 14 top execs are said to total only $6 million.

Carroll might overstate the case, but she must be heeded.  She’s not only caucus chair of the Senate Democrats—considered the main obstacle to a privatization bill—but she heads the Judiciary Committee, where Senate President Brandon Shaffer might assign it if he wants it killed.

Under Pinnacol’s pending privatization proposal, the state stands to earn $13.6 million a year in dividends from a stake of $340 million in preferred stock from the company.  That’s what captured the interest of Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Other observers agree that Pinnacol’s leaders could make millions off an initial public offering, presuming it has the usual generous board of directors.  “The fact they’ve given up their right to significant compensation today doesn’t mean they won’t receive very significant compensation in the future,” said Steve Durham, lobbyist for the home builders’ association.

Pinnacol wants to get out from under the state, not least because the legislature is tempted to raid its funds when there is a budget shortfall.  An attempted seizure of $500 million in 2009 was aborted mainly because of resistance by then-Gov. Bill Ritter.

Pinnacol provides workers’ comp insurance to about 55,000 Colorado businesses with 1 million employees.  It has private competitors, but it controls about 57 percent of the market.  Only larger companies are allowed to self-insure and avoid paying premiums.

Pinnacol is already sort of a mutual company in that dividends are returned to the companies covered. The current plan calls for it to be converted into a fully private mutual insurance holding company.  It would continue to serve as the insurer of last resort but would start to pay real estate and corporate taxes, from which it is now exempt.  And, at long last, it would become a member of the Colorado Insurance Guaranty Association, a sort of reinsurer funded by a 1 percent tax on premiums.

Pinnacol also wants to expand into other states and perhaps offer other forms of insurance.

It would also be free to turn itself into a stock company down the road, and the prospect of options may be the real force behind its push to privatize.

The legislature wouldn’t control the dividends Pinnacol would pay the state.  They would be deposited into two independent “heritage” funds with a fixed annual dividend of $6.8 million each. One would be devoted to economic development, the other to education.

Pinnacol is obviously serious about whatever privatization bill it hopes to push through the legislature, having recently hired a large number of high-powered lobbyists. They include Steve Farber, Michael Beasley, Mike Feeley, Jason Hopfer, Mary Marchun, Mary Alice Mandarich and the team of Will Coyne and Adam Eichberg. . .

So far.

One lobbyist they won’t have any longer: Cathy Wanstrath, who represented Pinnacol (and its predecessors) for 20 years, mostly by herself. She has chosen to terminate her contract but won’t discuss her reasons until the relationship is officially severed later this month.

At first glance it looks like a replay of House Bill 1365 in 2010, the so-called Clean Air Clean Jobs bill.  It had many lobbyists from the natural gas industry, the environmental community and the governor’s office and was rushed through the legislature before opposition could coalesce.

But this will be a much tougher fight because the Democrats who don’t like privatization might be joined by businesses who fear their premiums will rise.

The home builders are the only organization to have come out against the plan as it is now formulated.  “The greater the risk to rates the more likely you’ll see opposition to any change,” said Durham.

Workers’ comp attorneys are “in a wait-and-see mode,” said their lobbyist, Beth Minahan.  So is the AFL-CIO, said director Mike Cerbo. The Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry won’t take a position until the bill is introduced in mid-session, said spokesman Dan Pilcher.

Hickenlooper has cobbled together a 23-member advisory committee composed of  “stakeholders” in workers’ comp.  It will be led by a former aide, businessman John J. Huggins.  Its first meeting will be held Friday.

The members have been warned they “will not be expected to reach a consensus position on the Pinnacol proposal or any potential modifications,” although their comments will be forwarded to Hickenlooper. It sounds as though Pinnacol will go ahead with whatever it wants to do if it thinks it stands a chance of getting its bill passed.

Here’s the basic question: If workers’ comp is mandatory, why should Pinnacol’s surplus income end up going to other state endeavors instead of being used to reduce the premiums that businesses must pay?

Longtime Rocky Mountain News political columnist Peter Blake now writes Thursdays for the Colorado News Agency. Contact him at pblake0705@comcast.net You may re-publish his work at no charge and without further permission; please give full credit to Peter Blake and www.ColoradoNewsAgency.com

“No, its just for new people,” the vendor replies.

Another boy enters and is quickly awarded a chocolate cone.

“But I’m new too!” protests the first kid.

