Panel approves bill to repay veterans fund, with interest

Legislature borrowed about $2.3M from fund during 2002 budget crisis; $636,103 tacked on

By ED SEALOVER

THE GAZETTE

January 17, 2008 - 12:46AM

DENVER - State legislators took a big step Wednesday toward paying back nearly $3 million that the Joint Budget Committee chairman said they stole from state veterans six years ago.

Although a number of retired military members expressed their gratitude, several members of the General Assembly insisted it is a first move among many that could include asking voters for a tax increase for the state’s veterans.

The House Finance Committee unanimously passed a bill to repay $2,280,900 taken from the Veterans Trust Fund during the budget crunch of 2002.

Members also tacked on an amendment adding an additional $636,103 to represent the interest the 6-year-old “loan” would have accrued.

Created in 2000 with money from the landmark settlement with big tobacco companies, the fund subsidizes veterans’ needs not covered by the state or federal governments.

Grants have helped about 25,000 people by paying for things such as transportation to medical sites for rural residents, help for homeless veterans and improvements to Colorado’s five state-run veterans nursing homes.

The fund receives 1 percent of the annual settlement payments, or a maximum of $1 million from the settlement fund, each year.

The goal is to generate a $20 million principle balance so that the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs board can hand out $1.2 million in annual grants using only the interest.

Without the $2.3 million, though, the fund has generated less interest and fewer grants — $537,525 was given out last year — for a half-decade, officials said. If the measure passes the House and Senate, the transfer will be made Aug. 15.

“You’re helping veterans is what you’re doing,” said Marvin Meyers, legislative chairman for the United Veterans Committee of Colorado. “For every dollar we have, we are able to provide greater assistance.”

The bill’s sponsor, JBC Chairman and Grand Junction Democrat Bernie Buescher, called the 2002 action and subsequently unkept promise to pay back the fund a theft and “an injustice.”

He had requested the $2.3 million principle repayment but was happy to accept an amendment by Rep. Douglas Bruce, R-Colorado Springs, that added the interest.

Demand is up for veteran services: 1,200 claims for government benefits were submitted in Colorado in 2000 and 4,500 were submitted in 2005, said Rep. Jack Pommer, a Boulder Democrat and JBC member.

Also, Vietnam veterans who have not previously sought help are seeking mental and physical assistance, said Rep. Kent Lambert, a Colorado Springs Republican and Air Force veteran.

With more troops returning from the Iraq war with traumatic brain injuries, that number will increase in coming years, said Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver.

“We are so underfunded in this area that it’s almost malfeasance.”

Earlier in the day, Romer said the Legislature has a “moral obligation” to ask voters for a tax increase to increase the funding given to veterans tenfold or twentyfold.

Although no members of the Joint State, Veterans and Military Affairs Committee immediately backed his proposal, Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, said he’s working on a bill to create a statewide military council to help with issues such as these.

Prison firm threatens to stop taking Colo. felons

By MIKE SACCONE
The Daily Sentinel

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

A private prison company is threatening to stop housing additional Colorado inmates unless it receives more state funds, an act one state lawmaker called “extortion.”

Rep. Bernie Buescher, D-Grand Junction, said Corrections Corporation of America has demanded a substantial increase in the daily rate the state pays private prisons to hold inmates.

“They said that if we don’t essentially do a 5 percent increase over each of the next five years, they will work at closing at least one of their prisons to Colorado prisoners and start bringing in out-of-state prisoners,” Buescher said.

Corrections Corporation of America prisons in Burlington, Las Animas, Olney Springs, Walsenburg and Sayre, Okla., house 4,048 Colorado inmates, according to Katherine Sanguinetti, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

Those prisoners account for more than 20 percent of the state’s more than 19,000 prison inmates, according to agency statistics.

Steve Owen, spokesman for the Tennessee-based company, said Corrections Corporation of America requested the rate increase to keep its Colorado prisons operating at cost.

