Colorado LegiSource

An informational and educational resource for the Colorado General Assembly by the Office of Legislative Legal Services.

Category: Legislative Staff Agencies

  • Title 12 Recodification Continues Apace

    Editor’s note: We’re out of hiatus a week early! LegiSource has enjoyed a rest, but some things just can’t wait…

    by Kate Meyer

    There’s an old saying about law school that most students learn: In the first year, they scare you to death. In the second year, they work you to death. And in the third year, they bore you to death.

    I’ve been thinking lately about how to adapt that adage to the Title 12 recodification project. So far, I think the saying is apt as concerns the first and second years. In 2016, the first year of the Title 12 effort, folks didn’t quite know what to expect with such a massive undertaking and exhibited a combination of curiosity and trepidation about how it would unfold. In 2017, the project got a big boost when the Committee on Legal Services approved 15 separate bills relating to the effort (perhaps leaving sponsoring legislators and staff feeling “worked to death”). It’s the third year where the similarities stop; as Title 12 now enters its crucial and exciting third year, I think those involved will be anything but bored.

    Recap. The recodification of Title 12 (“Professions and Occupations”) officially commenced in 2016, with the passage of House Bill 16-163. For a refresher on that bill and a general overview of the project, click here.

    During the 2017 legislative session, the General Assembly made great strides,  better positioning the Title 12 recodification effort as it enters the final phase:

    • House Bill 17-1006 authorized administrative agencies to change statutory citations contained in rules published in the Colorado Code of Regulations through a simplified process. This avoids the need for agencies to conduct formal notice-and-comment rulemakings simply to update citations that are made obsolete by recodifying Title 12 and other relocations and will save a great deal of time and expense that would otherwise result from the renumbering caused by relocation.
    • Fourteen stand-alone bills slimmed down Title 12 by relocating 21 articles that have nothing to do with professions and occupations regulated by the Department of Regulatory Agencies (“DORA”) to more appropriate locations in the Colorado Revised Statutes (“C.R.S.”). The relocated laws affect everything from cemeteries to dance halls. With these provisions out of the way (resulting in about 270 fewer pages of statutory text in Title 12!), less work remains and there is little to distract from the more substantive, nuanced, and complicated aspects of recodifying Title 12.

    What’s in store now? Although much progress has been made, the real crux of the Title 12 recodification will occur in this, its third year. In particular, efforts will continue to identify more appropriate statutory locations for many current laws, and the reorganization of the remainder of Title 12 into a more coherent whole will commence. Specific activity will include:

    • Continuing the Title 12 exodus: A number of articles remain in Title 12 that will be moved (as with the 2017 session bills, in a nonsubstantive fashion) to more appropriate locations in the C.R.S., including laws about firearms dealers, background checks at gun shows, and advance parental notification of an unemancipated minor’s abortion.
    • Making recodification a two-way street: Although most of the recodification activity to date has seen Title 12 lose laws, it may actually gain some laws—DORA’s organizational statutes, laws related to passenger tramway safety, etc.—during this next phase of the project.
    • Creating a new Title 44: Other soon-to-be-orphaned Title 12 laws will be moved into a new title: Title 44, C.R.S. These laws concern areas in which the Department of Revenue has regulatory authority: Automobiles, medical and retail marijuana, alcoholic and fermented malt beverages, liquors special event permits, gaming, and racing.
    • Cleaning up what’s left: The rest of Title 12, which concerns DORA, will be divided into sections governing that department’s Real Estate Division and the Division of Professions and Occupations. Redundant provisions will be identified and combined into “common provisions” sections (i.e., single sections of general applicability that contain provisions setting forth for example, definitions or administrative procedures), which will further reduce the size of the title.

    Ultimately, the Committee on Legal Services must decide by December 31, 2017, whether to approve the additional Title 12 recodification bill(s). Any bill(s) recommended will be introduced in the 2018 legislative session.