“Mmm, he’s new-er than you,” explains Smarm.

Says the voiceover from Ally: “Even kids know its wrong to treat new friends better than old friends.”

Kids may know it, and Ally (which used to be GMAC), but not Colorado cities.  If you blow into town to launch a new business, perhaps you can cajole the city council to designate the land you want as “blighted.”  That entitles you to avail yourself of “tax increment financing.”  TIF, as it’s called, freezes the low existing tax rates and entitles you to help finance your project by using the prospective property, sales, lodging and other taxes that presumably wouldn’t be collected if you didn’t build your facility in the first place.  The bigger your plan, the bigger the subsidy you can get.

But if you’re an existing business in town, no ice cream for you.  Just keep on coughing up the taxes you owe and finance your own expansion, even as a TIF is subsidizing what may be your competition.

TIFs were first launched 50 years ago in blighted urban areas that cities wanted to renew.  But recently they’ve expanded to wealthy areas and even so-called blighted farmland.

The Aurora City Council recently voted unanimously to give 125 empty acres near Denver International Airport a “blight” designation in order to lure Gaylord Entertainment Co. of Nashville, Tenn.  Gaylord says it wants to build a 1,500-room hotel and conference center on the site, but seeks $300 million in tax breaks from the city.

Gaylord wants the National Western Stock Show to move in next door and the stock show wants to move, but it might have trouble escaping its lease with Denver, which runs to 2040.  Whether Gaylord would proceed with the project without the stock show has yet to be determined.  So many moving parts have to be synchronized it’s hard to see the project coming together.

Since Aurora’s offer of tax rebates apparently isn’t generous enough, Gaylord would also like to avail itself of $91 million in Regional Tourism Act money, a state version of TIF.  In this case the future taxes you can use to finance your project are state instead of local sales taxes.  The RTA commission is considering several projects but has yet to designate one.

Last year the legislature passed a bill designed to stop the designation of agricultural land as “blighted.”  It passed, but not before the Colorado Municipal League and others were able to carve out various exceptions which made possible the Aurora deal with Gaylord.

For instance, the new law includes a loophole which permits blight designation if all the surrounding taxing entities consent to surrendering their future revenues to the corporation involved.

State Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, who cosponsored the anti-agricultural blight bill, said Aurora and Gaylord gathered the waivers from the taxing entities before the issue even went to a council vote last month.

“They went behind closed doors, ran around and gathered support before anyone knew they were doing it,” she said.  “By the time the public was aware of the deal they had already lined it up.”

Council approval was, oddly, unanimous.  Why?  Hard to tell, but it may have had something to do with the support that developers tend to give council members who are running for re-election this fall.  Sometimes that’s called crony capitalism.

The Gaylord project should need a public subsidy even less than other “blighted” agricultural sites since it’s so near DIA.  There’s plenty of new development going on near the airport and none of it has needed TIF financing.

Developers get their TIF projects approved by playing one city against another, as Gaylord and the stock show did with Broomfield, Commerce City and Aurora.

Carroll notes that the state general fund has to backfill at least the lost school funds if TIF projects go belly up.  And yet the state has no say in the projects approved by cities.  A recent study by the Colorado Legislative Council says school districts could have lost $41.7 million in taxes to TIFs over the past three fiscal years, assuming that the subsidized projects would have been built anyway.

The possible hit on the general fund from an onslaught of TIFs “is not sustainable,” Carroll maintains.

TIFs entail a public risk to the taxpayer, but the profit is entirely private.  Carroll suggests a law might be needed that would require, in the spirit of TABOR, a public vote before a TIF project could go forward.  That might help discourage cities from rewarding new business friends at the expense of old ones.

Longtime Rocky Mountain News political columnist Peter Blake now writes Thursdays for the Colorado News Agency. Contact him at pblake0705@comcast.net You may re-publish his work at no charge and without further permission; please give full credit to Peter Blake and www.ColoradoNewsAgency.com

There’s no reason he should spend days poring over dozens of outrageously greedy maps and listening to tedious testimony while the lawyers drive their clients toward bankruptcy by running up their billable hours.

All he has to do is force the parties, before the trial starts, to use baseball’s arbitration system. It worked 10 years ago, although it was employed belatedly.

Redistricting is in court because, for at least the fourth decade in a row, the Colorado legislature failed in a task that the state constitution says it must undertake only once every 10 years.

