A bill aiming at expanding childcare options for military families was approved unanimously today by the House State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee. The measure, House Bill 1027, would create a pilot program for off-base childcare facilities to accept Department of Defense reimbursement.

Rep. Marsha Looper, R-Calhan, is the bill’s prime sponsor. She said that currently, Colorado military families can only use childcare stipends to pay for on-base facilities, which severely limits options for children of service members. She said there are more than 12,000 children between below the age of 5 that need care.

“Our numbers in El Paso County are staggering,” Looper told the committee.

The biggest hurdle, said Looper, is that the Department of Defense’s standards for approving childcare facilities is much higher than the state’s threshold. The Department of Defense requires that facilities be examined at least four times per year. The state, however, only requires facilities be inspected once every other year. The pilot program she’s pushing would give the state the chance to change that.

Sandra Coleman, who oversees the childcare department at Peterson Air Force Base, said allowing families to use off-base childcare facilities would solve a lot of problems.

“No matter where they live, service members constantly report difficulties finding good childcare,” she said. “We are very excited about this prospect.”

Republican Ken Buck, who lost out to U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet last year in a hotly-contested race, is still alive and kicking in Colorado politics. According to a story by The Grand Junction Sentinel, he announced yesterday that he’s going to be fighting for a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would require the federal government to balance its budget every year.

Buck, who rose to prominence as a favorite of the Tea Party, said his group will be called Balance Colorado, and will be part of a national organization called Balance America, according to the Sentinel.

Balance Colorado will be advocating for Senate Joint Resolution 3, by U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, which was introduced Jan. 26 and assigned to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The resolution is the measure that proposes the Constitutional amendment to require the budget be balanced annually.

The Republican bill has 27 Senate co-sponsors. Neither of Colorado’s senators are co-sponsors. U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs, has repeatedly expressed his support for the measure.

If you’ve ever received a notice in the mail from a red light camera, or one that caught you speeding, you know that the notice includes photos of both you behind the wheel and your car’s license plate. The latter photo is how the DMV knows who to cite for traffic violations.

But Colorado’s local and federal lawmakers are basically immune to cameras that bust drivers who blow red lights, speed, and use toll lanes without paying. Special license plates are available to legislators, and those plates make their automobiles all but invisible to traffic cameras, according to a story by the news site Face the State.

The special plates handed out to legislators don’t have registration numbers on them, as normal plates do. Typically, they only display the number of the legislator’s house or senate district, according to Face the State.

Lawmakers do usually keep their vehicle registration on hand, in case they get pulled over, but plates are the only info that cameras can use to bust drivers.

That doesn’t mean there’s an epidemic of red light-blowing state officials, wrote Face the State. Just that it’s a loophole in the traffic light photo system.

President Barack Obama has a 51 percent approval rating in Colorado, according to a new poll released Tuesday by Public Policy Polling. His disapproval rating is 45 percent.

The poll also matched Obama against four potential Republican candidates–former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. All lost.

Romney polled the best against Obama, losing by just six points, 41 to 47. Palin was at the bottom, losing by 19 points, 36 to 55.

The polling pool was 43 percent Democrat, 35 percent Republican and 22 percent unaffiliated.

The poll was conducted Feb. 4 to Feb. 6, and involved 517 Colorado voters. The margin of error is +/-4.3 percent.

State GOP Chair Dick Wadhams

Update: Jeff Crank, head of Americans for Prosperity, will not run for state party chair.

Dick Wadhams, the longtime chair of the state Republican Party, told Fox 31 News over the weekend that he isn’t running for the seat again.

Wadhams told The Gazette on Tuesday that a big part of his decision was constantly being blamed for political losses. Many Republicans, he said, faulted him last year when Republicans Ken Buck lost the U.S. Senate race and Dan Maes lost the governor’s race.

“The irony is, a year and a half ago, I was being pounded from a lot of different sources about, ‘We don’t want any backroom deals. You let this nomination process carry forward,’” Wadhams said. “Some of the very people who were pounding on me about this fantasy that we were going to nominate somebody through some backroom deal are the same people who were criticizing me after Dan Maes was revealed to be a fraud. They pounded on me, ‘Why did you let him run? Why didn’t you vet him? Why did you allow us to nominate him?’”