“We’re trying to keep our operations in Colorado financially viable looking to the long term,” Owen said. “It’s been a very good partnership.”

Owen declined to comment on the company’s dealings with state lawmakers. He said Corrections Corporation of America is merely trying to negotiate a reimbursement rate in line with prison companies’ pre-recession funding levels.

Following Colorado’s 2002 and 2003 recession, the state dropped its per-inmate, per-day private prison reimbursement rate from a high of $54.66 in fiscal year 2001-2002 to $49.56 in fiscal year 2004-2005.

Since then, the reimbursement rate has grown incrementally to $52.69.

Ari Zavaras, director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, was unavailable for comment Tuesday.

Rep. Al White, R-Hayden, said he understands the Corrections Corporation of America’s financial situation, but its threat to start “winnowing” Colorado inmates out of its facilities in favor of more lucrative out-of-state prisoners is insidious.

“I do feel there is some level of extortion involved here,” White said.

Buescher, who heads the state’s Joint Budget Committee, said Corrections Corporation of America’s responsibility for such a high percentage of the state’s inmates gives it a troubling level of influence over the state.

“When you use private prisons, you become hostage to their setting the rate,” Buescher said. “And we always knew that this issue was out there.”

White said if Corrections Corporation of America moves ahead with its plans, the state could find itself scrambling to either cram more inmates into its already overstuffed 22 public prisons, send prisoners outside Colorado or build a new public prison.

“We need to find beds for our prisoners,” White said, “and if we lose all of the (Corrections Corporation of America) beds, we’re in trouble.”

According to a Joint Budget Committee staff report, Colorado will need 5,100 new prison beds over the next five years.

White said building thousands of new public prison beds, without private prisons to help bridge the bedding gap, could run a tab of nearly $1 billion.

Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, said another short-term solution could be to encourage more community-based sentences for nonviolent felons. Community corrections programs, he said, are more cost-effective than prisons.

Pommer suggested during a Tuesday hearing the state could condemn and take over one of Corrections Corporation of America’s facilities, but said it would not be preferable.

He said for the time being, Colorado will have to rely on private-prison beds.

“We should have never let this situation get to the way it is,” Pommer said.

Health care tops agenda as state legislators to reconvene on Wednesday

By Laura Snider (Contact)
Sunday, January 6, 2008
On Wednesday, 100 elected officials -- including nine people representing at least part of Boulder and Broomfield counties -- will file into the golden-domed state Capitol in Denver to gavel in the 2008 legislative session.

This spring, both the Democrats and the Republicans have the same issue at the top of their agendas.

"The No. 1 issue is certainly going to be health care," said House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder. "We're working on affordability and access."

The state's Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform, created in 2006, will give its final report to the General Assembly on Jan. 31, thrusting the costly issue into the forefront of the Republican's agenda as well. But the two parties will be dueling it out about the best way to move forward.

Madden said the Democrats' long-term focus is making sure all Coloradans are insured. First, though, she said the majority will try to get universal access for the state's 180,000 uninsured children.

Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, agreed that health care is a big-ticket item this session, but he said he wants to reduce the rules governing the system to fix the problem.

"I think that we've gone too far down the path of government control and regulation," Mitchell said. "Reforms need to do an about face and use a freer market rather than pressure it with more government micromanagement."

Both parties also will take a hard look at education, with Rep. Jack Pommer, D-Boulder, leading the charge for expanded preschool and full-day kindergarten programs.

"Almost all the experts agree, especially for the kids that are already lagging, that preschool and full-day kindergarten, if it's good quality, is really important," Pommer said.

The Republicans are trying to institute statewide graduation standards, including a push by Mitchell to require English proficiency before students can earn high school diplomas.

"We have been committing educational fraud for too long," Mitchell said. "It dis-serves the students and fails the purpose of education."

Mitchell also is wading into another hot-button topic: Gov. Bill Ritter's decision to let state workers form bargaining groups. Mitchell will introduce a bill attempting to repeal Ritter's executive order.

