The good and bad of serving

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056, signed by Gov. Polis on June 2, a bill he worked very hard on that put $15 million into PERA (Public Employees Retirement Association) to help retirees. That money was due in 2020 but not paid because of the revenue shortage due to the pandemic.

Rep. Dickson talked about having “knocked on thousands of doors last year” when she was running for office and being told by voters in HD37 that their foremost concerns were reproductive freedom (and) the cost of inflation, transportation, fuel, and housing.” She explained, “The cost of housing translates to the issues with our homelessness crisis in metro Denver,” adding, “We’ve taken some steps but there’s definitely a lot more that I want to do to help those people, as well as to get people off our streets and make sure that we’re all happy living in the community we are living in here.”

Dickson pointed to a bill she sponsored, HB23-1255, “that says that local communities cannot just blanket say no to new housing…A community can no longer say, ‘we are full,’ no one else is allowed to move here…That’s so important (because) it completely strips property owners of any way to build housing to help themselves, to build (accessory dwelling units), or to show their local government why (a project) would be really good for their community. More than that, it takes away the local control of all the people in surrounding communities who now are forced to deal with the overflow of the bedroom environment because you are working with colleagues across the aisle that don’t believe that you deserve to be treated as a person. I’m going to call him out--Rep. (Scott) Bottoms (REl Paso County) and the vitriol that he brings to that chamber,” including, “hateful anti-trans rhetoric” that is “dangerous, especially in the face of the Club not, we are asked to be better.”

He went on to describe a time when a Republican colleague “equated having a disability with choosing it, saying, ‘you choose to run with the bulls (serving in the U.S. Army), you have to deal with the consequences. A colleague came down to defend me and said it was akin to the racist comments that come from them.”

Then, Ortiz said, another in their districts…We’ve seen a rise in domestic terrorism in this country because of those views. It is difficult for me because we have to serve with individuals like that, but they are not all like that. There are conservatives that have good ideas. I wish they would keep it about low taxes and small government and quit trying to take away the rights of our LGBTQ community, of women, and stop spewing hateful rhetoric that is inspiring domestic terrorist attacks.” community (that is) saying, ‘no more housing.’”

As the town hall wound down, Ortiz recounted some difficult personal moments that he shared with his audience. Comparing the general assembly to his service in the U.S. Army, where a helicopter crash in Afghanistan left him wheelchair-bound, he said, “Working under the dome (at the state capital) is a difficult

Q shooting.”

Ortiz continued, describing his experience in the 2023 legislative session, when he said there were members “allowed to come to the well and spew their hate,” while, “We’re supposed to be the ones to respect the dignity of that institution and of all Coloradans that put us there whether they voted for us or not--whether they espouse those same hateful views or

Republican explained it as, “She just simply spoke the truth (that Ortiz chose to serve, therefore should accept that he took the risk that he would spend his life in a wheelchair) and it was too much. A recess had to be called.”

Ortiz spoke his truth. “We are dealing (in the legislature) with individuals that espouse racist, bigoted, hateful rhetoric, and are elected because of this

Rep. Dickson, elected seven months ago, said, “All of the moderate and purple districts in Colorado are represented by Democrats…We have a 71% majority in the House…The only Republicans in the House are from districts that reward being an extremist, which means that we go to work every day in a building where a large portion of our colleagues have publicly made threats to our safety and publicly posted on social media about wanting a new Civil War. They have called us Nazis; they have demonstrated multiple times that they are carrying concealed firearms in the legislature in unsafe manners, manners that mean that the firearm will just sort of fall out of their pocket and go off or will be easily stolen. Both of those things have happened (creating) an unsafe working environment.” fmiklin.villager@gmail.com