Colorado: Colorado Springs

A bill that would repeal the death penalty in Colorado won yet another vote today, but storm clouds appear to be gathering over the effort at the state Capitol.

The Senate Appropriations Committee passed the bill this morning on a 6-4 party-line vote. It now goes to the full Senate, and the bill's sponsors say they are unsure whether it will be able to survive that vote, which could come as early as today.

"My sense is it's a close call," Sen. Morgan Carroll, an Aurora Democrat who is the bill's Senate sponsor, said. "So it could go either way."

The bill, House bill 1274, would repeal the death penalty as a sentencing option going forward and would use the money saved from not prosecuting and appealing such cases - estimated to be at least $1 million a year - to fund the cold case unit in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Senate President Peter Groff is stepping down May 8, but the election to succeed him will be held Friday. Aurora Sen. Suzanne Williams, caucus chair for the Senate Democrats, said members decided to elect Groff's successor now "to get politics out of the way, to get this out of the way."

Groff, D-Denver, has accepted a position in President Barack Obama's administration within the Department of Education. The names mentioned most often as Groff's successor are Majority Leader Brandon Shaffer of Longmont, Abel Tapia of Pueblo, John Morse of Colorado Springs and Betty Boyd of Lakewood. Groff's Senate seat will be filled by a Democratic vacancy committee.

Lynn Bartels, The Denver Post

The U.S. House of Representatives — on its second try — passed a bill to preserve 2 million acres as wilderness in nine states, including 315,000 acres in Colorado.

On March 11, the bill failed, by two votes, to get a necessary two-thirds approval for a procedural vote.

Republican Reps. Doug Lamborn of Colorado Springs and Mike Coffman of Aurora voted against the bill then and voted against it Wednesday.

The two lawmakers said they objected to the sweeping nature of the legislation — a collection of 170 different bills — and its estimated $10 billion price tag.

"When there is a $9 billion maintenance backlog on the Park Service land that we already have, why are we spending $10 billion that we will have to borrow to acquire even more land?" Coffman said in a statement.

Eight-plus years after Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the presidential election, a bill to change how the Electoral College works is gaining momentum at the state Capitol.

If the legislature approves House bill 1299 this year, Colorado would become the fifth state to sign on to an interstate compact to award the state's electoral votes for president based on who wins the national popular vote, regardless of who wins the state. The state House gave an initial OK to the bill Monday in a squeaker of a vote, after a three-hour debate that saw no shortage of high-flying rhetoric.