    How can I be involved? The staff of the Office of Legislative Legal Services strives to make the Title 12 recodification process as inclusive, transparent, and thoughtful as possible. To that end, we will once again conduct public meetings during the interim to solicit feedback on the recodification from stakeholders and other interested persons. Meeting announcements will be posted here, and all are welcome and encouraged to attend. In fact, we’ve already scheduled two discussions on the relocation of Article 6 of Title 12, which pertains to automobiles, for Friday, July 7th at 2 p.m. and Tuesday, July 11th, at 2 p.m. The meetings will be held at the Capitol in SCR 354.

    Additional resources:

    • To sign up for the Title 12 mailing list, please click here.
    • The Title 12 staff will keep the Committee on Legal Services apprised of the project’s progress. You can access agendas, meeting minutes, and audio for meetings here.

    If you have questions or concerns, please contact Christy Chase or Tom Morris.

  • Legislative Legal Services: Drafting and much more

    by Dan Cartin

    Legislative Legal Services is the General Assembly’s nonpartisan legal counsel and staff agency. Our staff, consisting of attorneys and other professionals, provides a variety of written materials and services to legislators in addition to their bill and amendment drafting needs. We hope each legislator will learn about and make full use of these ancillary services available from our staff during the 2017 session. Please visit the Legislative Legal Services website for a better idea of the types of services and products we can help with. Our homepage is located at leg.colorado.gov/agencies/office-of-legislative-legal-services.

    In addition to our primary function of drafting bills, resolutions, and amendments, the Legislative Legal Services staff, upon request, can provide legislators with written materials to help them understand Colorado law and what other states are doing and to help them explain their bills. Our attorneys may not always be able to respond quickly to every legislator’s request due to the time constraints created by bill and amendment drafting demands. But we will do our best to provide the requested materials as soon as practicable, time permitting and on a first-come, first-served basis. Examples of ancillary materials available upon request, time permitting, include:

    • More-detailed, written explanations of bills;
    • Summaries of changes made to a bill in committee, in the first house or in the second house;
    • Tables comparing bill provisions;
    • Explanations of state or federal statutes;
    • Summaries of case law relevant to a bill;
    • Summaries of case law interpreting a particular statute or issue;
    • Legislative histories of issues or bills;
    • Legislative histories of constitutional or statutory provisions;
    • Comparisons of Colorado law with the law of other states on particular issues; and
    • Lists of all Colorado statutes addressing an issue.

    Our office also provides written legal opinions regarding legislation. Occasionally a legislator will ask us for a written legal opinion on an issue that relates to pending legislation. We hold these requests in strictest confidence. We will not release a written memorandum to other persons without the permission of the legislator who requested it. And we will give the same answer if another legislator asks us the same question, which will result in identical legal opinions for different legislators.

    There are some limitations on the materials and services we can provide to legislators due to our role as nonpartisan legislative staff. Examples of the documents and tasks that Legislative Legal Services is not allowed to provide include:

    • Voting records on an issue or bill;
    • Talking points advocating for or opposing a policy position;
    • Carrying messages that encourage a legislator to vote for a bill or discourage a legislator from voting on a bill;
    • Soliciting legislators as joint prime sponsors, cosponsors, or second house sponsors;
    • Violating confidentiality, e.g., telling a legislator about amendments prepared for other legislators to his or her bill; telling a legislator what another legislator said or told others about the legislator’s bill; or telling a legislator what legal advice our office gave another legislator;
    • Assisting a legislator in counting votes; and
    • Advocating for passage or defeat of legislation on policy or any other grounds.

    These lists illustrate the materials or services we can and cannot provide, but they are not exhaustive. If a legislator has a request for materials or assistance, please ask us. If it’s something we can provide, we will.

    We are here to help all of the members of the 71st General Assembly achieve a successful legislative session in 2017. We encourage legislators to fully utilize the Legislative Legal Services staff for all of their legislative needs during the session, including those described here that go beyond bill and amendment drafting.

  • Revisor of Statutes Ensures Access to Colorado’s Laws

    by Julie Pelegrin

    As we explained a couple of weeks ago, the Office of Legislative Legal Services is responsible not only for writing bills and amendments, but also for publishing the statutes. But these functions—drafting and publishing—have not always been housed in the same office or even in the same branch of government.

