This past week I had a lot of bills moving through the Senate. Several House bills that I’m carrying came over to the Senate and several of my Senate bills passed out of Appropriations and came to the Senate floor.

Senate Bill 156:

I have been working with the Colorado Division of Wildlife (DOW) on Senate Bill 156, regarding expired warrants as they pertain to the DOW and the Wildlife Cash Fund (WCF). Expired WCF warrants are basically un-cashed checks that have not been presented to the state treasurer for payment prior to the warrant expiration date. 
Checks issued by the DOW are paid out of the WCF. Before 2003, when DOW-issued checks expired without being cashed, the money simply remained in the Wildlife Cash Fund where it was used to further support wildlife management in Colorado. However, the DOW always honored qualified refund checks when presented by individuals who had not cashed their checks in a timely manner.

In 2003, the passage of Senate Bill 62 directed that money from expired DOW warrants would be transferred to the Unclaimed Property Trust Fund (UPTF). That bill created a problem: the federal government requires that all funds that are acquired as a result of wildlife license fees must stay with the state wildlife agency to be used for wildlife management purposes. If license fee income is “diverted” away from the wildlife agency, the state in question becomes ineligible to receive any federal funds from two specific federal wildlife funding acts.

Colorado is in jeopardy of losing these federal funds if action is not taken. Therefore, Senate Bill 156 would clarify that certain funds from expired DOW warrants written on the WCF will remain in this fund and will not be transferred to the UPTF. Passage of this important bill would allow Colorado to continue to be eligible for millions of dollars in federal wildlife funds per year.

I also introduced another Senate bill just this week. As it is necessary to get permission from Senate leadership to introduce a bill this late I want to explain the need for this bill.
Senate Bill 201 is an effort led by the Colorado Department of Agriculture and our state’s agriculture industry to avoid a constitutional ballot initiative pertaining to certain livestock handling practices. The Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society has filed and received approval of a ballot title, “Farm Animal Confinement.” Their next step is to collect signatures to place the measure on the November ballot here in Colorado.
However, the president of the organization has agreed to withdraw the initiatives if SB08-201 is passed unamended and signed by the Governor.

In the past several years there have been successful attempts throughout the United States to impose confinement standards on the livestock industry. We don’t need to be addressing livestock handling issues in our state constitution. The bill doesn’t go as far as the proposed initiative and only pertains to the raising of calves for veal and gestation crates for pregnant sows. The bill requires that these animals be housed in such a way that they can stand up, lie down and turn around without touching the enclosure’s sides. These aren’t unreasonable requirements. We don’t have a veal industry in Colorado but I don’t think these restrictions would prevent it and at least some of the large hog operations that were using gestation crates already had plans to phase them out. They will still be able to use farrowing crates.

The bill also creates a process within the Department of Agriculture to address livestock handling practices so that the agriculture industry can address these issues without the need for citizen initiatives.

I feel it’s important to stress how much we in the agriculture industry care about our livestock. As a lifelong rancher myself, I know that nobody cares more about these animals than Colorado’s farmers and ranchers.