Wednesday night, student government pushed for a resolution that would urge the Colorado legislature to create a one-day tax break holiday on textbooks in university bookstores.

“The purpose of this bill is to encourage the legislative assembly of 2013 to address this issue,” said Lindon Belshe, Director of Government Affairs. “By passing this, we are endorsing the legislative action to follow.”

The resolution, which is approximately two paragraphs in length, in shorter than the average resolution to pass through the Senate. The reasoning behind this, Belshe said, is because there is currently no representative in either the state’s House or Senate who is sponsoring this bill and so the details of it are still unknown.

“We originally had a lot of details in our resolution about specifications for this particular holiday,”  Belshe said. “The reason we took those stats out is because we just won’t know the details until later.”

Student senators raised many questions about the path this bill might take.

When Becky Ewing, Director of Ram Ride, asked which representatives were being considered to sponsor on the bill, others in Senate questioned why the legislation would only benefit university bookstores.

“How would this help students more than a tax holiday on all textbooks?” said Sen. Josh Shaugnessy. “If I go to the bookstore, even with this tax break I would still be paying 50 percent more there than I would somewhere else.”

Belshe replied that a tax holiday targeted at all retail stores that carried textbooks would only result in a loss of state revenue, which would hurt students in turn.

“How would this work with students who reserve their textbooks ahead of time?” asked Sen. Caitlain Bricker. “Would they get the tax break?”

Belshe replied that those students would probably still receive the tax break, but that the details would be resolved after the bill was created in the Colorado General Assembly.

“All we are doing is sending a message to the legislature that we are behind this bill,”  Belshe said. “The rest of the details are things that will be discussed when the assembly reconvenes in the spring.”

The resolution was sent to the External Affairs Committee and will be voted on in next Wednesday’s Senate meeting.

ASCSU Beat Reporter Carrie Mobley can be reached at news@collegian.com.