    The history of publishing statutes in Colorado is long and complicated. Starting in 1861, the Territorial Legislature published the session laws after each biennial legislative session, which contained all of the bills the Legislature passed. Until 1868, if someone wanted to amend a bill that passed in an earlier session, he had to amend the bill as it appeared in the session laws.

    The first consolidation of the state’s laws occurred before Colorado became a state. In 1868, the Territorial Legislature authorized consolidation of the general statutes, all of the laws enacted since 1861 with any amendments to those laws, arranged into 90 chapters, alphabetic by topic. The Territorial Legislature then adopted this consolidation, making it the “positive law” of the state, which means that a person could cite to the section of consolidated statute, rather than having to cite to the act as it was published and later amended in session laws.[i]

    The General Assembly voted to reconsolidate and republish the laws at various times: The General Laws of 1877; the General Statutes of 1883; Mills’ Annotated Statutes of 1891; the Revised Statutes of 1908; the Compiled Laws of 1921; and the Colorado Statutes Annotated of 1935. Each of these, except the Mills’ Annotated Statutes, was created with the General Assembly’s official authorization, but there was not a specific official or office that was consistently responsible for codifying and republishing Colorado’s laws on a regular basis.

    Until 1951.

    That year, the General Assembly adopted House Bill No. 201. Like earlier acts, this act provided for revising and codifying the laws of the state, but with this act, the General Assembly for the first time took a longer view. It created the Committee on Statute Revision within the Judicial Department, chaired by the Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. The committee consisted of the Attorney General, two Senators, and two Representatives.

    2012 Session Laws of Colorado/photo by Ashley Zimmerman

    The act also created the position of Revisor of Statutes. The act directed the Committee to appoint an attorney to this position and to oversee his work. The Revisor could hire attorney associates and clerical staff to assist him in collating, compiling, editing, and preparing the statutes; publishing the statutes and other important documents like the state and federal constitutions; and creating source notes, annotations, an index, and comparative tables of prior compilations. All of this work was to be completed and submitted to the General Assembly by the 1953 legislative session.

    H.B. No. 201 also directed the Revisor, at the end of each legislative session after 1953, to annotate, arrange, and prepare pocket parts or supplements for the 1953 revision of the statutes. The Office of the Revisor of Statutes was now a continuing enterprise, responsible for maintaining the accuracy of the published statutes on an annual basis. The General Assembly also directed the Revisor to assist the Legislative Reference Bureau (in the Attorney General’s Office) in drafting bills and amendments and engrossing and enrolling bills.

    Finally, a permanent process existed to ensure the published statutes kept up to date. But in 1958, 1959, and 1960, the office fell behind in publishing the pocket parts. So, in 1961, the General Assembly directed the Revisor of Statutes to publish a new recodification, incorporating all of the changes since 1953 into a single set of volumes: the Colorado Revised Statutes 1963. At this time, the Revisor was still working out of the judicial branch.

    In the mid-1960’s, the General Assembly undertook a study of the organization of Colorado’s state government. In 1968, it passed Senate Bill No. 1, concerning the administrative reorganization of state government, which completely reorganized the executive branch of government, and moved the Legislative Drafting Office (LDO) from the Attorney General’s Office to the legislative branch. Then, in 1969, the General Assembly passed Senate Bill No. 396, which created the Office of Revisor of Statutes (ORS) in the legislative branch. Both the LDO and the ORS were under the direction of the Committee on Legal Services.

    Finally, in 1988, the General Assembly passed House Bill No. 1329, which combined the LDO and the ORS into the Office of Legislative Legal Services (OLLS). In combining the offices, the General Assembly named the Director of the OLLS the ex officio Revisor of Statutes, although the Director was authorized to appoint another attorney to serve as the Revisor. This has been the Director’s practice since 1988. The current Revisor of Statutes, Jennifer Gilroy, was appointed March 26, 2004, and is the first woman to serve in this capacity.