"He acted in the dark of night when the Legislature was out of session with his executive order," he said. "It'll probably be part of the early discussion this session."

Now entering his final session, term-limited Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, will sponsor bills close to many Boulderite's hearts with legislation designed to reduce the price of textbooks and create rebates for solar power. He also plans to co-sponsor a bill to amend Colorado's adverse possession law, which is at the heart of a headline-making land dispute in south Boulder.

Another Democratic Boulder legislator, Rep. Claire Levy, is backing bills that would boost energy efficiency and make it more difficult to try 14- and 15-year-olds as adults in the court system.

And, of course, if the 11 senators and 56 representatives hoping to retain their seats this fall want the November election to happen at all, legislators will have to deal with the recent decertification of many of the state's voting machines, including some used in Boulder County.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or sniderl@dailycamera.com.

Don’t spend transit money on social engineering

December 21, 2007 - 11:06PM

Trivial pursuits

Tax hikes are never an easy sell in Colorado, even when they’re going to fund legitimate government functions such as building and maintaining roads, bridges and freeways. But anger the voters by diverting these grudgingly surrendered dollars to pet projects or trivial pursuits — to lower priority transportation “needs” such as bike paths or pedestrian-friendly communities, for instance — and you’re just begging for rejection.

Bad news for the good old boys at the Gazette: people who pass taxes get to decide why they pass, not people who don't pass them. The Gazette, and its readers, may think that building highways is the only legitimate use of tax dollars and they may think that bike and pedestrian paths are trivial pursuits, but their opinions don't count.

Harsh? No, just reality. Back when Referenda C & D were on the ballot, asphalt junkies like the Gazette editorialists and Gov. Owens decided that the money from D, the transportation issue, should go only to highway building. D failed. Why? Because when it comes to tax hikes, right-wing, anti-tax zealots don't decide what passes.

People in Boulder County liked Ref. C and gave it enough "yes" votes to overcome all of the "no" votes from El Paso County. We didn't like Ref. D and we didn't give it the boost it would have needed to pass.

It’ll be tough enough to sell the state’s “blue ribbon” transportation commission proposal to more than double what Colorado spends annually on transportation — a $1.5 billion annual increase that will have to be paid for with tax hikes or higher “fees.” But if the plan is hijacked by two Boulder liberals, who want to divert these transportation funds for social engineering experiments, the entire effort is in danger of coming apart completely.

Exactly backwards. If the anti-common sense conservatives hijack the proposal it will die like D.

That’s why we were dismayed to read in Sunday’s Gazette that a number of key legislators want to divert would-be road funds to discourage people from driving, as part of some anti car crusade. According to the story, a growing number of Statehouse Democrats, led by Reps. Jack Pommer and Claire Levy, feel that “transportation funding and environmental and growth concerns should be linked.” Instead of upgrading basic infrastructure, they want to use the money to advance a so called smart growth agenda.

And smart tax agenda.

How “smart” any agenda is that flies in the face of consumer preferences isn’t a question we’ll settle today. Whether such approaches really reduce congestion, or merely redistribute it, is also open to debate. But on the practical political level, we think it would be a mistake to divert money in these directions.

Like it or not, most Americans still cherish the mobility, freedom and flexibility personal transport provides. Some Coloradans, either by choice or necessity, use buses, light rail and other forms of public transport. A number can walk or ride their bicycles to work or school. And that’s OK (except that many of these people are being heavily subsidized by other people). But these people are, and likely will remain, in the minority.

But a necessary majority when it comes to raising taxes. And an absent majority if the taxes are going to subsidize highway expansion. And does the Gazette really think pedestrians and cyclists need heavy subsidies?

That’s the reality we’re handed and the situation we have to address. Seizing this as an opportunity to try to remake society along different lines, in order to fit some naïve Utopian notions about the way the rest of us should (but don’t) choose to live, is not a wise expenditure of precious resources or the legitimate business of the state. Diverting money from the concrete goal of improving battered roadways to the nebulous goal of getting people to abandon their cars will convince voters that politicians can’t be trusted with more of their money.

