Montrose - Daily Press

K.C. MASON

DENVER - Area lawmakers are dealing with some familiar issues - both personally and statewide - as they return to Denver for the 2004 state Legislature.

Rep. Ray Rose, R-Montrose, is again trying to change some provisions in the voter-passed amendment that requires background checks at gun shows. Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus, already has reintroduced his bill that was vetoed last year by Gov. Bill Owens dealing with water loans between two irrigators.

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Water policy and balancing the state's $5.5 billion-plus general fund budget within the constitutional constraints of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and the education-funding law known as Amendment 23 are on everyone's plate.

"We can come through this fiscal perfect storm if we will come to this dome with the mindset of working together," said Rose, who is entering the second year of his first term as the House District 58 representative.

Isgar, whose Senate District 6 covers southwestern Colorado including Montrose County, said he hopes election-year politics can be set aside long enough to give the Legislature more flexibility to deal with the budget.

"We're all big enough to address that without coming down to political bickering," said Isgar. "I don't want our legacy to be that we couldn't resolve our differences to solve the biggest fiscal crisis to come along in a long time."

Isgar, the only Democratic state senator from the Western Slope, said most of his bills have Republican co-sponsors because they deal with rural issues.

"Election years always tend to be a little partisan," said Isgar, who does not face re-election until 2006. "But I'm still going to work with my rural friends who happen to be Republican. I don't blame people for their relatives, and I don't blame some of my colleagues for what party they're in."

Rose said he is returning with a smaller version of his gun-show bill because he learned from a rookie mistake a year ago.

"I wrote a really good bill last year, but it was far too complex to ever hope to get anything like that passed," he said.

Rose's first bill, which never left its first committee, attempted to define the limits of a gun-show facility and parking lot and to restrict the time in which a transaction must be completed before a background check is required.

Rose's new bill removes language from Amendment 22 that requires background checks from an "attempt" to sell a gun at a gun show, even if the transaction is not completed, and removes the definition of a collection as a barter, sale or trade at a gun show.

"There is no way to define a collection as a barter, sale or trade," said Rose.

Rose's gun-show bill was one of three he introduced on Wednesday's opening day of the 120-day session. He has three more in various stages of drafting, including one giving the Department of Agriculture the authority it needs to regulate biopharming in Colorado.

Rose was one of three rural lawmakers who traveled to France late last summer amid concern over a French company's plan to grow a pharmaceutical crop in an eastern Colorado corn field.

"I'm very confident that we can do this safely because I saw it being done," he said. "My bill is the enabling legislation that will allow the state to put regulations in place to ensure that everything we do is done safely and won't adversely affect other crops or the public safety."

For the third consecutive year, Isgar is sponsoring legislation to refine the collection of possessory interest taxes from farmers and ranchers who lease state or federal land.

The senator's new possessory tax bill would treat leases of U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management land used for grazing or growing crops the same as privately owned agricultural land.

"Our (state) constitution is clear that ag land should be based on its productivity and I believe the way we are (taxing possessory interest) is unconstitutional," he said. "What a person is willing to pay to lease that land is its productive value if you are using it for agriculture and that is how it should be taxed."

Isgar sponsored last year's successful bill, which the governor signed, that treats leases from State Land Board land as a series of one-year leases for assessment purposes.

While Isgar is the primary sponsor of only one water bill, which allows loans of up to 180 days between irrigators on the same streambed, he said he would watch all the water bills closely again this year.

"We need to make sure no one's water rights are injured," he said. "We need to figure out how we do conservation without penalizing communities and ignoring the property right of water. It's hard to make a community save water when they don't have a place to save it."

Isgar is co-sponsoring three bills dealing with the operation of the Colorado Water Conservation Board. They would remove the director of the Department of Natural Resources as a voting member of the board, disallow proxy voting on the board, and require the governor to fill within 30 days any vacancies that occur when the Legislature is in session.

Owens came under fire last year when he refused to reappoint three popular board members whose terms expired in February, including Keith Catlin of Montrose, until after the 2003 session adjourned. Catlin's confirmation hearing on his reappointment is scheduled for Thursday.

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