House Speaker Mark Ferrandino last week signed commendation letters for six high school students participating in Youth Leadership Jefferson County. They’re still in his desk, waiting to be given to the lawmaker who asked for them.
Welcome to the latest legislative dust-up courtesy of Jessica’s Law, a GOP-bill aimed at sexual predator sentencing that Democrats killed and conservatives have made into a rallying cry.
Rep. Libby Szabo, R-Arvada, who carried Jessica’s Law, said she “assumes” Ferrandino held onto the letters because of her comments last month about the bill’s death on Bill O’Reilly show on Fox News. And Ferrandino confirmed she is right.
Ferrandino, D-Denver, said he signed the letters the day he got them, on March 5.
“We usually send them out but she said on Bill O’Reilly she was going to come see me, so I assumed I’d just hand them to her when I saw her,” he said.
Szabo asked about the tributes when the students showed up on March 6. She said she was told to talk to the speaker, but she was busy. But, she said, his reason for not releasing them through normal channels was silly and unfair to students who are “the future leaders of this state.”
“Mr. Speaker,” she said, “let my tributes go.”
The conservative blog, ColoradoPeakPolitics, today ripped Ferrandino.
“What kind of politician uses high schoolers to punish a political opponent? We here at the Peak have seen pretty much everything and our level of cynicism is pretty healthy, but the level of personal and professional pettiness exhibited by Mark Ferrandino is striking,” it said.
On his show on Feb. 22, O’Reilly lamented the death of House Bill 1149, which would have imposed a mandatory sentence of at least 25 years before parole on an offender who commits a sexual assault against a child. It was named for Jessica Lunsford, a 9-year-old who was sexually assaulted and buried alive in Florida in 2005 by a career criminal who previously had been convicted of exposing himself to a 5-year-old girl.
In a rare display of unity, Colorado’s public defenders, district attorneys and a victims group all said the bill wasn’t needed.
But O’Reilly called Ferrandino a “villian” because the bill died and he asked Szabo whether the speaker had said anything to the press (in fact, Ferrandino had talked to the press).
“I don’t believe he was willing to speak to them because obviously he’s protecting somebody,” Szabo said, adding Ferrandino was more interested in protecting the criminal than the victim.
O’Reilly said there had to be a reason the speaker didn’t want tougher mandatory sentences and Szabo needed to ask him why. “I will,” she said, “next time I see him.”
Several days after the show aired, the Denver Post asked Szabo to explain her comment about Ferrandino protecting someone. She said that’s what Fox told her when she did a “pre-interview” with the network prior to the show.
O’Reilly has been criticized for some of his comments. He said Ferrandino was sponsoring a “gay marriage” bill, which isn’t allowed under Colorado law. Ferrandino sponsored a civil unions bill, that passed the House this week. O’Reilly also claimed Gov. John Hickenlooper wouldn’t back the bill because “he’s too busy legalizing marijuana.” Actually, the voters in November legalized marijuana, approving a ballot measure that the governor opposed.
“You know, if you’ve ever watched O’Reilly he is fast and furious,” Szabo said. “You saw him cut me off several times, and so I tried my best.”
She said had she been given time to wrap up, “I would have corrected a lot of that stuff.”
O’Reilly also has been blasted in a Denver Post column and in other media outlets for mentioning several times the speaker’s sexual orientation while discussing the need for tougher laws against sexual predators.
But House Republicans are incensed that Ferrandino assigned Jessica’s Law to the so-called “kill committee,” which lived up to its name. They maintain that it should have been sent to the Judiciary Committee, but Ferrandino wanted to protect Democrats on that committee who are from swing districts.
Ferrandino smiled at the accusation — several swing-district Democrats do sit on Judiciary. But he pointed out Republicans could have introduced the bill when they had the majority in 2011 and 2012.