    The Revisor’s duties have not changed significantly over time. Under the direction of the Committee on Legal Services, the Revisor must compile, edit, arrange, and prepare for publication the Colorado statutes, the state and federal constitutions, other significant documents, an index of the statutes, and tables comparing the current statutes with previous compilations. Each section of the statutes must have a source note, which provides the history of the section, and annotations of any cases interpreting the section. In publishing the statutes each year, the Revisor, with assistance from legislative editors and attorneys in the OLLS, can correct errors in grammar and punctuation, and may identify other errors or inconsistencies that may be fixed in a revisor’s bill introduced in the next legislative session.

    The most important recent changes to the published statutes are a result of technology. In addition to publishing the entire set of statutes each year, the Revisor oversees the electronic publication of and access to the Colorado Revised Statutes on the internet, on disc, and through e-books.

    The last time the General Assembly recodified and reorganized the entire Colorado Revised Statutes was in 1973. With that recodification, it adopted a numbering convention that provides a great deal of flexibility and room for expansion in the statutes. In the last legislative session, the General Assembly recreated the Statutory Revision Committee to address defects and anachronisms in the law. These provisions make another complete recodification of the statutes less likely.

     

    ________

    [i] See “Colorado Statutes: Past, Present, and Future” J. Myron Jacobstein, 33 Rocky Mountain Law Review, pg 36 (1960-61).

  • Legislature Passes the Laws – But Executive Branch Used to Write Them

    by Julie Pelegrin

    Newly elected legislators are often (pleasantly) surprised to find that they do not have to write their own bills. The Office of Legislative Legal Services – a nonpartisan legislative staff agency – provides expert legislative drafting services to help legislators put their policy ideas into statutory language. But this was not always the case. For over 90 years, Colorado’s legislation was written by employees of the executive branch.

    From the first Legislative Assembly of the Colorado Territory in 1861 until 1917, it’s not clear who was writing the legislation. There is no mention of bill drafting services in the statutes or anywhere else that we can find. Presumably, every legislator wrote his or her own bills, although some may have sought help from private attorneys or the Attorney General. The first mention we find of a bill drafting office is in the 1917-18 biennial report of Colorado Attorney General (AG) Leslie E. Hubbard. He reports that he formed a division within the Attorney General’s office to assist legislators in writing bills. His motivation: To avoid the introduction of bills with “patent inaccuracies, conflicts and constitutional objections” and so reduce the amount of litigation against the state.

    2012 Colorado Revised Statutes/Photo by Ashley ZimmermanIt appears this informal division of the AG’s office continued to operate until 1927. That year, the General Assembly officially created a legislative reference office (LRO) within the Attorney General’s office with the passage of S.B. No. 200. The LRO consisted of one attorney who served as director of the office and at least one stenographer. The Attorney General appointed the LRO director, with the consent of the Governor. S.B. No. 200 also authorized the Supreme Court Librarian to assign library employees to work with the LRO during the legislative session.

    From the beginning, the employees of the LRO were nonpartisan – appointed without reference to party affiliation, solely on the ground of fitness. The director of the LRO had to be an attorney licensed to practice law for at least five years before appointment. And all bill requests were confidential; neither the director nor any employee of the LRO could reveal to anyone outside the office the contents or nature of a bill request without the requesting legislator’s consent. Also, the director and the LRO employees were prohibited from lobbying in favor of or against any type of legislation.

    The LRO had several duties including: Maintaining bill files and information relating to bills; accumulating data and statistics concerning the practical operation of Colorado’s statutes and those of other states; studying the statutes to find ways to reduce the number and bulk of the statutes; and working with the legislative reference bureaus in other states.

    Most importantly, at a legislator’s or the Governor’s request, the LRO was required to draft bills, resolutions, and amendments; advise the legislature or the Governor as to the constitutionality or probable effect of proposed legislation; prepare summaries of existing laws and compilations of laws in other states; and research proposed legislation.

    Although employees of the executive branch were drafting legislation for the legislative branch, the separation-of-powers implications did not seem to cause any concern – at least not until 1968. That year, Senator Bill Armstrong and Representative Star Burton Caywood introduced and passed S.B. 1, concerning the administrative reorganization of state government. This was a massive bill, the product of at least two years of interim committee meetings and planning. The act significantly restructured state government, reducing the sprawling mass of executive branch agencies and offices to just 17 state executive departments.

