A day after the conclusion of the 2008 legislature--in which critics chided Democrats for failing to propose reforms for health care and transportation--GOP lawmakers pointed to what they say was a comprehensive agenda that addressed the issues of greatest concern to Coloradans.

Senate and House Republicans--relegated to the legislative minority since 2004--say they knew they had to band together this session in order to serve the best interests of Colorado.  They came up with a new approach and offered a legislative package in both chambers. It was a package they say aimed to gird the state against recession, improve its transportation infrastructure, bridge gaps in health care and boost education.

"I'm happy to call this my final year at the Capitol--even if we were in the minority," term-limited Senate GOP leader Andy McElhany, of Colorado Springs, said. "We were able to work together to get some meaningful legislation passed. Somebody had to guard Colorado's pocketbook and with so few of us, we had to cooperate. "

Republican lawmakers are responding with a chorus of told-ya-sos to an admission in court this week by the state treasurer that last year's freeze in the property-mill levy has raised property-tax bills across the state. The disclosure came in testimony in a lawsuit brought by a citizens group to halt the property-tax hike.

As reported in Wednesday's Rocky Mountain News--Democrat Treasurer Cary Kennedy, an architect of the controversial policy and an ally of the administration of Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter--conceded on the witness stand  that the mill-levy freeze changes the way taxes are calculated and raises property tax bills for many home- and business owners. Legislative Republicans, who all along have referred to the mill-levy freeze as a tax hike, say Kennedy's admission vindicates them because any change in tax policy, under Colorado's constitution, amounts to a tax hike that must be put to a public vote.

"Apparently, it took a Bible and a witness stand to get the governor and his allies to admit their tax hike is, in fact, a tax hike," said a bemused Senate GOP leader Andy McElhany. "Of course, the rest of the state already knew as much, especially when homeowners and business owners got their property-tax bills earlier this year."

Ritter and his Democrat allies who control the legislature imposed the tax hike without a vote of the people during the 2007 legislative session, claiming the school districts affected by the hike already approved local mill-levy freezes. The measure is projected to cost taxpayers some $3.8 billion over the next 10 years.

An eleventh-hour effort by Senate Republicans to gauge the potentially crippling impact of sweeping new regulations on Colorado's booming energy economy died Monday at the hands of ruling Democrats.

Killed on a party-line vote was a resolution authored by the GOP's Sen. Bill Cadman and House Democrat Rep. Wes McKinley, calling a cost analysis of the potential effect of pending new rules on oil and gas prices. Cadman, of Colorado Springs, told colleagues on the Senate floor that the regulations--soon to be released by the state's Oil and Gas Conservation Commission at the behest of Gov. Bill Ritter--could reduce oil and gas exploration by 20 percent to 30 percent and drive up the price of those commodities nationwide.

"Reductions of those quantities (of oil and gas production)...will impact prices, they will impact supply," Cadman said. "It's important that we have a review."

Democrats also rejected an amendment to the bill that would have required the commission to hold hearings on the impact of the regulations in the different regions of Colorado that have some of the highest concentrations of oil and gas exploration. The amendment by Republican Sen. Ken Kester, of Las Animas, sought commission hearings in all Colorado basins.