The process shouldn’t have been that hard.  The census determined that the state was again authorized seven districts; all lawmakers had to do was tweak their boundaries so that all had equal populations. A 10-member, bipartisan Joint Select Committee on Redistricting was created to expedite the task.

But of course its negotiations broke down in a flurry of mutual recriminations. Democrats accused the Republicans, who now hold a 4-3 edge in Congress, of trying to grab another seat.  Republicans said the Democrats were drawing maps that would enable Senate President Brandon Shaffer, D-Longmont, to get elected to Congress.  You can assume both accusations were right.

After negotiations collapsed, the Democrats filed a lawsuit in Denver District Court May 10.  The Republicans followed with their own suit a few hours later.  The cases have been consolidated, and trial is set to begin Oct. 11.

Is there a better way? According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 42 states authorize the legislature to do the job; seven use independent commissions and one, Iowa, uses its legislative staffers.

Says the NCSL dryly in its summary: “Reformers often mistakenly assume that commissions will be less partisan than legislatures when conducting redistricting, but that depends largely on the design of the board or commission.”

So true.  We need look no further than our own Reapportionment Commission, which handles legislative redistricting but not congressional.  It was created by a 1974 initiative ramrodded by Colorado Common Cause.  The big selling point: during the 1972 legislative session, lawmakers had spent 90 of their  150 days (no 120-day limit then) debating reapportionment, mostly behind closed doors (no sunshine law yet either).

Their political survival consumed much more of their time and passions than mere public issues.

The commission’s 11 members are picked by legislative leaders, the governor and chief justice and must meet bipartisan standards. But that hardly makes it free from politics. In the early 1990s law professor Gene Nichol, a liberal Democrat from Boulder, changed his affiliation to unaffiliated in order to wangle an appointment to the commission. He got it. When that job ended, he re-registered as a Democrat and ran, unsuccessfully, for the U.S. Senate.

State Sen. Morgan Carroll, a member of the select committee on congressional redistricting, thinks a commission would work better. So does Jenny Flanagan, head of Colorado Common Cause, which is contemplating another initiative.

Iowa has a unique system in that it lets its nonpartisan legislative staff draw the redistricting boundaries.  As explained by Denver attorney Tom Downey in a 2004 op-ed in the Rocky Mountain News, the plan may not take incumbency or political strategies into consideration. The legislature may vote the staff’s plan up or down, but not change it.  If lawmakers reject a second plan, it can follow the normal legislative process.

This year, even though Iowa lost one of its five districts, the legislature speedily approved the plan—even though a couple of incumbents were thrown into the same district..

It might work in Colorado too.  Our Legislative Council has an excellent reputation for nonpartisan competence. But since none of the proposed changes could take effect until the 2021 redistricting, Denver District Judge Robert Hyatt, who’s handling the current case, should insist on baseball arbitration.

When a player and his club can’t agree on a contract, each side submits a proposed salary to an arbitration panel.  The panel isn’t allowed to split the difference; it must choose one side or the other.  This keeps both sides from overreaching.

Hyatt could insist that the Republicans and Democrats submit only one map each, observing the basic rules that have been in place since the Carstens vs. Lamm decision of 1982: Denver must not be divided, and the Western Slope and eastern plains should stay as intact as possible.

After dithering for a long time in the 2001-2002 trial, Denver District Judge John Coughlin finally demanded each side produce one map and he would choose.

The Republicans complained later that the Democratic map he ended up choosing was submitted after the deadline, but the GOP won the new 7th District anyway and ended up with a 5-2 margin after the 2002 election.

Later in the decade the Democrats controlled five of the seven seats.  That proves the parties should spend more time honing their philosophies and wooing voters than fighting over district shapes.

Veteran Colorado political columnist Peter Blake now writes Thursdays for the Colorado News Agency. Contact him at pblake0705@comcast.net You may re-publish his work at no charge and without further permission; please give full credit to Peter Blake and www.ColoradoNewsAgency.com

At a recent post-session town-hall meeting in Aurora hosted by Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, and Rep. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora, the virtues of renewable energy were promoted. The event was promoted as offering, “Tips for saving money and saving the planet.”

The event showcased opportunities for homeowners and businesses to embrace both water conservation and solar-powered utilities. Representatives from the cities of Aurora and Denver and a member of a panel from the Governor’s Energy Office spoke to the small gathering of constituents about programs, rebates, and other efforts that consumers can avail themselves of to make the leap into renewable energy for their homes and businesses.

