BIG PIVOTS: A Conversation with Steve Fenberg, Part One

This interview by Allen Best appeared on BigPivots.com on December 24, 2024. We are sharing it in two parts.

On September 10, then-Senate President Steve Fenberg sat down with Allen Best of Big Pivots to talk about his eight years in the Senate, about what he learned as a legislative leader, his accomplishments, and the instances where legislation fell short.

In 2017, when Fenberg took office as a state senator from Boulder, Republicans still held the majority in that chamber. Then, following the 2018 election, the traffic barricades went down.

Legislators have passed 128 bills since then that, in one way or another, have aggressively directed Colorado toward a dramatic — and some would say unattainable — downward shift in greenhouse gas emissions. The shift will ultimately impact every part of how we live and do business.

Colorado clearly has emerged as among the leaders of climate action among the nation’s 50 states.

Going into the Senate, he saw politics more as akin to the art of war. During his time as a legislative leader, he learned that the simple act of listening plays an important role in long-term success and that it’s important to show respect to those in the minority.

He also shares observations about working with Gov. Jared Polis and the power tactics of the oil and gas industry and the deep influence of Xcel Energy at the State Capitol.

Fenberg also reflected broadly on how he sees his individual role in the sequencing of generations:

“We think of ancestors and what they did to help us be who we are and get to where we are. What we don’t do often is think of ourself as an ancestor to future generations.”

Let start with the happy notes. Colorado has defined an aggressive pivot in energy during your time in the Senate, especially since the 2019 session. According to a report by Will Toor at a recent conference, 128 bills have been passed into law that together aim to dramatically curb Colorado’s emissions of greenhouse gasses. Do two, three or four of these bills stand out for you as sweet triumphs or that provoke vivid memories? And why?

It’s not like we just passed 128 separate bills. Many of them are iterations of previous bills, and many of them are evolutions.

Also keep in mind that when I first got into office, I was in the minority. I introduced some climate bills that died, and then in 2019, when we got the majority [in both chambers of the General Assembly] for the first time in a while and the first time in my career, we had a whole lot of pent-up pieces of legislation that we were just ready to go with.

A foundational bill, HB19-1261, which laid out our broad greenhouse gas targets for 2025, 2030 and 2040, was legislation that had been introduced previously. If that bill was introduced today, I think many of us would say it’s weak sauce, but it was critical to get it done then, to set the foundation. I think it inspired or kind of facilitated many of the later bills.

I remember that fight vividly. We passed that bill at, I think, five in the morning.

You’re kidding me.

It was a rough-and-tumble period in the Senate, because we had just gotten the majority — by one vote. The Republicans were fighting like hell. They felt like we were doing too much, too fast. It’s a very natural reaction. I don’t blame them for it. I think if the tables were turned, I would do the same.

I was also younger and less experienced, and I wasn’t as convinced at the time about how much relationships matter in the legislative process. It was a learning experience for me. It was also a lot of fun to just have a knock-down, drag-out fight on a really important issue and to win.

There was a filibuster, and it went late into the night, and we finally called the question. I don’t think we’ve done that again since that night. It’s a very rare thing to do, but it was the only way forward. We felt like we had given the minority plenty of time to voice their opinion. It got to a point where they were just simply delaying.

You describe this bill as zealous? Did I hear that right?

I don’t think I would say zealous. It was ambitious for the moment. I think many states have since adopted those types of goals. And some aspects of those goals we now think we can easily surpass. But it was important for the moment to help lay out a framework for a roadmap and individual sectors of the economy.

The same year had many other big moments. One was SB19-181. {It made the protection of public safety, health, welfare, and the environment in the regulation of the oil and gas industry a higher priority than production].

Looking back, many of us think, okay, yeah, but there’s so much more to do. But take yourself back to 2019 and think about all of the oil and gas regulation bills that had been introduced, all the ballot measure wars, and all of the failures, one after another.

Those failures were important. I think we learned a lot. Think about the accomplishment of passing SB181 in the context of those years of a lack of progress. It laid the foundation for many oil and gas bills that came after.

Those two fights were particularly important and personally gratifying and a big part of my professional growth as a legislator. That’s partially because I was arguably in charge of getting the (Democratic) majority back. That was my mission in 2017 and 2018, and we did it. And I made a lot of promises to a lot of people that if we get this majority, here’s what you can expect from us. And I feel like we delivered on a lot of that.

You said one thing you learned was the importance of relationships, which has perhaps helped you as you’ve gone on through your legislative career. Are there ways you went about this that you regret?

I wouldn’t use the word regret, because, again, I think if it didn’t happen the way it happened, I wouldn’t have learned certain lessons. But it was pretty turbulent.

We had the [Democratic] majority back. We were getting a lot done in one session. Jared Polis was a new governor. We had the trifecta [control of both legislative chambers and the governor’s mansion] for the first time, and I was in the middle of it.

Not long before in my legislative career I had been a freshman in the minority, which basically means you just sit there, right? For two years, I was just lobbing bombs, and they would deflect every single one of them. And so we got the majority and immediately I became the majority leader. Very quickly, I had to learn. And I don’t think I would have learned certain lessons if we had not pushed the envelope in the way that we did.

But there’s a little bit of me that feels it’s not how I would do it today. Again, it’s not regret.

The biggest lesson is the importance of just communicating with your opponents. I think I went into those fights too convinced that my opponents were my enemy and not just simply my political opponents. And I think when you have the mindset of an enemy, you take actions and you use tactics that maybe you wouldn’t if you just simply saw them as someone who disagreed with you. That was okay. You were still going to work to get your way, but an “enemy” makes you treat people differently than if they’re just simply a political opponent.

Read Part Two…