Hinda Mandell, Cry of liberty. Foundation will honor refuseniks whose 1970 attempted hijacking drew world attention to the Soviet Union’s oppression of Jews. Boston Globe, Oct. 8, 2009.

Jerry Kopel, Freeing the Leningrad Three.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Denver). Remarks in the Congressional Record, "Celebrating 80th Birthday Of Gerald (Jerry) Kopel And 56th Anniversary of Jerry And Dolores Kopel." June 12, 2008 (pages E1229-30). Text. PDF.

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Archive

Full list of Jerry's articles

Subject areas:

Biography

Colorado History

Colorado Legislature

Colorado Politics & elections, including Denver.

Constitutional Amendments and other Ballot issues

Consumer and Tort Issues

Criminal Law

Gambling

Sunrise/Sunset (occupational licensing)

Jerry News

Jerry wins First Place in the Colorado Press Association's 2006 Public Service writing category, for his column in the Colorado Statesman.

University of Colorado School of Journalism. Alumni article on Jerry -- a "C" student in the J-school, who was told he should try another field.

Jerry parties with the Denver Bar Association.

The Gerald Kopel Papers, which cover Kopel's entire legislative career from 1964 to 1992, are housed in the Denver Public Library's Western History Collection. The papers are perhaps the most extensive archive of the public career of any American state legislator from the 20th century. For more information on the collection, and a link to an HTML table of contents, click here. For the Denver Public Library's online Table of Contents and information, click here.

Jerry Kopel's Report. Jerry's newsletter to constituents, from 1967 to 1998. Available in the Denver Public Library.

The Dolores Kopel Papers, cover the life and career of Jerry's wife Dolores, who was one of the first female lawyers in Colorado. She served as United States Bankruptcy Trustee for Colorado and Kansas. Table of Contents here.

Short biography of Dolores Kopel.

Reported legal cases of Gerald and Dolores Kopel.

Most of the articles on this website were originally published in the Colorado Statesman, a weekly newspaper for which Jerry Kopel has been an award-winning columnist since 1992.

Jerry's latest article

It only happened once in the combination of 19th and 20th century Colorado. What? A legislature controlled by Democrats in the House and Senate with a Republican as governor.

From 1901 through 2010, Democrats have controlled both the House and Senate 14 times (28 years) and in 13 of the 14, there was a Democratic governor. Only in 2005-06 did the opposite happen, a Democrat House and Senate and two years of Gov. Bill Owens' eight years in that office.

We started the last century in 1901 with two Republicans in the Senate and seven in the House. The others not Democratic were Silver Republicans, Populists, and Single Tax parties. We ended the present legislature with 60 Democrats, one Independent, and 39 Republicans. 

Here are the 14 legislative assemblies with Democratic majority (out of 65) in the House and (out of 35) in the Senate.. Until the 1961 election governors were elected to two year terms.

* In 2009 one Democrat became an Independent. The legislature went from 40 Democrats in 1999 to 61 in 2009. 

 * * *

One Joint Rule of the House and Senate is basically avoided by legislators. It reads "Sponsors of Bills. Rule 24(b)(1)(A). A member of the General Assembly may not introduce more than five bills in a regular session" excluding supplemental appropriations and bills required by statutes or approved by interim committees.

Permission for more House bills are decided by a Committee on Delayed Bills composed of the minority leader, majority leader of the House (plus Speaker) and for the Senate the senate majority and minority leaders (plus President). Final annual bill totals over the last decade number in the high 600s and low 700s.

Historically during the 20th century each odd year legislature until the 1950s saw more than a thousand bills introduced and passage of fewer than 200. The bill went to a committee which committee decided whether or not to print the measure.

In 1929 as an example, the legislative session ran for 110 days. There were 1,038 bills and 186 passed.

Under the present system:

In the even-numbered years the House introduces the supplementals and the odd numbered years the Senate get the task. In even-numbered years the House introduces the bills subject to Sunset repeal review. In odd-numbered years the Senators are the chief sponsors. 

 * * *

For many years I have berated the legislators for wasting valuable time notifying Congress what the state legislature thought about national issues through House and Senate Joint Resolutions (JR). Some JRs tell us about holidays that need recognition, news events worthy of notice, or substitutes for bills killed. Some are actually needed to amend legislative rules or notifying the governor when work was about to begin or end.

When Bill Armstrong was a U.S. senator, he would send me glowing thanks for the state legislature passing a JR on a federal issue, apparently unaware I had voted and spoken against the JR.