    S.B. 1 also moved the LRO out of the Attorney General’s office and into the legislative department, renaming it the Legislative Drafting Office (LDO). And the bill created the Legislative Drafting Committee, a bipartisan committee consisting of the three members of leadership in each house and one additional minority party member appointed from each house.

    The new LDO had a director, appointed by the legislative drafting committee without regard to party affiliation, who had to be an attorney. The director could appoint additional attorneys and clerical personnel as necessary to staff the office. The duties of the new LDO were essentially the same as the old LRO, except the attorneys in the LDO could no longer advise the Governor as to whether to sign a bill.

    In 1969, the General Assembly passed S.B. 396, which, among other things, renamed the legislative drafting committee the Committee on Legal Services and changed the membership to consist of eight legislators and the Attorney General – but it remained a bipartisan committee. The General Assembly removed the Attorney General from the committee in 1973 and expanded the membership to 10 legislators in 1985.

    Finally, in 1988, the General Assembly passed House Bill 1329, which combined the LDO and the Office of the Revisor of Statutes into what we now know as the Office of Legislative Legal Services (OLLS). The duties of the OLLS did not change significantly from those exercised by the LDO, but, with the addition of the Office of the Revisor of Statutes, the OLLS is also responsible for revising, codifying, and publishing the statutes.front-door-of-office-1

    Several things about the OLLS have not changed as it has evolved from the executive branch into the legislative branch. Bill and amendment requests and communications between OLLS staff and legislators are all still confidential. The OLLS is still nonpartisan and is still charged with providing legal services. And, finally, the mission of the OLLS continues to be providing “the best technical advice and information … available to the General Assembly, agencies of state government, and the people of this state.”

  • Title 12 Recodification: A Study in Organization

    Editors’ note: Although the LegiSource is currently on hiatus, we are making an exception and posting today’s article on the Title 12 Recodification Project to provide timely notice of the meetings scheduled for June 29 and 30. Regular postings for LegiSource will resume July 7.

    by Thomas Morris

    If you’re like me, you rely to some degree on a filing system to store and, more importantly, retrieve documents that are important to you. How well this works for you depends not only on how the system is set up but also how you actually store documents over time. Although it’s hard to find what you’re looking for in a poorly designed organizational system, few things are harder to find than a document that has been misfiled. Who would think to look for a recipe for soup in a folder labelled “soap”?

    In contrast, a well-designed system includes only subjects that relate to the overall system and organizes those subjects in an intuitive way. This reduces the possibility of misfiling a document and increases the likelihood that you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for.

    Similarly, although the original organizational structure for title 12 of the Colorado Revised Statutes (regarding “Professions and Occupations”) may have worked well initially, over time several problems have emerged:

    • Almost one-third of the title’s 104 articles have been repealed, but the numbers for those articles cannot be reused;
    • Another one-third of the articles have been squeezed between previous articles (such as 43.2, 43.3, 43.4, etc.) in an effort to add new articles in alphabetical order;
    • The title is organized into a series of “General” articles, then a series of “Health Care” articles, and finally another series of “General” articles;
    • Many articles contain duplicative language that could be consolidated into a general or common provisions article that could apply broadly to all professions and occupations; and
    • Title 12 addresses not only laws governing professions and occupations regulated by the department of regulatory agencies but also other areas of law that are not truly a “profession or occupation”, affecting seven principal state departments, the judicial branch, local governments, and medical schools.

    These shortcomings make the title unnecessarily voluminous, repetitive, and difficult to amend, understand, and administer. For example, title 12 includes an article about dead human bodies, including a part 1 governing anatomical gifts and a part 2 governing unclaimed dead human bodies. Certainly, no one makes a profession or occupation in making anatomical gifts or in claiming dead human bodies. So why are these laws codified in title 12? It probably makes more sense to put them in the laws governing medical facilities (which receive anatomical gifts) or medical schools (which receive unclaimed bodies).

