Chamber announces 2009 legislative vote tracking results

The Denver Metro Chamber, as part of its role of enhancing and hastening the economic recovery in Colorado, tracked the votes of state legislators and their alignment with Chamber positions on legislation during the 2009 session of the Colorado General Assembly. 

The Chamber’s goal with this legislative scorecard is to ensure that both the Chamber and our elected officials have a clear understanding of where their positions and pro-business ideals intersect. To attain this goal, we began by informing lawmakers, at the beginning of the 2009 legislative session, that we would be tracking votes and followed up with weekly e-mails to every legislator, notifying them of the positions the Chamber took on bills.  The information was also available for review on the organization’s Web site at http://www.denverchamber.org/. 

Overall, analysis of the legislators’ votes shows that the majority of lawmakers supported the Chamber’s position more than half of the time. Furthermore, the ultimate outcome on bills of interest to the organization had the Chamber prevailing 80 percent of the time.

Legislative measures on which the Chamber took a position to support, oppose or to remain neutral focused on the state’s overall business climate; including key areas, such as transportation funding, economic development, health care cost, quality and regulation and higher education funding.  Additionally, the Chamber took into consideration public policy changes that have a direct effect on the needs of key industry clusters vital to our state, including aerospace, aviation, energy, telecommunications, bioscience, broadcasting, financial services and information technology. 

Joe Blake, president and CEO of the Denver Metro Chamber, noted that the Chamber will use this data as an education tool with its membership and elected leaders. The Chamber is a non-partisan organization that does not endorse candidates.   

“Assuring that members of the General Assembly understand these issues is vital to assisting Colorado’s recovery from these challenging economic times—and that is a responsibility we take very seriously,” said Blake. “An understanding of the impact their decisions have on Colorado’s business climate is the best way for us to help craft positive business legislation.”

Methodology
The sources of data used to determine voting records are the First Regular Session of the 67th Colorado General Assembly House and Senate Journals, and the Colorado General Assembly Web site committee reports as of June 18, 2009. The data is based on votes cast during members’ full or partial term of service. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce takes full responsibility for tabulation of voting records on bills of interest to the organization.

The Chamber tracked all committee and floor votes for bills on which the Chamber took a position. Votes were tracked from the point the organization took action on each piece of legislation. In all, the Chamber tracked 57 bills, which translated into a total of 4,600 votes.

Members' percentages were determined by dividing the total number of votes that matched the DMCC position by the total number of opportunities to vote on committee and floor votes on bills of interest to the DMCC.  That is, matches divided by individual opportunities. The percentages are not weighted.

Link to Legislative Wrap-up and Scorecard 2009: 
www.denverchamber.org/scorecard

Link to Policy Briefing from Colorado’s Business Leadership:
www.denverchamber.org/policybriefing2009