Three Takeaways From Our Interview With House Minority Leader Patrick Neville

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4min 56sec

Lawmakers head to the gold dome on Jan. 10 to begin Colorado's annual legislative session. Here are highlights from statehouse reporter Bente Birkeland's interview with House Minority Leader Patrick Neville about his priorities.

On the big themes he wants to tackle: 

Rep. Patrick Neville: "The everyday aspects of Coloradans, lives to try to keep Colorado a great place and an attractive place for people to live. And one of the major things that we have an issue here facing Colorado is overall affordability. Affordability — whether it's housing, whether it's cars, the ability to actually live here on a decent salary."

On how he would tackle affordable housing: 

Neville: "Anything that gets subsidized does not end up being more affordable for the average citizen. When I say affordable, I'm not talking about subsidizing anything, which I hope is not [Democrats] plan, but I did hear rumors of that. We did make a huge step last year with construction litigation. We're going to have to wait to see how that plays out but I think we can do other things to help business in general."

On how he thinks the general assembly should change the workplace harassment policy: 

Neville: "We can bring in someone who can almost ask a human resources personally or getting advice from other folks. But I will say it's a very difficult issue because we can't just adopt any business type policy because us legislators — we're a different type of organization, where there's a hundred of us, we all meet, we all have different bosses because we all respond to the constituents in our district; those are our bosses. Looking at the current policies, I think there is room for improvement and of course we're all going to look at that."

Capitol Coverage is a collaborative public policy reporting project, providing news and analysis to communities across Colorado for more than a decade. Fifteen public radio stations participate in Capitol Coverage from throughout Colorado.