    To redress these problems, the General Assembly recently enacted Senate Bill 16-163. The act directs the Office of Legislative Legal Services (OLLS) to conduct a two-year study of an organizational recodification of title 12. What does an “organizational recodification” mean? To recodify means to rearrange and reorganize a system of laws. In the context of title 12, a recodification means that the laws in title 12 will be repealed and reenacted; laws that may have been “misfiled” in title 12 may be “refiled” in a more appropriate title. As expressed in the act, § 2-3-510 (3) (a), C.R.S., “organizational” means that:

    Fundamentally, the recodification should be organizational and nonsubstantive, and any substantive provisions that may be included in the proposed legislation should be strictly limited to those that are necessary to promote the public purposes of an organizational recodification as specified in this section, such as:
    (I) Conforming similar provisions to achieve uniformity, eliminate redundancy, and allow for the consolidation of common provisions; and
    (II) Eliminating provisions that are archaic or obsolete;

    During the 2016 interim, the OLLS will solicit input from state and local government agencies, representatives from professions and occupations regulated under title 12, and other interested members of the public. During the 2017 interim, the OLLS, working with the stakeholders, will start to formulate specific recodification proposals and begin writing draft legislation. By December 31, 2017, the Committee on Legal Services must decide whether to approve legislation to recodify title 12 for introduction in the 2018 regular session.

    The first meetings for the study have been scheduled for June 29 at 1 p.m. and June 30 at 9 a.m., both in Room 271 of the State Capitol. These are the initial, introductory organizational meetings and the agendas, which are available on the study’s web page, are identical. We encourage all interested parties to attend one of these meetings. Hopefully, by the end of the 2018 regular session, Colorado will have better-organized laws regulating professions and occupations!

  • Bills, Amendments, Legal Opinions and Research, Explanations – OLLS is Ready to Serve

    by Dan Cartin

    Legislative Legal Services is often referred to as “the drafting office.” But we are actually the General Assembly’s nonpartisan legal counsel and staff agency. We have a statutory and ethical duty to represent the General Assembly as a whole. And we are obligated to serve the best interests of our institutional client, the General Assembly, as distinguished from the individual interests of any specific legislator. We balance that obligation with our statutory direction to prepare bills, amendments, and other documents for individual legislators and to maintain strict confidentiality when doing so.

    In addition to our primary function of drafting bills, resolutions, and amendments, the Legislative Legal Services staff, upon request, can provide legislators with written materials explaining current Colorado law and other state and federal law that can assist them in explaining their bills. We do our best to provide the requested materials as soon as practicable, time permitting and on a first-come, first-served basis. Examples of ancillary materials available upon request, time permitting, include:

    • More detailed, written explanations of bills;
    • Summaries of changes made to a bill in committee, in the first house, or in the second house;
    • Tables comparing bill provisions;
    • Explanations of state and federal statutes;
    • Summaries of case law relevant to a bill;
    • Summaries of case law interpreting a particular statute or issue;
    • Legislative histories of issues and bills;
    • Legislative histories of constitutional and statutory provisions;
    • Comparisons of Colorado law with the law of other states on particular issues;
    • Lists of all Colorado statutes addressing an issue; and
    • Legal opinions regarding legislation.

    This list is not exhaustive. If a legislator needs or would like other materials or assistance not listed, he or she should please ask us. If it’s something we can provide, we will.

    With regard to legal opinions, occasionally a legislator will ask us for a legal opinion on an issue that relates to pending legislation. We hold these requests in strictest confidence. We will not release a written legal opinion to other persons without the permission of the legislator who requested it. And we will give the same answer if another legislator asks us the same question, which will result in identical legal opinions for different legislators.

    Please visit the Legislative Legal Services website for a better idea of the types of services and products we can help with. The link for “Legal Topics,” among others, is an especially good resource for information concerning recurring legislative legal topics and issues.

    We encourage legislators to fully utilize the Legislative Legal Services staff for all of their legislative needs during the session, including those described here that go beyond bill and amendment drafting. We are here to provide the services and support that help all of the members of the 70th General Assembly achieve a successful legislative session in 2016.

  • Legislative Legal Services: The Variety of “Services” We Provide Beyond Bill and Amendment Drafting

    by Dan Cartin

    Legislative Legal Services provides a variety of written materials and services to legislators in addition to their bill and amendment drafting needs. We hope each legislator will learn about and make full use of these ancillary services available from our staff during the 2015 session. Our homepage is located at http://leg.colorado.gov/agencies/office-of-legislative-legal-services.