The governor’s race turned into a fiasco after party favorite Scott McInnis was accused of plagiarism. He was beaten for the nomination by Maes, a political unknown and Tea Party favorite. But Maes quickly became embroiled in scandal after scandal, including accusations that he lied about his record as a police officer. Things got so bad for the GOP that former Congressman Tom Tancredo decided to step in. It didn’t matter, though–Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, won handily.

Like Maes, Buck was also an insurgent Tea Party favorite. He took controversial stances that made headlines around the state, and even garnered national attention when he compared homosexuality to alcoholism.

Wadhams said that Buck in particular had only himself to blame for losing the Senate race. He said that only moderate Republicans, such as former Gov. Bill Owens and former U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, prove to be successful in statewide races.

“Ken Buck knew better than to take some of the positions that he did,” Wadhams said. “For someone to blame me or this state party because Ken Buck took some positions that were contrary to what unaffiliated voters wanted him to take is kind of a stretch of the imagination.”

Tea Party activists also wore him down, he said. In driving candidates like Buck far to the right, they undermined the party itself, he said.

“I have grown a little weary of these party activists who see a conspiracy around every corner, who just seem incapable of grasping what the state party’s role is in campaigns and elections,” he said.

The race to succeed Wadhams is already under way–state Sen. Ted Harvey announced his candidacy in January, and now, a longtime Denver Republican activist is tossing his hat into the ring.

Attorney Ryan Call, who has chaired the Denver County Republican Party for the last two years, told The Gazette Tuesday morning that he’ll be informing state GOP committee members this afternoon that he’ll be running for state chair.

“I think I bring a lot to the table in terms of both skill set and relationships, and I’m excited to be able to put my hat in the ring,” said Call, who has also been the state party’s legal counsel for five years.

Wadhams said he doesn’t support state Harvey, of Highlands Ranch, and said his views are “too narrow.”

“He sees the world through a very narrow lens, of a faith Republican district in Douglas County,” Wadhams said. “That is not how the rest of Colorado looks. It is a very competitive state, and it’s a very diverse state. We need a chairman who understands that, and who doesn’t want to constrict our party to a very narrow conservative ideological approach.”

Though he stopped short of endorsing Call, Wadhams said Call would be “a magnificent state chairman.” Wadhams said Call has been instrumental in building the state GOP’s communications network and get-out-the-vote drives.

Two other Republicans in the race are El Paso County resident Bart Baron and former campaign manager John Wagner.

Jeff Crank, state director of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, has also been mentioned in the past as a potential candidate for state chair. Crank was a strong contender for the 5th Congressional District seat in 2006 and 2008, but lost both times to U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn. He could not be reached Tuesday for comment.

Harvey could not be reached immediately for comment Tuesday.

Party officials will elect a new chair on March 26, at a party meeting in Douglas County.

A new bill at the state Capitol would essentially repeal Colorado’s “concealed-carry” permit for handguns, according to a story by the Denver Daily News.

House Bill 1205 originally would only have applied to university students, but was amended by House Republicans to apply to all Coloradans.

Rep. Chris Holbert, R-Parker, told the News, “It’s time in our society that the law abiding, the very best in our society, stand up for self protection.”

The bill will likely evolve into a fight in the state Senate, given that Republicans control the House while Democrats still rule the Senate.

Sen. Greg Brophy, R-Wray, is running the bill in the Senate, and the measure has 37 co-sponsors, including 10 El Paso legislators.

Sarah Palin isn’t coming to Denver anymore. Though she was scheduled to speak in Denver on May 2, the event has been canceled, according to The Denver Post. Read more about the details here.

Sarah Palin will be headlining a charity fundraising event called the Patriots & Warriors Gala at the Infinity Park Events Center in Glendale, according to The Denver Post.

The event is being sponsored by the Sharon K. Pacheco Foundation, which is dedicated to providing financial assistance for military families.

Tickets for the event are on sale at www.wix.com/lpenterprises/skp-foundation. Ticket prices start at $165.

In a new series of regular interviews, I’ll speak with two state lawmakers from El Paso County each week about what they think are the most significant happenings at the Capitol from each week, and we’ll also try to get a sense of what Statehouse-watchers can expect to see in the coming days. This week, I spoke to Sens. John Morse, a Democrat, and Kent Lambert, a Republican.

The Gazette: What happened this past week at the Capitol that was pretty significant, that voters should know about?