Carroll said the government incentives coaxing consumers toward considering renewable energy as an alternative to traditional fossil fuels is nothing new and could in fact be less costly.

“Right now we’re spending more for fossil fuels in terms of subsidies than with renewable,” said Carroll. “The rebates and incentives out there for renewable energy sources is dwarfed by the incentives currently in place for fossil fuels.”

Carroll said there also are hidden costs to fossil fuels.

“If you don’t include in the cost of energy things such as coal miners who have died or lost their health, you are not looking at the total cost. Fighting for oil–a war-and-peace kind of thing –is also a cost,” said Carroll.

“In the big picture we need to figure out how to get a clear and total cost analysis to see what we’re really paying.”

Yet, Rep. Randy Baumgardner, R-Hot Sulphur Springs, says the push toward renewables from the government in recent years  ignores market realities and technological progress.

“The science is just not where we want it to be yet,”Baumgardner said. “When the government steps in with mandates before the time is right, it is meddling with the natural course of things and picking a winner.”

Baumgardner’s Republican colleagues offered numerous measures aimed at keeping the costs of marching too fast, too soon, toward renewables in check.  All were defeated.

Another failed measure, with bipartisan sponsorship,  House Bill 1312, sponsored by Rep. Jon Becker, R-Fort Morgan, and Sen. Mary Hodge, D-Brighton, sought to restructure the Governor’s Energy Office to be more inclusive of current energy technologies.

Meanwhile, some Democratic-sponsored measures supporting a shift toward renewable also failed to gather enough support, such as a measure sponsored by Sen. Michael Johnston, D-Denver, Senate Bill 32.  It would have created a loan program for homeowners wanting to install energy-efficient improvements like new windows, doors and insulation.

Still, Baumgardner says the bottom line for him is producing energy that makes sense economically and environmentally until another form lands on top through its own merits.

“We need all types of energy, and we need to stop pitting one form against another form,” said Baumgardner.  “The government has started picking winners and losers to the detriment of costs.  Right now, coal is the cheapest form of energy for our needs, and we’ve figured out how to use it cleaner.”

In the meantime, the legislature passed and the governor approved House Bill 1199, a bipartisan measure sponsored by Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, and Sen. Bob Bacon, D-Fort Collins, that extends the provisions of a previous policy that places a cap on the permit fees for the installation of solar energy devices.

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Lending urgency to their concern, a legislative compromise announced today on next year’s budget includes a provision declaring a fiscal emergency—and tapping $33 million in tobacco-tax revenue to help bridge the spending gap.

In 2004, voters approved Amendment 35, raising the tax on tobacco products and stipulating that the added revenue was to be used for tobacco-related health services and education, such as tobacco cessation programs.

In addition to the Amendment 35 dollars, the state also has money earmarked for the same purpose but derived from a pool of funds distributed to individual states based on a court settlement from litigation against tobacco companies.

Rep. Cindy Acree, R-Aurora, says she wants to make sure the money is being used properly. Acree made a formal request in February for the state auditor to begin looking into the issue, and the Legislative Audit Committee took an initial step last week toward approving an audit. Acree said she asked for the audit to make sure that tobacco funds are indeed serving their intended target.

Of particular concern is the fact that, since 2004, the state has been relying on the tobacco funds to help shore up its operating budget under a provision that allows for it to be used when there is a fiscal emergency.

“There hasn’t been a good way to track and provide oversight over this money to see if we are actually accomplishing what this money is meant for in terms of health issues,’”said Acree.

The money, says Acree, has been flowing into programs with little feedback to the state once it’s spent.

“We’re funneling money out to communities in the form of grants and too much is being spent without the public knowing how it’s spent,” said Acree. “I’m afraid that we might be co-mingling this to the extent that we might not be able to identify where it’s going.”

Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, concurs with Acree that the audit is necessary. While there haven’t been glaring examples of misuse of the money, Carroll said, enough red flags have been raised to merit inquiry.

“We need to make sure that there’s a nexus with the money spent and its purpose. The use of the money is clearly limited in scope,” said Carroll.

Carroll also said she believes that the money ought to be focused on areas where it is most effective and that the state has an obligation to the voters to ensure that the dollars are being used both thoughtfully and appropriately.

“When the voters have been asked a specific question and they gave a specific answer, we have an obligation to let them know whether or not it’s working.” said Carroll.