    Legislative Legal Services is the General Assembly’s nonpartisan legal staff agency. We have a statutory and ethical duty to represent the General Assembly as a whole. And we are obligated to serve the best interests of our institutional client, the General Assembly, as distinguished from the individual interests of any specific legislator. We balance that obligation with our statutory direction to prepare bills, amendments, and other documents for individual legislators and to maintain strict confidentiality when doing so.

    In addition to our primary function of drafting bills, resolutions, and amendments, the Legislative Legal Services staff, upon request, can provide legislators with written materials to help them understand the current state of the law and what other states are doing and to help them explain their bills. Our attorneys may not always be able to respond quickly to every legislator’s request due to the time constraints created by bill and amendment drafting demands. But we will do our best to provide the requested materials as soon as practicable, time permitting and on a first-come, first-served basis. Examples of ancillary materials available upon request, time permitting, include:

    • More detailed, written explanations of bills;
    • Summaries of changes made to a bill in committee, in the first house, or in the second house;
    • Tables comparing bill provisions;
    • Explanations of state or federal statutes;
    • Summaries of case law relevant to a bill;
    • Summaries of case law interpreting a particular statute or issue;
    • Legislative histories of issues or bills;
    • Legislative histories of constitutional or statutory provisions;
    • Comparisons of Colorado law with the law of other states on particular issues;
    • Lists of all Colorado statutes addressing an issue; and
    • Legal opinions regarding legislation.

    With regard to legal opinions, occasionally a legislator will ask us for a legal opinion on an issue that relates to pending legislation. We hold these requests in strictest confidence. We will not release a written memorandum to other persons without the permission of the legislator who requested it. And we will give the same answer if another legislator asks us the same question, which will result in identical legal opinions for different legislators.

    There are some limitations on the materials and services we can provide to legislators due to our role as nonpartisan legislative staff. Examples of the documents and tasks that Legislative Legal Services is not allowed to provide include:

    • Voting records on an issue or bill;
    • Talking points advocating or opposing a policy position;
    • Carrying messages that encourage a legislator to vote for a bill or discourage a legislator from voting on a bill;
    • Soliciting legislators as joint prime sponsors, cosponsors, or second house sponsors;
    • Violating confidentiality, e.g., telling a legislator about amendments prepared for other legislators to his or her bill; telling a legislator what another legislator said or told others about the legislator’s bill; telling a legislator what legal advice our office gave another legislator;
    • Assisting a legislator in counting votes; and
    • Advocating for passage or defeat of legislation on policy or any other grounds.These lists illustrate the materials or services we can and cannot provide, but they are not exhaustive. If a legislator has a request for materials or assistance, please ask us. If it’s something we can provide, we will.

    Please visit the Legislative Legal Services website for a better idea of the types of services and products we can help with. The link for “Legal Topics”, among others, is an especially good resource for information concerning recurring legislative legal topics and issues.

    We are here to help all of the members of the 70th General Assembly achieve a successful legislative session in 2015. We encourage legislators to fully utilize the Legislative Legal Services staff for all of their legislative needs during the session, including those described here that go beyond bill and amendment drafting.

  • Legislative Council Set to Review 2014 Ballot Analyses

    By Julie Pelegrin and Cathy Eslinger

    LegiSource acknowledges and thanks the Legislative Council Staff for their significant input on this article.

    The Legislative Council Committee will meet Wednesday, Sept. 3, to review analyses of the four measures that the secretary of state has certified to the 2014 general election ballot. Two of the measures would amend the constitution: Amendment 67 would define “person” and “child” for purposes of the Colorado criminal code and wrongful death statutes; and Amendment 68 would allow casino gambling at horse race tracks. The other two measures would amend the Colorado Revised Statutes: Proposition 104 would specify that local school board meetings concerning collective bargaining negotiations or employment negotiations must be open to the public; and Proposition 105 would require the labeling of genetically modified food, beginning July 1, 2016.

