Two Republican proposals aimed at protecting children from sexual assault were killed on party-line votes in the Senate Appropriations Committee today. 

Meanwhile, the same committee approved two measures, also along party lines, that critics say are soft on criminals.

“This committee is the most dangerous place for a child in Colorado,” said Sen. Steve Johnson, a Fort Collins Republican on the committee.

The first of the GOP bills, Senate Bill 195, would have given prosecutors the option of seeking the death penalty for anyone convicted of a violent sexual assault on a child.  The policy already is law in several other states.

A GOP plan to expand capacity on a chronically congested stretch of Interstate 70 west of Denver took a big stride forward today, winning the approval of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Democrats on the same committee, however, killed another Republican transportation proposal--to let voters secure all highway funding in the state constitution.

Both measures are part of the GOP's legislative transportation agenda for 2008 and represent an effort by the party's elected leadership to end the legislative stalemate over how to shore up transportation funding--and break the logjam on the state's highways. Although a special transportation panel appointed by Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter has made several funding recommendations, the Ritter administration and its ruling Democrat allies in the General Assembly have yet to embrace any of them.

"We are trying to move past the gridlock, not just on our highways but also in the statehouse when it comes to transportation policy," Senate GOP leader Andy McElhany, who introduced the GOP measures, said after the vote. House Republican chief Mike May, of Parker, is sponsoring the legislation in the House.

Winning committee approval was Senate Bill 213, which would toll motorists along Interstate 70 west of Denver to pay for expanding the highway's capacity into the mountains. The Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the proposal, underscoring how that stretch of the aging interstate is a notorious chokepoint for weekend ski and travel traffic as well as a major impediment to Colorado commerce.