The next step will be for the State Auditor’s Office to make a recommendation to the legislative Audit Committee on whether a full audit is merited. The committee can then direct the auditor to perform the full audit.

The initial findings will be presented this summer to the committee, and a full audit can take anywhere from a few months to a year.  Lesa Fischer, executive administrator with the Office of the State Auditor, says a full audit is time-consuming, but for good reason.

“It’s a very thorough process,” said Fischer. “Nothing is quick and easy about it.”

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Steadman’s Senate Bill 44 addresses the barriers that are faced by people who have a felony conviction as they re-enter society. Steadman told the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing his bill today that the measure is a valuable tool in reducing recidivism and provides a measure of redemption to those who deserve it.

‘Too often prisoners go through the revolving door at the front of the prison,” said Steadman. “We’re creating barriers for them to put their life back together so they can become employed, productive, and out of trouble.”

Under the provisions of the measure, a defendant facing a felony conviction would be given notice of the 300-plus legally imposed consequences that accompany the conviction.  After a sentence is served, the measure provides for a court-ordered waiver of certain consequences, such as the barriers convicts face in acquiring a professional license.

Speaking against the measure, Deputy Attorney General Michael Dougherty said the bill does “too much too quickly.”

Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs, said he is concerned about the unintended consequences of undoing years of identifying areas where a felony conviction may be a factor.

“The 300 consequences that have taken years to develop shouldn’t just be disregarded,” said King. “There is an issue with causes of recidivism, but this needs to be looked at on a case-by-case basis rather than such a broad approach.”

The vote on the bill was postponed by the committee’s chair, Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, until amendments are drafted resolving fiscal concerns.

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Senate Bill 72, which expands remedies available to employees, and Senate Bill 68, which removes barriers to consumers in making a claim—both are sponsored by Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora—were endorsed on party-line votes in back-to-back hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

SB 72 would allow an employee who prevails in a lawsuit to receive compensation in addition to wages and economic losses in cases where their employer has 15 employees or less.  Current law only allows the added compensation for larger employers.

Among those supporting SB 72 were members of the Colorado chapter of the 9 to 5 organization.

“We see hundreds of people who face discrimination in the workplace and have no recourse because they work for a small business,” said Erin Benett, the organization’s director. “What you receive shouldn’t depend on who you are and who you work for.”

Yet, attorney Sybil Kisken, who chairs the Labor and Employment Council for the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry, said it’s already illegal to discriminate against an employee and that the intent of the bill could backfire.

“The people that will benefit will be the lawyers, and the people that will be harmed are small businesses,” said Kisken. “These small businesses don’t have the luxury of full-time legal staff to defend themselves against claims that may or may not have merit.”

Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud said the measure would add another layer of vulnerability for already precarious small businesses struggling in a slowly recovering economy.

“There’s too many down sides,” said Lundberg. “They can’t afford to put up with the extra stuff we are always heaping on their backs as small employers.”

Carroll said affording more remedies for employees who have been wronged is simply the right thing to do.

“”It’s free and cheap to comply with the law as an employer,” said Carroll.  “It’s not a wild and crazy benchmark. The original Civil Rights Act passed years ago is just as true in 2011.”

SB 68 amends the Colorado Consumer Protection Act by clarifying the illegality of deceptive, unfair practices under state law and removes what Carroll says is a prohibitive provision that has been imposed by the courts.

Currently, a consumer must first show that a significant number of people have been harmed, other than themselves, before they can move forward with a claim against a fraudulent scheme.  The courts have imposed the requirement, but it is not actually written into the law. The measure puts into law that proving a public impact is not necessary.

“Normal people don’t have the time, money, or access to find out who else has been harmed,” said Carroll.  “Fraud is illegal in every state and consumers should have access to a remedy in court without an added arbitrary burden that is not actually in law.”

Sen. Ellen Roberts, R-Durango, an attorney, said she voted against SB 68 because of the risk to legitimate businesses by shifting the burden of proof from the consumer to a business to show harm has not occurred.

“It would create a hardship on businesses because it turns the tables and forces businesses to show that they have not harmed the public,” said Roberts. “It turns everything entirely on its head.”

Next up for the measures is consideration by the full Senate.

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Right now, government contracts with the private sector are theoretically subject to public scrutiny but, says Aurora Democratic Sen. Morgan Carroll, not always accessible in practice. Carroll wants to ensure that the public receives the information undeterred by roadblocks along the way.