Lambert: Well, I’ve got, let’s see, at least two bills that El Paso County citizens should be aware of. One of them is coming up next week, and I think the other one comes up a little later in February. But we did have a meeting with the City Council and some representatives from Colorado Springs Utilities this week. The two bills that really affect El Paso County, one would give the county relief in having to put notices in newspapers like The Gazette. So in all full disclosure, this does affect print media…When this law was originally put into effect, I think it was 1901, so we’re now on almost our like third century of this sort of unfunded state mandate that all public notices have to be in a newspaper. But it’s costing tens of millions of dollars to just about everybody. You know, District 11, the county, the state, everybody that does public notices is basically using 110-year-old technology. Just about every other means of communication now is put on the net where it’s always available, it’s always searchable, and users can actually just pulls things off a database. The effect of that is giving, especially like the country trustee here, who has to, you know, contract for all of those notices, it gives them flexibility, not on a mandatory basis but on an optional basis if they want to, to save many millions of dollars every year in order to have better transparency to the public. And of course, in 1901, that was transparency—was, you know, requiring that the government to put things in the newspaper so that people could see what was going on. It has wonderful intentions, but we’re 110 years beyond that now. It’s time to do it, because the government can’t afford to pay for those things. The other thing is the bill that I’ve been working on with Lionel Rivera, during the interim session, ever since the summer, and that is to allow, well, here it would be CSU, City of Colorado Springs, I think District 11, Colorado Springs Utilities, but to allow government entities to do an optional 2.5 percent PERA (Public Employees’ Retirement Association) swap, just like we passed in the Senate today, that we had on second reading today. The state has found that that’s something that must be done to balance our budget, but yet we don’t offer any flexibility to the subdivisions of the state to balance their budget. And this, again, it’s an optional way of allowing them to do the same thing the state’s doing. It’s actually the same language that we just had in the Senate bill that came from the JBC.

The Gazette: And what can voters expect to see next week that you think is going to be important?

Lambert: Well, I know the public meeting things, at least that’s my bill, that’s my only bill that’s up next week, we have just finished, today we just approved 10 to 12 JBC supplemental bills. Those will be filed on Monday, I believe. We’ll be presenting those to the committee’s record and the rest of the Legislature. Most of them are starting in the Senate, so we’ll be doing that primarily from the Senate next week, probably coming up for a vote about Thursday. I don’t know, it’s probably in the range of about $160 million in cuts for this year.

The Gazette: What would that do?

Lambert: The supplementals are changes to this year’s budget. And right now, I think we’re at about $160 million worth of changes to this year’s budget. It may be significant that none of those changes have to do with K-12 or higher education…But the supplementals should be hitting the committees of reference and we’ll be briefing them next week, voting on those, and they’re just like any other bill. They’ll go through the Senate process and go to the House. And it’s a fairly rapid process, because the sooner they’re signed into law, the quicker we can balance this year’s budget. That’s a pretty daunting task. Then we’re actually starting on what we call figure-setting, on the budget committee, which is actually vetting those budget targets for next year’s budget, the ’11-’12 budget.

The Gazette: Anything else voters should know?

Lambert: I think those are pretty significant things right there, from my particular point of view, looking at the budget. You know, we’ve hit some fairly good milestones. We have to wait and see what happens (in) our next economic forecast in March. So that will be coming up. The March forecast will really determine how deep we have to make cuts in next year’s budget. And I think it’s February 15, Gov. Hickenlooper will, basically his new staff will make their first announcement on where they think we need to make some budget cuts for next year. So that will be a pretty seminal meeting.

In a new series of regular interviews, I’ll speak with two state lawmakers from El Paso County each week about what they think are the most significant happenings at the Capitol from each week, and we’ll also try to get a sense of what Statehouse-watchers can expect to see in the coming days. This week, I spoke to Sens. John Morse, a Democrat, and Kent Lambert, a Republican.

The Gazette: What’s the big news of the week? What’s happened?

