DENVER – Lawmakers representing Southwest Colorado say they did as much as they could for rural residents during a session that ended Wednesday.

The three Republicans – Reps. Don Coram of Montrose, J. Paul Brown of Ignacio and Sen. Ellen Roberts of Durango – pointed to progress this year on wildfires and water issues.

Roberts found herself in a unique position, landing a leadership role as president pro tempore in the first Republican-controlled Senate in a decade. The landscape, however, of the overall Legislature was challenging because Democrats controlled the House.

“For the first time being in the majority, I saw policies advance, at least through the Senate, that had never come out of committee before,” Roberts said.

Wildfires and water

One of Roberts’ greatest wins was a bill that incorporates both fire and water issues by securing $600,000 for new technology that uses weather forecasting to predict the intensity and direction of wildfires. The bill originally aimed at both fires and floods, but lawmakers scaled it back to just the fire portion after budget concerns were raised. The bill still involves water because fires can contaminate watersheds.

Roberts was not as successful, however, with pushing for a bill that would have allowed residents to collect rainwater from their roofs. Even though it wasn’t her legislation, she worked closely on the bill, trying to convince a few in her caucus to support the measure. The bill ultimately died. Roberts said she expects to raise the issue this summer as chairwoman of an interim committee that studies water resources.

Coram felt victorious after passing a bill that would create a grant program for managing phreatophytes – plants that consume a significant amount of water.

And Brown worked with Roberts on a successful bill that would create a grant program to advance fire-mitigation techniques. He had hoped to also pass a bill that would have studied water storage along the South Platte River, but that bill was killed over spending concerns.

For Brown, there was only a slight adjustment factor since he had been away from the Legislature for two years after losing his re-election bid in 2012. He convinced voters last year to give him another chance.

“Within a week, it was like I never left,” said Brown, though he was disappointed he couldn’t advance measures that would have added more transportation funding and allowed off-highway vehicles on county roads.

IUD funding and personhood in spotlight

All three lawmakers struggled with a controversy about a proposal led by Coram that would have set aside $5 million to expand a birth-control program that provides intrauterine devices to low-income women. The Senate killed the bill.

“It was a conversation that we needed to have,” a disappointed Coram said. “Some of those conversations take more than one year.”

Several interests were closely watching Roberts to see if she would maintain her pro-choice record by supporting the bill. Roberts said she would have supported it if she had gotten the chance to vote on it.

“I didn’t learn any new information about the objections that would have persuaded me otherwise,” she said.

Roberts and Coram also sponsored a bill that would have expanded a teen pregnancy and dropout prevention program. It, too, failed.

Brown found himself caught in the contraception issue, surprising several observers by voting for the IUD bill, despite fellow conservative pro-life caucus members encouraging him to oppose it.

“You have to vote your conscience and not worry about the party,” Brown said. “You just have to do what you think is right.”

Also part of the abortion debate was a bill that would have created a fetal homicide law in Colorado, allowing prosecutors to file murder charges in attacks against women in which a fetus is killed. Roberts, Coram and Brown were disappointed to see that bill fail at the hands of Democrats who feared that it would have created so-called “personhood” in the state.

Student testing

Much of the end of the legislative session was dominated by a conversation about student testing. Lawmakers ultimately advanced a proposal that would reduce some testing, though some felt it didn’t go far enough.

The delegation representing Southwest Colorado believes the step is in the right direction because it would begin a process of empowering local school districts while maintaining the current evaluation system.

“We’ll have less testing so that teachers can get in there and teach and not be so worried about tests,” Brown said. “It puts us on the track to have our own tests.”

Law enforcement oversight

Police reform hasn’t been an outcry in rural Colorado, but Roberts took a leading role on the subject this year in an effort to offer a rural perspective. She sponsored three bills that would require greater transparency and data collection after officer-involved shootings and the disclosure of employment misconduct history when an officer is applying for a job.

pmarcus@durangoherald.com