Senate Bill 25, sponsored by Carroll and Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, in the House has been dubbed by its sponsors “the Colorado Taxpayers Empowerment Act of 2011.”  Under current law, contracts that the state enters into for procurement—acquiring goods or services from vendors—are subject to open-record requests under the “Colorado Open Records Act” or CORA.  SB 25 would explicitly include the CORA requirement in the signed contract language between the state and the vendor.

Carroll says the measure is needed because the open-records process is often challenged in terms of what information is subject to public scrutiny.

“It’s been hit and miss,” said Carroll. “In this day and age no state contract should be out there without transparency.”

The bill passed the Senate Finance Committee with an approving nod from all but one panel member, Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, although not without a revision by Carroll.

The measure originally would have required vendors to supply state departments, and members of the legislative body, access to vendor records relating to the costs or performance measures of their contracts with the state.  Carroll agreed to scale back the measure to just the statement about CORA in the contract to smooth over objections by some in the business community.

Brophy said the amended version of the bill differed little from the status quo although he said he was not too keen on the bill anyway because it pried too deeply into the affairs of private business.  Transparency, said Brophy should reside with government, not private business.

“It (the amended bill) no longer does anything. It puts in a boilerplate clause in a contract saying that the law has to be followed,” said Brophy. “We don’t need to be opening up the books on private businesses, looking at profit margins. We need to be looking at the contracts that the government enters into with an eye toward efficiency.”

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Small business employers who cannot afford health insurance for their employees under the group market but want to provide some money for their employees to purchase a health insurance plan on their own, can do so under a recent ruling by Colorado’s Division of Insurance. Sen. Keith King, R-Colorado Springs,  wants the ruling secured by law. His bill, Senate Bill 19, would do so.

“We need to find a way to insure more people,” said King. “This bill provides an alternative for small business employers to contribute toward an employee’s health insurance.”

Under the ruling, employers that don’t offer health plans and have fewer than 50 employees can contribute any amount of money, as long as it is distributed equally, into an employee’s Health Retirement Account. The HRA funds can then be used by an employee to purchase a health insurance premium or any other qualifying medical expenses.  The money stays with the employee from year to year, much like an IRA account.

Tony Gagliardi, speaking for the Colorado chapter of National Federation of Independent Business, said small businesses welcome the opportunity to be able to afford some coverage for their employees.

“It’s another alternative or option for both employers and employees to gain access to health insurance,” said Gagliardi. “We’ve been trying a long time to get more people covered. This bill is one mechanism to help them do so.”

Speaking in opposition to the measure, A.W. Schnellbacher, a volunteer with the AARP , said his organization was concerned that gravitation toward health insurance plans outside of the group market would prove detrimental.

“This could destroy the group market,” said Schnellbacher. “People will be shifted from the small group market to the individual market, where there will be cherry picking and lemon dropping.”

Voting against the measure was Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora who tried unsuccessfully to require a review in a few years to see if the HRA approach works.

“Any experimentation with a health insurance market that is volatile and changing without an evaluation process in place is not something I can support,” Carroll said.

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The measure, Senate Bill 36, by the GOP’s Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, an avid biker, would have narrowed the scope of civil lawsuits that can be filed by riders against mountain-biking area operators, mountain bicycling-biking instructors, bicycle providers, and mountain-biking event organizers.

Fear of lawsuits, says Brophy, may be holding back the development of more trails for mountain-bike enthusiasts.  The ski industry enjoys a limited-liability protection that shields against claims of negligence from skiers who engage in risky behavior while on privately owned property. Government-owned property enjoys the same protection against liability.

“This is the proper way to promote mountain-bike riding in Colorado,” said Brophy. “It has worked well for the ski industry, and it ought to be extended to the mountain-bike industry as well. We would see more trails and growth of the sport in the state, creating more tourism opportunities.”

The Trial Lawyers Association came speaking in opposition to the measure, which was ultimately defeated on a party-line vote with Republicans in favor of extending limited liability to the mountain bike industry and Democratic committee members opposed to the extension.

Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, an attorney, concurred with the trial lawyers that mountain bikers should be afforded full access to the courts if an event merited a lawsuit.  Carroll said that if the industry was given limited liability, bikers actually may be discouraged from coming to Colorado.

“If we sent the message that people can be negligent without consequence….how do we know that this doesn’t send the opposite message?” said Carroll.

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