Neguse, Crow among Congress’ most effective lawmakers | Columnists

Colorado Democrats Joe Neguse and Jason Crow finished near the top of a list of the most effective lawmakers in the last Congress, according to a report released last week by the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking.

The scorecard, covering two year’s worth of legislative work in the 117th Congress from early 2021 to the beginning of this year, ranked Neguse in third place and Crow in fifth place among 232 House Democrats, when both were serving their second terms.

Neguse, who represents the 2nd Congressional District, saw 13 of the nearly 90 bills he sponsored signed into law during the two-year period, while the president signed 10 of the more than 50 bills introduced by Crow, who represents the 6th Congressional District.

It’s Neguse’s second appearance on the center’s list in as many terms. In the previous 116th Congress, in session from 2019 to 2021, Neguse landed in eighth place out of 240 House Democrats and tied with another lawmaker as the most effective members of the House’s freshmen class. In both two-year studies, Neguse was deemed the most effective House lawmaker on public lands legislation.

“We’re grateful for the recognition,” Neguse told Colorado Politics. “We’ve built a great team over the course of the last several years that is really focused on serving Colorado, serving the people of the 2nd District, and doing everything that we can to enact good public policy that’s rooted in making people’s lives better. Any time we get a recognition like this, of course, it’s humbling, and while we’re grateful to be, I guess, the third most effective office in the House, we’d like to be the first, so we’re back at it, working hard in this Congress to build on those achievements in the last Congress and do what we can here to make more progress going forward.”

Neguse said the broad range of topics addressed in the legislation he’s introduced is often inspired by constituents encountered at town halls.

“From improving wildfire mitigation, investing in our rural and mountain communities and creating opportunities for small businesses and entrepreneurs, my office strives to lead locally, always listening to the people of Colorado first,” Neguse said.

The 38-year old attorney and former University of Colorado regent won similar accolades a month ago, when GovTrack.US, an independent legislative tracking service, determined that Neguse had more bills signed into law than any other House member during the 117th Congress.

The Center for Effective Lawmaking — a joint project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia — arrives at its rankings using a more complicated system that tracks bills using 15 metrics in an attempt to determine whether lawmakers meet, exceed or fall below expectations for legislators in similar circumstances.

The scholars track the fate of every piece of legislation, assigns scores based on how far bills get in the legislative process, giving more weight to bills classified as substantial and significant, as opposed to merely commemorative, and rank members of the majority and minority parties on different scales, since members of the party in power tend to pass more legislation.

The scores are also…