A controversial construction-defects bill that created political drama at the Capitol in recent weeks is scheduled for debate today on the House floor.
"This is going to be one heck of a fight," predicted Rep. Alice Borodkin, D-Denver.
The intrigue involves automated phone calls to senior citizens that infuriated Democratic lawmakers, including Borodkin, and a Republican lawmaker at odds with her own caucus and the home-building industry.
Rep. Debbie Stafford, R-Aurora, said she was told by a fellow House Republican that she would be targeted by a home-builders association in future elections if she supported the bill.
On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker, said Stafford has an ax to grind because home builders worked to kill an unrelated bill of hers this session.
He said her version of events "never happened."
I think it happened. I wasn't there when Debbie was threatened, but it wouldn't be he first time. When the Republicans ran the legislature they routinely threatened their own caucus with reprisals if they didn't vote the party line.
In fact, they would bring our floor work to a halt and we'd sit and watch while the Majority Leader walked up and down the aisles bullying his fellow Republicans into voting the way he wanted.
One common threat was a primary. If the recalcitrant Republican was in a safe seat (meaning there wasn't much chance of him or her losing in a general election), the leadership would threaten to find an opponent for the primary, an opponent who would have the support of the Republican Party and Governor Owens.
They carried through the treat once in a while to make sure people understood it was serious.
Rep. Mike May, the current Republican leader in the House, isn't like that. I don't think he threatens his caucus. But there are others who would and, Debbie Stafford insists, did.
"I stick by my story," Stafford shot back. "I think it's time we stick by the people of Colorado, and they are being stuck with shoddily built homes and no recourse."
At issue is a measure designed to protect homeowners from having to waive their legal rights, at the time of buying their homes, to compel their home builder to fix construction defects.
Opponents argue that House Bill 1338 does much more than that, opening the door to lawyers collecting huge judgments for their clients.
"I don't get that," said Sen. Jennifer Veiga, D-Denver, the Senate sponsor of the measure. "That's not in there."
The controversy over House Bill 1338, also sponsored by Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, began before the bill was even introduced March 7.
Several Democrats said senior citizens in their districts received "Robo calls," claiming their lawmaker supported a home-builders bill that would raise taxes and enrich trial lawyers.
The senior citizens, in turn, called the lawmakers to complain.
"We had no idea what they were talking about," Rep. Nancy Todd, D-Aurora, recalled. "There was no home-builders bill at the time. And the one that was later introduced doesn't raise taxes. It was a scare tactic."
Borodkin was so furious she contacted the Colorado Association of Homebuilders and Colorado Concerns, a consortium of influential business leaders statewide.
"I said, 'If these calls don't stop by noon tomorrow I'm going to ask the attorney general to sue because they are filled with falsehoods.' The calls stopped," Borodkin said.
The calls were paid for by Rick Sapkin, with Edgemark Development. He is chairman of Colorado Concerns.
Sapkin could not be reached for comment, but William Mutch, director of Colorado Concerns, said Sapkin was acting as an individual and not as the group chairman.
Sure he was. As an ordinary, individual Coloradan he decided to spend thousands of dollars on robo-calls all across Colorado claiming that a bill to protect a few legal rights for new home buyers is actually a sneaky attempt to increase taxes. Heck, we've all done that.
Actually, his explanation was even better. He claims that he was testing some new robo-call technology and it went awry, accidentally calling people from Arvada to Grand Junction lying about why were running the bill. Give the robot a laser weapon instead of a telephone and you'd have the makings of a great science fiction flick.
Joking aside, this is the homebuilders' modus operandi. They have dozens of lawyers and lobbyists working for them, but no one is ever actually speaking or acting for the homebuilders themselves. You can negotiate for hours with their lawyers, then the lawyers will say they're not actually getting paid for the meeting and you can't hold the homebuilders they usually work for to anything they said.
You can negotiate an issue with a lobbyist, then find out it's not something the "homebuilders" actually care about.
One other thing. It's odd to talk about Colorado Concern and the other groups as if they're somehow separate from the homebuilders. They''re supported with the homebuilders' money and they follow the homebuilders' orders.
I've tried to talk with some of these other groups and their response is always the same: we take our direction from the Homebuilders Association.
The home builders, Colorado Concerns and the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce are leading the charge against HB 1338.
Mutch said opponents agree that some home builders are inserting waivers-of-legal-rights clauses in contracts that are over and above what lawmakers intended in 2003 when they passed the original construction-defects bill. Those clauses give homeowners little recourse if their homes are defective.
Some? We haven't found a contract from a major production homebuilder without those clauses.
The 2003 bill put an end to home-owners collecting punitive damages, triple damages and attorneys fee. But homeowners were allowed "a right of remedy," if the builder didn't make repairs, Veiga said.
The clauses, she said, are stripping away that right.
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