For the last three weeks, six hearings in total, the Colorado House Health and Human Services Committee has been missing one of its newest members: freshman Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of Fort Morgan.
House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese is in charge of Republican House committee assignments. She told CPR News she made the switch because of the relationship between Johnson and Republican Rep. Brandi Bradley, who is the committee’s ranking minority member. Pugliese also said she is responsible for ensuring the well-being of her caucus.
“There are some personality differences between members of the committee and I am giving them space right now. Rep Johnson has not been permanently replaced,” said Pugliese in a statement.
For each committee meeting since March 11, Republican House leaders have sent notice to the panel’s non-partisan staff that Johnson would be substituted off and replaced by one of her colleagues.
But changing out a committee member, especially on an ongoing basis, can have significant consequences at the Capitol, both for that lawmaker’s work, the committee’s votes, and the ability of lobbyists and interest groups to advocate for their bills.
Through a staffer, both Johnson and Bradley declined to comment for this article. Johnson is still attending hearings for her other two committees, Education and Agriculture and Natural Resources.
Bradley and Johnson have been on opposite sides of a few bills so far this session, with the biggest falling out coming over a bipartisan bill Bradley is co-sponsoring on digital education materials.
The bill requires schools to cancel contracts if digital materials include advertisements, promotions, or embedded links. Johnson initially opposed the measure in committee; she ended up voting yes, but said she wanted the bill amended. A week later Johnson took to social media to outline her concerns with the bill in a letter, writing, “good intent can lead to bad impact.” She worried the policy would put too much burden on teachers and school districts and could censor rural schools in particular that teach things like animal husbandry.
The letter sparked back-and-forths between grassroots activists, with Bradley commenting positively on posts that attacked Johnson. At one point, she tweeted at Johnson directly, “Hey Dusty, do you want to go there? … This is not a battle you want to pick with me,” she wrote as part of a longer post that claimed some of Johnson’s policy positions weren’t what the freshman lawmaker’s conservative constituents wanted.
In another post Bradley said of Johnson, “she wouldn’t know how to spell liberty and freedom if she had a cue card in front of her.”
It appears Bradley hasn’t posted anything about Johnson on social media since late February and the two have mostly avoided each other on the House floor.
While an ongoing sub is rare, House Democratic leaders have used formal committee assignments to try to ease tensions and as a disciplinary tool. Before the start of last session Speaker Julie McCluskie removed two members she’d clashed with from the Judiciary Committee, former Democratic Rep. Elisabeth Epps and Rep. Bob Marshall. She said serving on a member’s top choice committee is a privilege not a right.
“My decisions on where to appoint members depend on their respect of their colleagues, ability to collaborate and adherence to decorum,” she said at the time.
At age 29, Johnson is the youngest member of the legislature and has said healthcare is a passion in part because she wants to improve access for rural Colorado and because of her own battle with serious health challenges. She has struggled for years with aggressive tumors in one of her knees, almost losing her leg before her insurance consented to cover a knee replacement.
“I want to make sure people are able to do the needed treatment they need without delaying it or making it worse because they can't afford it,” she told CPR News previously.
Bradley is serving in her second term in the legislature and healthcare policy has been a priority area for her, too. She’s sponsored a number of bills ranging from a proposal that would have prohibited giving a COVID-19 vaccine to a minor without consent of the parent or guardian, as well as a bill to ban gender-affirming care to minors. She’s also been a leading voice in the caucus against legal abortion.
Substitutions complicate work of powerful committee
It’s not uncommon to have a substitute join a committee on a one-off basis, or longer if a member is not able to go to the Capitol or participate remotely for some reason. But it is rare for a member who is at the capitol every day to be substituted from a committee for three weeks mid-session.
“We have members who have familial obligations that may need to be remote periodically. Obviously illnesses happen. But yeah, the expectation is that if you're in the building, and even if you're not in the building, that you're going to tend to be there,” said Democratic Rep. Kyle Brown, the chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee.
Brown said after Johnson missed a few hearings he started to wonder what was going on and reached out, but doesn’t know the details of what’s going on.
“The minority party doesn't have to run their substitutes by me,” he said.
Brown said though they don’t agree on much (he represents blue Boulder county) he and Johnson have run bills together and he considers her a valuable member of the committee, as a strong rural voice who has expertise as a trained EMT. He said he believes consistent participation by committee members is critical, especially on a panel that oversees a large and complex sector such as healthcare.
“It's really important that folks have a working expertise and that they build that over time.” he said. “We have many newer members on the committee who show up and are able to be there day in and day out. And that's really important because as we sit on a committee, we learn things as new bills come before us.”
The substitutions have made it trickier for advocates and lobbyists to figure out if there will be enough votes for their bills to pass, because they often don’t know who will be filling Johnson’s seat until right before the hearing begins. In one case a replacement for her chose to abstain from a vote because the hearing testimony had occurred on a day he wasn’t in the committee.
The House Health committee is one of the legislature’s largest, with 13 members and it has a full calendar with some significant bills heading its way.
