Kill Committee
Marble is an apt name for a woman with a heart of stone.
Things get a little crazy at the end of the Colorado legislative session. Several kinds of bills get saved for the end. There are must-pass bills that demand a hard-fought compromise. There are bills nobody cares about.
Then there are bills that many care about, but moneyed interests oppose. They want these bills to die a quiet death. In May, in the waning days of the session, those who serve those moneyed interests use every possible trick to see inconvenient bills die with no fuss.
AKA State, Military, and Veterans Affairs
The State, Military, and Veterans Affairs committees, in both houses of Colorado’s legislature, are where doomed bills are sent to die. Republican Vicki Marble of Senate District 23, which crawls along the northern I-25 corridor encompassing parts of Broomfield, Weld, and Larimer counties, chairs the Senate Kill Committee. Her partners in crime are Republican Senators Jerry Sonnenberg of SD 1, and Owen Hill of SD 10. The minority members of the committee, Democrats Stephen Fenberg and Lois Court, have the saddest job in the Capitol. They move to pass bills to be debated by the full Senate. None of the other three ever votes with them.
On May 1, 2018 the Longmont city council suspended its rules to approve supporting two bills on an emergency basis. They were simple safety regulations on oil and gas extraction. One, HB18–1352, clarified the rule that drilling occur no nearer a school than 1000 feet, to specify that the distance to the well be measured from the nearest edge of the schoolyard, not the building. The other, HB18–1419, required drilling companies to disclose to county and municipal governments the location of flow and gathering pipelines for wells drilled within their jurisdictions.
On the morning of Wednesday, May 2 the word came down that both bills had been scheduled to be heard in the Senate “kill committee” that afternoon. On such short notice, I was the only member of Council who could make it to the Capitol to speak in support of the bills. I arrived in Denver at 3 pm to learn that the two bills I had come to support were dead last on the committee’s agenda, unlikely to be heard until 9 or 10 that evening. I could wait.
Killing the Bills
Senator Marble’s committee was chewing through bills like a meat grinder. Occasionally she or Senator Hill would pause to interject a bit of Libertarian or Objectivist philosophy, letting the blades of the grinder cool off. Several of the bills lined up for slaughter involved micro-loans or micro-grants to students. A recent study showed that many students just short of graduating from college, with creditable academic records, nevertheless drop out and fail to complete their degrees in the final semester, because “life happens.” A car breaks down, or a roommate breaks the lease.
HB18–1414, Higher Education Student Emergency Assistance Grants would have helped such students by providing an emergency fund to each state college and university, to be administered by the school’s financial aid office. It would enable each financial aid office to make emergency grants to students for rent, food, or vehicle repairs to let them stay in school. The needed appropriation, statewide, would be only $1.5M.
“Why,” asked Senator Marble, “doesn’t the university give the students money now in such cases? Why should the state shoulder the burden?” Thinking of all the NO votes on school appropriations I have watched Senator Marble cast, it is hard to imagine that she’s actually puzzled about this. But she, along with Senators Sonnenberg and Hill, voted this bill down.
HB18–1009, Diabetes Drug Pricing Transparency Act 2018, was the heartbreaker of the evening. This one filled the room with people waiting to testify in support. I missed the early testimony because people waiting to speak on later bills were asked to leave so that those interested in this bill could have chairs. About an hour in, enough people had spoken and filtered out that I could go in and listen.
This long, complex bill did not offer any financial relief for the insulin-dependent. All it did was set reporting requirements on each step in the insulin supply chain from manufacturing through testing and distribution to drugstores and insurance providers. It set peripheral requirements that research institutions must report contributions by the pharmacy industry. The the price of insulin rose 45% between 2014 and 2017. The purpose of the bill was to let insulin users comparison shop for drug sources or insurance plans.
Parent after parent, some with children in tow, explained the impact of the recent huge rise on their finances. One family told how their daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 4, and then their infant son was diagnosed at 16 weeks. Their out-of-pocket costs for insulin alone exceed $1300. Their gross family income is $45,000/year.
The real tear-jerkers were the children. One thirteen-year-old had recently learned how much of a financial burden she is to her family. That is not something any little girl should have to live with. She held her composure and spoke well and clearly, but the tears could be heard in her voice as she asked, “Why should my parents have to pay for my life?”
Why, indeed? Not everyone spoke in favor of the Diabetes Drug Pricing Transparency Act. Industry lobbyists appeared to testify against it. The bill would increase drug costs, they argued. This odious reporting burden would have to be passed along to the consumer. (Really?) It would discourage innovation. The black hearts on the Senate Committee commented approvingly on these arguments. Reporting, they opined, is anti-Capitalist.
Parallel Processes
As I sat, notes in hand, I thought how similar these arguments sounded to the ones regarding Oil and Gas regulation. Those who support regulation of drilling and fracking tell heart-wrenching tales of children with asthma, nosebleeds, and leukemia. The strategy of Big Oil, like that of Big Pharma, is to accept no regulation, no matter how sensible, no matter how minor. Safety is anti-Capitalist. Transparency is anti-competitive. Property rights are sacred. Truth is irrelevant.
We have danced this dance before. We have danced it with Big Tobacco and paid the piper with the lives of our credulous forebears. We dance it today with the NRA, and pay with the lives of our children.
When the time came (10:30 pm) I stood, and I talked about how how a new wellpad now sits only feet from the playground of Bella Romero Middle School. I talked about social justice: a delegation of parents from the predominantly white school down the street met with the extraction company and negotiated to have their proposed well moved. The new site, it turned out, was across from Bella Romero, where most of the children are brown.
My name is Marcia Martin, and I represent the City of Longmont. I rise in support of House Bill 18–1352…
I had no illusions that my arguments would be heard. We do this to get on the record. We do it for Democracy. We do it to give the people, the grieving parents, the puzzled children, the courage to stay in the fight. We do it not to win votes in the committee, but to win voters at the ballot box. Your vote can change the song and the dance. Capitalism was not meant to be unfettered. It was meant to be tempered with Democracy, with your voice, with our voices, and with our votes.
Please vote in the upcoming Midterm elections. And please, be sure to choose candidates with soft hearts of gold, not hearts of stone. Or Marble.
