Beth McCann

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Hello friends and neighbors!

I hope your new year has started off well! Mine is certainly busy. As I am sure you know the legislative session started this week with inspiring speeches by the House Speaker, Terrance Carroll, the Minority leader Mike May, and most notably an excellent State of the State address by Governor Bill Ritter. I hope some of you were able to hear it. We have lots of work to do with fewer resources than we even anticipated. It is a challenging and exciting time in our state.

Let me start off by thanking those of you serving on my committees. The committees have all met, and I am thrilled by the number of people who are willing to serve and by the level of knowledge and expertise we have here in the district on so many topics. The committees are: Education, Health/Human Services, Judiciary/Criminal Justice, Finance/Budget and Energy/Natural Resources. I have decided not to have the Transportation Committee meet this year as there was not a great deal of interest and I don't anticipate many transportation bills. If you would like to join any of the committees, please do so by letting Carolyn Cole know at cmcole09@gmail.com. The members will be providing me with feedback during the session and hopefully proposing new legislation for next year! I have already starting sending them bills to review.

I also would like to encourage each of you, if possible, to contribute to the huge task facing the relief workers in Haiti. What a heart wrenching tragedy! There is some information about how to get involved and contribute at www.huffingtonpost.com/2010 or you may contribute to the American Red Cross at http://americanredcross.org/HaitiRelief or Doctors without Borders: https://donate.doctorswithoutborders.org. Beware of organizations or individuals with whom you are not familiar who are soliciting donations.

Here is a synopsis of the bills I will be carrying and co-sponsoring this year.
The list may grow longer as the Session gets fully underway. I still have some under consideration.

1) I am co-sponsoring a bill to eliminate gender discrimination in health insurance premiums in the individual market. Right now, women pay more for the same coverage as men until about age 50 at which time men pay more. These are for policies that do not include maternity care so that is not the basis on which women pay more. The insurance companies state that women use medical care more than men before age 50 but they are pretty vague on any specifics. This practice is already prohibited for large employer based plans that are regulated by the federal government.

2) I am co-sponsoring a bill to require health insurance policies in the individual market to offer maternity coverage (pre-natal care). It is almost impossible for a woman to purchase health insurance outside of an employment situation that provides maternity coverage.

3) I am co-sponsoring a bill to require a bona fide patient/physician relationship in the area of medical marijuana. This bill would require that a physician physically examine a patient and his or her medical records before writing a recommendation to allow the person to use medical marijuana. The doctor would be required to provide followup care to see if the marijuana is helping and there would be limits on the time frame for writing a recommendation. It also prohibits a doctor from having a financial interest in a marijuana dispensary and from being paid by dispensaries for writing recommendations. It will allow the Board of Medical Examiners more power in regulating activities of physicians in this area.

4) a bill to allow county jails to establish industry work programs for jail inmates that will pay them a comparable wage to workers on the outside for products that will be sold on the market. The Dept. of Corrections already operates several of these programs for state inmates, and they have proven to be an important way for inmates to learn marketable skills and to accumulate some income so when they are released, they have some skills and resources to assist them in becoming productive citizens. In order to start a program, the county jails need to be able to provide workers comp coverage which is now prohibited by statute.

5) a bill to set campaign contribution limits on school board and RTD races. Currently, there are no limits and in the last Denver school board race, one candidate got close to $100,000 from one individual. The bill also increases reporting requirements for these races. I am not a huge fan of campaign contribution limits because I believe it causes money to be contributed into 527s which can then operate independently from the candidates and don't have to report contributions. However, if all other races have limits, it is not appropriate that these races have no limits and there needs to be more transparency.

6) a bill to establish a new license plate, "Adopt a Shelter Pet" which will provide funding to animal shelters to enable them to spay/neuter and provide veterinary care for animals so that the animal is more likely to be adopted. Particularly in rural areas, shelters are not able to pay the veterinary expenses and since the law currently requires that shelter pets be spayed or neutered in order to be adopted, this bill should help more families adopt a shelter animal.

7) a bill to clarify that part-time youth sports coaches are not employees of the youth sports association but rather act as independent contractors. This is the way the associations have been operating but there was an administrative decision recently involving Colorado Fusion (the Denver and Aurora soccer club) that would require the associations to provide unemployment insurance and probably workers comp. to these coaches. This would cause the associations to charge higher rates to families to participate or to pay the coaches less to make up the cost of this insurance.

8) a bill that will allow the Dept. of Health Care Policy and Finance to contract out the administration of the Medicaid Dental program in an effort to encourage more dentists to participate in Medicaid. There are several counties in Colorado in which there are no dentists who accept Medicaid patients. This bill is designed to encourage more dentists to participate, particularly with respect to children.

9) a bill to codify current practice with respect to juveniles who are on escape status. The bill will clarify that the juvenile's sentence is stayed while he or she is on escape status.

I am carrying a few clean up bills as well but these are the main ones. Please feel free to email me with any comments or suggestions.

Military Day at the Capitol

Visit the capitol on Monday, Jan. 25, 2010. This day is set aside to honor our vets and current military personnel. I would love to have any of our HD8 veterans or current military personnel and their families join me for this special day. My father who is now deceased was a career army man, fought in World War II, and then retired as Assistant Commandant of Cadets at Virginia Tech, his alma mater, where he worked with young people who joined the Tech Corps of Cadets. Contact my office at 303.866.2959 if you are interested in attending military day.

As always, you can watch the House on The Colorado Channel on your TV at Comcast Channel 165 or on your computer at www.coloradochannel.net. The State's legislative website can lead you to lots of information at www.leg.state.co.us and the House Democrat's website posts breaking news as well as biographies, photographs and district maps.... www.coloradohouse.org.