Morse: The revenue resolution was the big thing of the week. The Republicans in the House took the normal revenue resolution, which chooses between the OSPB (Office of State Planning and Budgeting) forecast and the Legislative Council forecast — that’s really all this does — they took the lower of the two, which makes perfect sense, and then they lowered it by another 2.75 percent, which makes no sense at all. That reduces the revenue forecast by another $194 million, which would end up coming out of K-12 education. That’s just the reality. We’re going to cut everything else, and then everything that’s left is going to have to come out of K-12. We already have $1.1 billion to reconcile, if you will. I know we won’t cut $1.1 billion, but I’ll be we’ll cut $600 million to $800 million. But what they were doing was saying, “Instead of reconciling $1.1 billion, we want you to reconcile $1.3 billion.” And it’s like, “No. $1.1 billion is going to be plenty hard, and we’re already going to end up having to lay off, you know, some 6,500 school teachers throughout the state. Don’t force us to budget so that we’re going to lay off another 3,200 right off the budget. That’s just stupid.” And it’s real jobs, and it’s a real impact on the education of our kids.

So, they did this resolution that said, “Hey, we’re going to use this lower number, we’re going to lower it by 2.75 percent,” and we said, “Yeah, no, bring it back up to where it was. In fact, let’s commit right now that we will use anything over that for K-12 education to backfill the $300 million to $500 million in cuts they’re going to suffer no matter what.” And of course, the Republicans said, “Well, yeah, no.” Which I understand, but then they appointed a conference committee, which, all right, let’s go to conference committee and hash something out. And a little while before the conference committee, which was supposed to meet yesterday, the House just said, “You know what? Screw it. We’re not even going to do a conference committee. We’re just going to stick to our original position.” It’s like, “Well, your position is untenable.” So today, it died.

The Gazette: In the Senate.

Morse: Yeah. We’re going to stick to our position, too. We’re not going to let you arbitrarily budget to lay off 3,200 more teachers. You’ll do that over my dead body. If the forecast actually comes in in March, or if actual revenue comes in $200 million less, then you’re right. We’re going to have to lay off another 3,200 teachers. I get it, and I’ll do it, but not until I have to.

The Gazette: Is that a firm number? 6,500 teachers that are going to be laid off in the state?

Morse: Well, no, it’s not a firm number. That’s an estimate on my part, based on the fact that we have $1.1 billion that the budget is out of sync, and I think that means we’re going to have to cut $600 million to $800 million in real dollars, and I think that $300 million to $500 million will come from K-12. So what I’ve done is take $400 million, split the difference, divided it by a $60,000 average salary—which is high, but I’m being conservative deliberately—and you get like 6,600 teaching jobs, and I’m rounding that down to 6,500 teachers jobs. I mean, the budget—we’re going to have to make some god-awful cuts, and the Republicans are trying to set us up to make god-awful cuts on top of god-awful cuts.

The Gazette: And it’s definitely going to be teachers that are going to be laid off?

Morse: When I talk to superintendents from around the state, they tell me, “We’ve already done everything else. The next dollar you cut is coming out of the classroom.” And many districts around the state have already cut teachers, based on the cuts they’ve already had to endure. So you know, realistically, I mean, obviously, they’ll do everything they can to cut other things first, but they’ve already done that. So they’re basically down to teachers. You could actually more accurately say 6,500 school employees around the state, and again, is there still a little bit they can cut that’s not payroll-related? Maybe, but most of them tell me that their budgets are 85 percent personnel right now. And that other 15 percent is really probably fixed costs. I mean, how much can you pay on a utility bill?

The Gazette: What can voters expect to see next week that’s going to be significant?

Morse: Next week, I think you’ll see a series of bills introduced that will reconcile the current year budget to the actual monies that are coming in this year and what’s forecast right now to come in for the rest of this year, for the next four months, through June 30. We have a $266 million hole for the current year, which is on top of the $1.1 billion hole for next year. So next week we’ll actually be spending time in the Senate filling that $266 million hole. Interestingly, $10 million of that hole, we were going to fill by transferring some medical marijuana fee money and some secretary of state fee money to help us balance that $266 million balance, but those two ideas failed at the JBC. So we’re not using those. There are other cash transfers that we’re doing, and some cuts that we’re making as well, but I am happy that we’re not cutting K-12 right now, because it’s very difficult for school districts to cut their budgets once the budget year starts July 1. So we won’t be making cuts to K-12, in my opinion, over the next four months, but starting July 1, there will be substantial cuts. And I’m sure there will be discussions throughout the state of which schools will have to close, and perhaps even which school districts will have to merge.

The Gazette: Do you expect that El Paso County schools will be hit hard by the cuts?

Morse: Oh, yeah. There will be serious cuts to every school district in El Paso County, without question, because there will be serious cuts to every school district in Colorado.