What is a SMART hearing? Thoughts on political polarization. And lastly, for Mother's Day, Nessun Dorma.
Get to know your government and its vocab: SMART act hearings
When I was reading up on the wild horses bill I posted about yesterday, a line in there caught my eye. I boxed it in red and attached it as a screenshot.
It occurred to me that you may or may not know what the SMART act is or what a SMART act hearing is. I won't go into tremendous detail, but a brief overview is possible and worth your time if you're not aware.
Broadly speaking, the legislative branch has oversight on the executive. This is true at both the Federal and state level of government. If you've ever seen hearings where, say, the director of the FBI appears before congress, this is an example.
The SMART act (acronym for "State Measurement for Accountable, Responsive,and Transparent Government Act") essentially creates a framework in Colorado law for how the oversight is to happen.
More details on the process are linked first below, but each agency has a yearly report and committee hearing in front of a joint (House and Senate) committee of the Assembly. These reports are also made public and, with a little digging, could be found on the department's site.
I linked an example from the State Public Defender's Office below the memo on SMART hearings for your reading pleasure. I didn't have any agenda by picking the Public Defender's Office, it was just the first one outside of the Secretary of State's or Attorney General's office that came up in Google.
You are also legally allowed to offer comment and testimony for any SMART hearing. You just need to look up the committee for the department you want to speak on and sign up. The process would be exactly like that of signing up to speak on a bill.
For your reference, I was able to get a table of which committee hears from which executive branch agency. That is the third link below.
https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/2023_smart_act_hearings_overview_memo.pdf
https://www.coloradodefenders.us/information/legislative-reports/
https://www.leg.state.co.us/inethsr.nsf/Rule.xsp?id=JNTRULES.25&catg=Joint&pg=3.0
I remain convinced that one source of political polarization in this country is due to the idea that we do not trust each other anymore with shared governance
What I mean is, and maybe this is somewhat nostalgia, in the past we might have looked upon the opposite party having power as being foolish or shortsighted, but not actively seeking to harm us.
I should pause here too to indicate that this works both ways in my view. I'm not saying this is a uniquely Democrat or Republican thing.
I will let you know ahead of time, however, that the examples I'm going to share are solely Democrat. I chose to do this because the Democrat examples will not have a fair airing in public in the mainstream media. It is important (as it is often for me in what I do on this page) to offer some counterpoint and a reminder that no one's skirts are pristine.
Before going on I want you to read the two screenshots attached. They are from the articles linked below and I've labeled each according to the news outlet that ran the story.
Look at the rhetoric in both. Does that strike you as a policy disagreement? Nor does it for me. This is extreme rhetoric and is just as extreme as the Republican extremists in the House.
Beyond the extremity, however, it points to something deeper and more concerning. After all overheated words are par for the course, especially among the politicians that occupy the lower chambers of our legislatures.
Consider the content and the subtext here. You, if you disagree, are a threat to me. An existential threat. What is the natural response to a threat? Threats are neutralized, rendered safe.
This would be bad enough were it not being said by people whose party has unrestrained power in our state, and that brings us back to what I wrote at the start.
If you see the other party, those that disagree with you politically or otherwise as an actual threat to your existence, you of course want to have the reins so that you can use government as a tool to render those you don't like unable to be that threat any longer.
Those that are under your thumb now, those that see your actions and now tag you as a threat are biding their time to be the one on top. When that time comes (because the nature of our governance in this country and state is to have power go back and forth), they intend to render you safe.
And so we go.
https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2023/05/09/colorado-democratic-lawmaker-gop-wants-to-kill-a-lot-of-us
https://www.cpr.org/2023/05/09/tensions-between-house-democrats-flare-in-final-hours-of-session/
Presented in honor of my mom.
Happy Mother's Day mom, and to all the other moms out there.
One of my mom's favorite songs is an aria from the opera "Turnadot" titled "Nessun Dorma" (let no one sleep).
As I've mentioned before, I'm not a huge fan of opera, I don't always know what the songs mean, or what the stories are, but I do enjoy some arias.
This is one of them and I am a lucky man to have had the mother I did. Without it, I wouldn't have been exposed to things like this (nor had the chance to share something like it with you).
I love you mom.