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Campaign Updates>
Sophomore lawmakers aim to build on lessons
January 8, 2006
Sophomore lawmakers aim to build on lessons learned
Sunday, January 08, 2006
By DANIE HARRELSON
The Daily Sentinel
They aren’t the new kids on the 200 block of East Colfax
anymore.
Three Western Slope lawmakers — Democrats Bernie Buescher
of Grand Junction and Kathleen Curry of Gunnison, and Grand
Junction Republican Josh Penry — return to the capitol
building this week with a legislative session under their
belts and high expectations for their sophomore year.
Buescher and Curry landed key committee assignments shortly
after voters elected them to their posts in November 2004.
Buescher joined five lawmakers on the six-member Joint
Budget Committee, one of the Legislature’s most powerful
panels.
Curry took the reins of the House Agriculture, Natural
Resources and Livestock Committee, the first stop for
legislation dealing with water, grazing and other land-use
issues critical to rural Colorado.
Curry was the lone freshman legislator appointed to head a
committee last year after Democrats took control of both
chambers of the Legislature for the first time in four
decades. Buescher’s appointment was no less significant;
freshman lawmakers are not often assigned to the JBC.
House Speaker Andrew Romanoff said he handed Buescher and
Curry tall orders when he appointed them to such
high-profile posts. The Denver Democrat said he made the
appointments with the idea of “de-Denverizing” the capitol.
“The goal is to tap the talent of the state, not just the
metro area,” he said. “It helped that the Western Slope
sent to the capitol two extraordinarily smart and
thoughtful legislators.”
In Curry, Romanoff said, he picked the best person on water
policy to lead the House Agriculture Committee. In
Buescher, he said, he found the “biggest brain in the
building” to work on the budget.
“I had expectations, which they both exceeded,” Romanoff
said.
Penry’s freshman performance impressed his party’s
leadership enough to garner him greater responsibilities in
2006. House Minority Leader Joe Stengel, R-Littleton, last
month appointed Penry, whom he considers a “rising star,”
to two legislative panels tasked with evaluating
legislation with financial and economic implications for
the state.
Penry traded his post on the House Agriculture Committee
for seats on the House Appropriations Committee and House
Business Affairs and Labor Committee. Stengel has high
expectations for the sophomore legislator.
“I didn’t appoint him to just sit passively by,” he said.
Stengel said the House Business Affairs Committee in 2006
represents the first stop on Democrats’ way to influencing
business, insurance and labor in Colorado.
Penry’s minority status on the committee doesn’t afford him
enough power to block what he considers harmful
legislation, Stengel said. But he expects Penry to exert
“his intellect and his strong conservative viewpoint.”
“The challenge of doing business when you’re in the
minority ... you have to know when to reach across the
aisle and try to cut a deal and when to hold the line and
fight for principle,” Penry said. “The only way you learn
is on the job.”
Buescher’s on-the-job training reinforced the need for
common ground and compromise.
“The biggest lesson is that you govern best from the
middle,” Buescher said. “When either party gets too
partisan ... you don’t make good policy. You turn folks
off.”
Buescher said he believes last year’s freshman class brings
to the 2006 legislative session a commitment to civility
and cooperation.
“The freshman class can make a difference now that we’ve
got a year behind us,” he said.
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