Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Thursday, February 22, 2007 12:26:00 PM
I always try to learn from my experiences. Yesterday's testimony before the Colorado House Judiciary Committee was a learning experience.
The first thing I learned was that I didn't know the rules. I didn't understand, and several of the witnesses did not understand that we would have only three minutes to speak. Three minutes is a very short time. One can only advocate in three minutes. There is no hope of educating in three minutes.
I got several questions, but all were on advocacy issues. No member of that committee sought to be educated.
That brings up a fundamental question. How does an individual citizen actually educate the members of the legislature on issues that concerns him/her?
Nothing that I heard yesterday indicates to me that ANY legislator understands how broken the legal ethics system is. More importantly, they don't seem to care to explore the subject which is pretty amazing for a "judiciary" committee.
HB 1227 impacted my efforts to try to fix the system through the system. All I was asking for was to be able to appear before a state retention commission that hadn't been stacked-stacked with the Chief Justice's appointees, stacked with members of one party, and stacked with lawyers whose goal is to protect the system. It wasn't a perfect bill, but it would have gotten rid of part of the conflict of interest inherent in the current system-the Chief Justice's appointees.
The second thing I learned is that legislators are quite willing to vote against their own constituents interests. The legislators who voted against HB 1227 voted against their own constituents interests but very much in favor of the legal community's interest. In the end, it was a vote against any meaningful attempt to hold judges accountable. I wonder how thrilled their constituents will be to hear that tidbit.
The third thing I knew, but was driven home to other witnesses, was the importance of speaking to the bill. It is a matter of formatting one's testimony. I got some points in about the legal ethics system by couching them in terms of how that bill would have helped me try to fix the system. I would call the Vice Chair who was running the hearing, Representative Morgan Carroll, unnecessarily intimidating to some of the citizen witnesses in an effort to keep them on the subject that the hearing was about. When the lawyers appeared, she was completely polite and deferential.
In Representative Morgan Carroll's defense, I will point out that the hearing occurred late in the day, and one more followed ours, so she wanted witnesses to cut to the quick. This offended some witnesses because she made it appear that an earlier animal "necromancy" bill (Chairman Terrance Carroll's word) on which an inordinate amount of time was spent was far more important than making an incremental fix to the retention commission system.
Witnesses need to be prepared to defend themselves against this kind of intimidation. At one point Rep Morgan Carroll tried to truncate my testimony as to why I wanted an unbiased commission membership. I was giving examples of the information I would present to the state commission about the legal ethics system, and she interrupted to tell me that she didn't want specific examples. I simply told her that they were generic examples and proceeded. Fortunately, they were generic.
Fourth, I am terrible about watching their little warning light system. I ran over in time and realized I had never once looked at it. The next time I testify, I plan to ask for a verbal warning when the yellow 30 second light comes on.
Fifth, don't take the vote personally. The fact is that there could have been a hundred or a thousand witnesses in that room in favor of the bill and I doubt that the outcome would have been much different. This seemed to be seen as a party line, rather than a good government issue.
I find it quite telling that nationally the Democrats complain daily that the Republican Congress failed to provide oversight on a Republican President and yet the Colorado Democrats insist on stacking the membership of the one institution that potentially provides oversight over a Democrat dominated Supreme Court. Does anyone else see the hypocrisy here?