For the past two dozen years I have kept data on JRs. Here is the breakdown for the last decade:

Pouring more bills and JRs into the system during the last several weeks of the session brings exhaustion and exhaustion brings uncaught error. After awhile you become numb and could not pick up another amended bill or (heaven forbid) a bill longer than 10 pages. Having served 22 years I can honestly say legislators faced the same problems in the 1970s that they do in the new century.

Sometimes the stress is so great as to cause medical problems. I had a major heart attack nine months after retiring. 

 * * *

What will be the major position that Republicans will attempt this year? I would go for election of the new governor. The Colorado Senior Lobby in June of 2005 reported "Gov. Owens' 47 vetoes sets a record for the number of vetoes issued by a governor". I have to assume the author reviewed each legislative session since 1876. Thanks to the 120 day limit on the legislative session this leaves the governor at the end with an ability to veto bills without any possible override by the legislature. In 2006, Owens vetoed 44 bills.

If that did not work then the Senate would be the priority since only half the members are up for election. Taking a large number of seats cannot be challenged until 2014 which could result in a Republican Senate majority in 2012.

The Democratic priority slogan should be "hell, no". I remember hearing that slogan extensively recently.

(Jerry Kopel served 22 years in the Colorado House.)

Maryland won the battle and Colorado lost.

Neither state probably knew of the battle. But for several decades Maryland's annual count of persons confined to Maryland's state prisons had placed them 22d in the nation's gross prison population.

As the annual count entered the 21st century, the continued increase in Colorado state prisoners took us from 25th to 23rd. And as the years passed Colorado came closer and closer to overtaking Maryland.

The contest became "serious" in 2004. Maryland held 23,276 state prisoners vs. Colorado with 20,841. While Maryland numbers remained steady, Colorado continued to close the gap.

If you looked at U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics you will likely not find the number of state prisoners as of Dec. 31, 2009. You will find the numbers of prisoners as of Dec. 1, 2008.

But when numbers are collected, there are people and organizations who can determine what they mean. State prisoners numbers as of Dec. 31, 2009 were collected and made available by the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center On the States in partnership with the Association of State Correction Administrators.

I had originally attempted to find the 2009 numbers by phoning the Colorado prison statistic office. I kept getting different Colorado totals depending on who I spoke to. The number I settled on of 22,661 was incorrect. The Pew Center number was 22,795. Maryland dropped from 23,324 to 22,009 and into 23rd place. Colorado increased to 22d highest prison population.

On state prison percentage population reduction Maryland came in third, but when you sweep away New Hampshire (-173) and Rhode Island (-371), Maryland comes in second, a 5.6 percent drop of 1,315 prisoners.

First was Michigan showing 3,260 fewer prisoners, a 6.7 percent drop. Mississippi fell 5.4 percent with 1,233 fewer prisoners.

Nine of the 50 states hold slightly more than half of the state prisoners. The nine are Texas, 171, 249; California, 169,413; Florida, 103,915; New York, 58,648; Georgia, 53,562; Penn., 51,429; Ohio, 51,606; Michigan, 45, 478, and Illinois, 45,161.

Overall state prison totals were 4,777 fewer than the Dec.31,2008 total of 1,408,830. This reduction was the first in 38 years to have a smaller state prison population than in the preceding year.

Colorado now has to worry about climbing from 22d to 21st in a battle with Wisconsin, which had 23,112 prisoners or 317 more than Colorado as of Dec. 31, 2009. To Colorado's credit, the state was 9th best in prison population reduction during 2009.

Why the drop in state prison population? The Pew Center gives a lot of credit to how parole revocations are now treated when mostly technical violations. Immediately holding violators in prison shows them the state "means it".

Community-based treatment and diversion programs helped in Texas, as did shortened probation times. Nevada provides credits for education, vocation and abuse treatment. Mississippi reduced the nonviolent offender time actually spent in prison. Other useful tools: development of more accurate risk assessment, polls taken supporting alternatives to prison, and focus on cost-benefit analysis.

But Pew Center found the budget pressure played the big starting role. "Corrections cost has quadrupled in just the past 20 years and now account for one of every state general fund discretion dollar. Correction has been the second fastest growing category of state budgets behind only Medicaid and nearly 90 percent of that spending has gone to prisons."

Pew writers claim "No matter what happens in the short term, the United States will continue to lead the world in incarcerations for the foreseeable future".

(Jerry Kopel served 22 years in the Colorado House.)