    As required by the state constitution and by statute the Legislative Council Staff (LCS) has been working for weeks to prepare the analyses to help the public understand the purpose and effect of each measure. Following the Legislative Council’s review, the LCS will mail the analyses, printed in the familiar “blue book,” to each registered-voter household in the state. bluebook Also, the LCS maintains a blue book website – www.coloradobluebook.com – that includes drafts of the analyses and the text of each measure.

    The LCS prepares a blue book before each general election for which initiated or referred constitutional or statutory amendments or questions are certified to the ballot. The analysis of each measure includes a summary of the measure, the major arguments for and against the measure, and a brief fiscal assessment of the measure. The analysis may also include other information that can help voters understand the measure’s purpose and effect.

    Each analysis typically goes through three drafts. But, depending on the complexity of the measure and the time available, some may require only two drafts. The LCS meets with proponents and opponents of the measure and writes the first draft using the information provided by them as well as information obtained through the LCS’s own research. The goal is to write an analysis that is concise, readable for a layperson, and factually correct.

    The LCS posts the draft analyses on the blue book website, and any person may file written comments for staff to consider in preparing the second or third draft. The staff considers all comments and proposed amendments submitted by the established deadlines, but use discretion in changing the analysis. Some of the criteria for making proposed changes to the analysis include:
    • Avoiding slogan-type language that triggers a response but does not contribute to greater understanding of the measure;
    • Ensuring that statements are verifiable statements of fact rather than mere opinion, directly applicable to the measure, and not misleading;
    • Ensuring that the language specifically strengthens or clarifies the arguments and is not repetitive;
    • Maintaining the balance of the analysis between the opposing sides; and
    • Avoiding language that is more appropriate for the campaigns conducted by the opposing sides.

    As part of the analysis, the LCS also prepares a fiscal impact statement for each measure, taking into consideration fiscal impact information submitted by various state and local agencies, proponents and opponents, and other interested persons. The blue book will include a summary of each measure’s fiscal assessment. The full fiscal impact statement for each measure will be available on the blue book website. At a minimum, the summary must include:
    • An estimate of the measure’s effect on state and local government revenues, expenditures, taxes, and fiscal liabilities;
    • An estimate of the amount of any state and local government recurring expenditures or fiscal liabilities; and
    • For a measure that modifies the state tax laws, an estimate of the impact to the average taxpayer, if feasible.

    The LCS submits the final draft of each analysis to the Legislative Council Committee, which holds a public hearing to review the analyses. Anyone who is interested in testifying on the accuracy or fairness of an analysis may do so at this public hearing. The Legislative Council may change the language of an analysis upon a two-thirds affirmative vote of the council members. Before the public hearing, the LCS will post on the blue book website information for each analysis that includes the final draft, any amendments submitted to the final draft, a list of persons who had opportunity to comment on the last draft, and the text of the measure.

    Following the public hearing, the LCS will mail copies of the blue book to each registered-voter household in the state. This year, the scheduled mailing date is Oct. 3.

  • Legislative Legal Services: “Services” For You That Go Beyond Bill and Amendment Drafting

    by Dan Cartin

    Legislative Legal Services provides a variety of written materials and services to legislators in addition to their bill and amendment drafting needs. We hope each legislator will become a “power-user” of these ancillary services available from our staff during the 2014 session. Our homepage is located at http://leg.colorado.gov/agencies/office-of-legislative-legal-services.

    Legislative Legal Services is the General Assembly’s nonpartisan legal staff agency. We have a statutory and ethical duty to represent the General Assembly as a whole. And we are obligated to serve the best interests of our institutional client, the General Assembly, as distinguished from the individual interests of any specific legislator. We balance that obligation with our statutory direction to prepare bills, amendments, and other documents for individual legislators and to maintain strict confidentiality when doing so. (more…)

  • The OLLS: Legal Services Available to You Beyond Bill and Amendment Drafting

    by Dan Cartin

    The OLLS provides a variety of written materials and services to members in addition to your bill and amendment drafting needs. As the 2013 session begins, we hope you will frequently contact the OLLS attorneys and legislative assistants to access these ancillary services. (more…)