Colorado House Rep. Ray Scott’s Weird 2014 Bill

Here ya go, Ray! Introduce a bill for us, will you?

Here ya go, Ray! Will you introduce a bill for us, now, too?

Have you been wondering what Colorado House Rep. Ray Scott has been doing to benefit the western slope during his time in the Colorado House? So have we, but looking into this question left us scratching our heads.

In April, Ray Scott sponsored HB14-1046, a very important bill to create a Scottish-American license plate. To get the plate, all a person would have to do is prove they made a financial donation to the St. Andrew Society of Colorado. That’s right…Scott introduced a bill that would financially benefit a group that has almost no presence on the western slope. The St. Andrew Society has exactly one member in Silt and one member in Montrose. They have no members or branches in Mesa County, and they only put on two annual events, both of which are on the front range. Ray Scott does not belong to the group, either, according to Jean Casson, the group’s self-professed “mother hen” for 40 years, who is also their public contact for phone inquiries. According to Casson, the Scottish-American constituency here on the western slope at the moment isn’t even big enough to support a single pro-Scottish group.

So where did Ray Scott get the impetus to introduce a bill that has absolutely zero pressing need, practically no constituency and that absolutely no one on the western slope asked him to introduce? According to Casson, someone in the Denver area just happened to ask Scott to introduce the bill as a favor, and he did.

Imagine that. Legislators get to introduce only five bills per session, and Scott couldn’t come up with any other ideas for things to introduce in the legislature to help his west slope constituents. What about child hunger? Poverty? Homelessness? Our perpetually bad economy and low wages? Air pollution? High tuition?

Maybe Scott introduced his Scottish-American license plate bill because his name is “Scott.” Or maybe he just wanted a chance to see his co-workers’ legs. After all, several of his legislator friends donned kilts at the capitol to lobby for his Scottish-American license plate bill.

No small surprise, by the way that the bill failed.

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