Top Ten Worst Bills of the Session

The session is a little over the half way point and I have finished my top ten list of dumbest bills of the year. There may be more to come, but for now here’s the list with humorous bills at the top and exceptionally bad bills at the bottom.

1. The Plastic Bag Reduction Act -- that’s right a law to ban the use of plastic bags in grocery stores. Of course the stores would then switch to paper bags which fill up landfills at three times the rate plastic bags do. No doubt someone tried to ban the use of paper bags thirty years ago to save trees.
2. The Cat Identification Law for Cities – someone cares so much about fluffy that they wanted a law requiring micro chips in cats. Really.
3. Protect Public Safety Control Coyotes – this was a bill that would have required the Division of Wildlife to make controlling coyotes in cities their top priority. To really understand this you have to pronounce coyotes like the cities folks do: kie-oh-tees. At least these kie-oh-tees will be easy to find after all the city kitties have micro chips in them.
4. Utilities Disclose Carbon Footprint bill – this year’s global warming bill. Now, you too, can be like Al Gore and buy your own carbon offsets.
5. Require Physical Activities in Schools – the mandatory recess bill. Do you think we could apply this to legislators? Ever noticed the condition of most lawmakers?
6. Ban Use of Cell Phones While Driving – no word when the ban on coffee, cheeseburgers, IPods, farding, or kids in the car will be offered.
7. Mandatory Parental Leave – not making the parents go anywhere, just telling businesses that they have to allow parents time off to attend school activities.
8. In-state Tuition of Illegal Aliens – legislating by compassion instead of principle
9. The Car Tax – a quarter of a billion dollar tax increase during a recession. The Governor calls it FASTER. I call it pulling a fast one.
10. Flexibility to Use State Revenues – this is the worst fiscal policy ever introduced in Colorado. The bill will remove state spending caps so entitlement spending can grow unchecked during prosperous times leading to a fiscal train wreck during times of recession. This sets up Colorado for the same type of budgetary problems that California is currently experiencing.

Some of these bills have already been dispatched to the paper shredder in the sky, but the Car Tax has been signed into law. Numbers 8 and 10 have come out of committee in the Senate and are awaiting final Senate passage.