If people want to live in more pedestrian-friendly communities, they can seek them out. If people like to commute to work on a bicycle, they can do so. And if these folks want to smugly pat themselves on the back for being “smarter” than the rest of us, so be it.

But using public money and state power to coerce or entice people into making politically correct lifestyle choices is inappropriate. It’s generally a minority of professional planners and smart-growth activists who are pushing these we-know-best schemes.

They seem to have forgotten that I was against the tax increase, they're the ones who want to tax people and divert the money to their agenda.

These sorts of ideas may go over big in Boulder, where Pommer and Levy are from. But there’s a reason Boulder is the butt of so many jokes elsewhere in Colorado. Government’s job isn’t to tell people how to live, but to serve a limited set of needs that the private sector can’t provide. Straying too far from these fundamentals when setting the state’s transportation priorities will lead to a car crash at the ballot box.

That's OK.

It gets better. The initial report to the JBC only mentioned raising taxes (or fees) to pay for highway expansions. When the Blue Ribbon Panel's final report came out in January, it included the kind of sensible planning and demand management Claire and I suggested.

Live, from the Capitol!

Your lawmakers in action

Clint Talbott, for the editorial board
Friday, July 6, 2007

If Statehouse proceedings had been televised in 2003, the Republican Party would probably still have gerrymandered Colorado's congressional districts to its advantage. But more citizens could have had a front-row seat.

That would have been a good thing, and it illustrates the wisdom in House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's proposal to televise House deliberations.

"The idea is to bring the House of Representatives to living rooms," Romanoff told The Denver Post last month. "A lot of folks have no idea what we do here, and we would make better decisions if they did."

Romanoff, a Denver Democrat, said live television coverage "might improve the decorum of the chamber." His optimism is refreshing, if not altogether convincing.

As he noted, 34 states already have their own version of C-SPAN, which televises Congress. Colorado's Sunshine Law requires that the formation of public policy be done in public. Televised proceedings (which would be available in indexed form on the internet) are a significant improvement over the audio-only internet "streaming" of Statehouse debates.

Beginning in January 2008, Romanoff says, the House may come into your home. The state Senate, meanwhile, hasn't mustered equal enthusiasm. Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald reportedly is concerned about a potential conflict of interest. Comcast is donating in-kind services to televise House proceedings.

Fitz-Gerald wonders if that's appropriate, given that Comcast has an interest in some legislation. That potential conflict seems manageable.

Meanwhile, some wonder if the presence of TV cameras would transform lawmakers into (even bigger) hams. It might. But it would boost the transparency, and that's the critical factor.

Consider the waning days of the session in 2002, when the GOP railroaded a gerrymandered congressional district plan through the Legislature. The Legislature is supposed to redraw the districts once a decade, after each census. Because lawmakers couldn't agree on a plan, a court picked a plan that gave the Republicans solid majorities in four districts, the Democrats dominion over two districts, and one district fairly even-Steven.

So the Republicans imposed a new map in which the GOP had the advantage in five of seven districts. Similar strong-armed gerrymander plans were imposed in Georgia and Texas. Ultimately, the Colorado scheme failed when challenged in court.

But if cameras had been in the House then, citizens could have watched as former Rep. Tom Plant, a Nederland Democrat, tried to explain why he wouldn't vote on the redistricting bill. The chair interrupted, informing Plant that his point was moot. As Plant objected, the chair silenced Plant, literally, by turning off his microphone.

Boulder Rep. Alice Madden tried to make the same point and was similarly gagged. So was Boulder Rep. Jack Pommer and others. It was a nauseating spectacle — an illustration of how partisan zeal can trump democratic ideals. The newspapers covered it. But reading the stories was nothing like watching the actual train wreck.

Such machinations are offensive no matter which party is responsible. In the future, when partisans launch a similar stunt, perhaps they will stop to consider that people are (or could be) watching. In politics, that kind of scrutiny can be positively transformative.