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Bentley: Casting votes based on personal feelings?

Roger Bentley
Delta

On April 6, 2013, we had the opportunity to meet with Colorado state Sen. Gail Schwartz and Rep. Millie Hamner in Paonia. The townhall meeting room was full of constituents. There was discussion about the local schools, school funding, increasing state taxes (even state income taxes), the Common Core State Standards Initiative being implemented in our schools, medical marijuana, hemp and gun control legislation.

Schwartz and Hamner left us with a misunderstanding on the implementation of Common Core. Our local school board recently told the public that the program is mandated by the state. Now our legislators portrayed it as being decided by the local school board. Which is it, and who is actually mandating the implementation?

When the conversation moved to gun control, local Democrat Scott Wilson challenged their votes of record on all of the bills. He challenged the misdirected feelings they share that this gun control legislation is not in conflict with the 2nd Amendment!



After the meeting, Sam Lockhart and I asked Hamner if her office compiled comments from her constituents? She responded, yes, her staff threw out all of the correspondence from out of state and anything directly from the NRA. She stated that she did not tabulate her constituents’ comments. Question No. 2: Did you vote as a representative of your constituents? No, she said she voted her own feelings. And she said that “we had to do something.” Sam and I walked away, and we agree we have big problems with our government. We find it appalling that our elected officials vote on their feelings rather than the input of their constituents. It makes one wonder if they vote on all bills based only on their feelings.

Roger Bentley, Delta


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