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Colorado lawmakers can procrastinate with the best of 'em

A few members of the Next with Kyle Clark can too!

DENVER — Procrastinate | verb | pro·cras·ti·nate |

MEANING: To put off intentionally and habitually

Colorado lawmakers in the House and Senate worked until the statutorily allowed deadline, gaveling out at 11:59:59 p.m. on Wednesday.

The Colorado legislature meets for 120 days, and just like years past, major bills were still yet to be decided by the end of the 120th day.

"There's really not a good reason for it. I think some of them are just controversial. But, if we actually started talking about them earlier, we wouldn't be getting them done literally in the final minutes of the legislative session," said House Minority Leader Rep. Patrick Neville, R-Castle Rock.

Decisions on two key bills -- PERA, the state's bleeding retirement fund, and a plan to fund the state's roads, waited until the last day.

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"I would dispute the idea that they were rushed through, I mean we've been about these things through the last interim," said Senate President, Sen. Kevin Grantham, R-Canon City. "Honestly, there's been a lot of talk and a lot of negotiation going on during the entire 120 days. The only reason it comes down to looking like we're rushing things at the end is because these are big issues that took a lot of work."

"I mean we would have been fine if the Republicans would have agreed with us weeks ago," said House Speaker Rep. Crisanta Duran, D-Denver. "We could have made sure those bills got to the Governor's desk like that."

"We all have things that we want to do versus things that we need to do," said Travis Heath, associate professor of psychology at Metro State University. "If it's going to be painful, we as humans, often push out that which will be painful until we have to."

Procrastination isn't limited to lawmakers or students studying for an exam, the TV version of this story was finished five minutes before it aired. Next producer Kerry Leary would admit that Kyle Clark and Marshall Zelinger give her undue stress.

"You and Kyle might be looking for every last piece of information for your stories, but in doing so that actually can be like paralysis by analysis," said Heath. "People will go, 'Well, I'm better at the last minute.' They've done research on this, and that actually turns out often not to be the case."

Heath said it's very similar to someone using a dating app, getting matched with someone and then seeking an even greater match.

"People will go, 'Oh, I'm an 80 percent match with this person,' but then people will go, 'Maybe, I’m an 85 percent match with someone, maybe I'm an 86 with somebody else,' said Heath. "In that regard, it's paralyzing in terms of actually getting to a finished product."

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