And just like that, it’s over

All the air went out of the state Capitol this morning, like steam leaving a pressure cooker.

By 9 a.m. – the normal start time for morning floor meetings and less than 12 hours after the legislative session ended Tuesday night – the halls and offices of the building were nearly empty.

A group of environmental advocates held a small press conference, touting their successes, as a couple early-rising lawmakers stood off to the side. Gov. Bill Ritter ducked into his office by the side door, almost without notice. Voices echoed off the marble walls of the rotunda.

In the basement, the cashier at the normally bustling café looked bored.

“It’s like something came in and blew everybody away,” she said. “It’s instant calm.”

A handful of tourists snapped photos of the building, but it was like visiting the zoo without the animals. A slow trickle of lawmakers, some in shirt sleeves and blue jeans, flowed in and out of the Capitol, packing up desks or catching up on e-mails.

“Just because the session ends,” said Sen. Dan Gibbs, a Silverthorne Democrat who came to the Capitol for the first time in months wearing an open-collared shirt, “doesn’t mean the work ends.”

One of the more remarkable things about the lifecycle of the legislative session is how quickly the Capitol comes to life on Day 1 and how fast it all goes away when the session ends on Day 120. Overnight the building seems to bustle with fast-moving lawmakers and sharp-elbowed lobbyists. The entryways to the two chambers clog with advocates trying to get their business cards into the right hands inside.

It all came to an end late Tuesday with a flurry of last-minute activity and a bipartisan bash of lawmakers and schmoozing lobbyists at a bar a few blocks away that lasted until the small hours.

And this morning all the sweat and ambition that grease the Capitol during the session seemed to have evaporated. The entryways for the chambers were empty and clean. Just inside the front door to the Senate was a sign saying, “The Senate is now adjourned.”

And, after four months of policy forging and political jockeying, of passionate speeches and pointless diatribes, it all raised a surprisingly unsettling question: What is the sound of no yaps flapping?

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