NoCoPolitics.com

"A Floor Fight in Denver"

Well?

We should know more by the end of this weekend.

Fix the Infrastructure

Behold, the Alliance for Improving America's Infrastructure.

Someone once noted that if you're a member of Congress and you get funding for a bike path in your district, you get to go to a nifty ribbon-cutting ceremony.  There are no ribbon-cutting ceremonies for simply getting our roadways back to working order. 

Anatomy of a Tax Hike

This time, it's El Paso County.

The county reached the breaking point this year, commissioners said Thursday. The county has already closed most offices on Fridays, and officials are exploring other options includ- ing selling county parks.

Boston

Felix Wong has an article in the FCN that speaks to me.

To explain the allure of the Boston Marathon would require giving a history lesson.

No on June 10

Here's the site of the "no" committee: The Truth About Fort Collins

The Morning Papers, 5/29/08

Lots of catching up to do...

Tax Numbers: Not So Good (Again)

In the Coloradoan:

Fort Collins sales tax collections dipped nearly 6 percent in April amid large drops in general merchandise, clothing, furniture, electronics and construction.

It was the largest decline of the year, but officials said much of the decline was expected as residents dealt with higher gas prices and increased food costs and the city continued to feel the economic loss of the now-closed Mason Street Wal-Mart.

Now if only we had some sort of retail development to look forward to at our highway interchanges...

Ed Reform Signed

SB 130 is now law.

Senate Bill 130 allows schools to set their own courses, break from district rules and state law to form "innovation zones."

...

The innovation bill was born from a struggle that occurred earlier this school year at Bruce Randolph, when teachers and the principal petitioned the district and the union for autonomy.

The union, at first, was resistant — denying the separation until agreeing to most of the school's request. The school wanted freedom to hire when positions opened and set its own calendar and teacher pay scale.

So far, said Principal Kristin Waters, the autonomy is working.

The school has hired 13 new teachers, is paying teachers double for tutoring and will start a two-week summer school on Monday for 70 kids who failed classes. If they don't re-earn their credits, they won't be promoted to the next grade, she said.

Diggs Brown on the Municipal Employees Union Fight in Fort Collins

It's deja vu all over again.

When binding arbitration is used, an outsider is brought in to arbitrate between parties. It's very important that you understand an arbitrator is not a referee or a mediator. That person passes judgment, and the parties have to live with it. This unelected outside attorney will be making budget priority decisions for the city. Those decisions will ripple through the entire city budget.

The city of Fort Collins pays competitive salaries and offers generous benefits to employees.

The measure has nothing to do with fairness or more police on the street, as the paid signature collectors fabricated. It is most certainly not something desired by the City Council. Read the text of the proposed ballot measure, and you will see that it's about changing the existing collective bargaining provisions that are already in the City Code so that they require binding arbitration between city government and the unions and putting that revised version in the City Charter.

Sean Conway on Glade

Weld Commissioner candidate and Allard Chief of Staff Sean Conway has a Tribune op-ed on Glade Reservoir.

The NCBR on Glade   

Pretty good in-depth article on what NISP/Glade would do to the region and the river.

Please Disregard the Construction at I-25/Harmony

It's just Timnath.

The Toughest Job in Politics

These days, in this litigious political climate, it's being a county clerk.  Here's Rebecca Boyle's profile of the best county clerk in America, Scott Doyle.

It's Quiet...

...too quiet.

BROOMFIELD — Rumors persist that Saturday's Republican State Convention could draw protesters, including some seeking to make a mark at Denver's Democratic National Convention in August.

But a community meeting Wednesday held to discuss how protests will be handled provided scant evidence that there will be any sort of ruckus.

The Morning Papers, 5/23/08

Red Cross, Centennial Chapter.  (The site has been down.  The phone number is (970) 226-5728.)

Updates from the Town of Windsor are here (info about shelters).

Fort Collins Now (in conjunction with the Greeley Tribune) has some comprehensive coverage and raw video.

Home Builders of Northern Colorado are collecting pledges for support:

Those interested can e-mail pledges to djweber@hbanco.com or call 686-2798. All funds need to be at the HBA by Wednesday.

The Reporter-Herald is tracking closures and cancellations.

To volunteer:

Starting at 10 a.m. today, there will be a volunteer meeting point at Poudre Valley REA, 7649 REA Parkway. It is off of Colorado 392, Windsor Exit 262 from Interstate 25.

  At the site, volunteers can register to help, have their skills assessed and be assigned a project.

For more information, call 211.

The Markey Economic Plan

Here's my one-liner review of the Markey Economic Plan, point-by-point.

• Cut federal media PR contracts.  (Okay.  That's $8.8 million a year savings.)

• Ban bonuses for political appointees.  (Another whopping $1.5 million a year.)

• Reduce government travel.  (Okay.)

• Repeal subsidies for oil companies.  (She goes on to explain that the motivation for this is the high price of gas.  But wouldn't this effectively raise the price of gas?)


• Close the Bermuda Tax Loophole.  (She doesn't say how she would do this.)


• Eliminate the Oil Technology Program.  (Once again, wouldn't this raise the price of gasoline if you're cutting programs that encourage oil companies to find new and cheaper ways to produce gasoline?)


• Close the CEO pay loophole.  (This is pure class warfare and a big corporate tax hike.  She would cap the tax deductibility for executive compensation at $1 million, including performance-based pay.)


• Consolidate federal statistical agencies.  (Sounds good to me.  Of course, it's only $5 million a year.)


• Create a bipartisan corporate subsidy reform commission.  (Uh... sure.)


• Reform earmarks.  (This is a pledge to make her own earmark requests public.  I'm not sure how that's "anti-earmark". More accurately, it's pro-earmark with disclosure.)


• Enact a two-year refinancing credit.  (Create a two-year, one-time $2,000 credit to cover the closing costs of anyone refinancing into a fixed rate mortgage.)


• Fix the AMT.  (I'm not sure that we would agree on the meaning of the verb "fix" here, and she doesn't get much more specific.)


• Establish criminal penalties for "foreclosure consultants". 


• Double the personal exemption for dependents.  (A tax cut targeted towards families?  I'm in.)


• Make college more affordable by creating a $10,000 tax credit for tuition.


• Create flexible education accounts.  (I know!  We'll name it the "529 Plan".  Wait a second...)

• Tax credits for senior care.  (Extending beyond the current credits if the senior is living with you.)

• Make the R&D tax credit permanent.  (I think Newt Gingrich came up with this one first.  It's on his web site.)


• Increase the small business enterprise credit from $5,000 to $10,000.  (Okay.)


• Make the production tax credit permanent.  (Okay.  I wonder, however, if this is the type of thing the Markey Bipartisan Corporate Subsidy Reform Commission (see above) might frown on.)


• A pledge to spend more time in the district, work one day a year in a small business and one day on a farm.  A commitment to meet with chamber leadership, labor leaders and economic development groups. Pledges to meet with Governor Ritter, hold an education summit, hold town meetings, meet with business owners, etc.  (i.e. Do all of the things that congresspeople do.)

So there you have it.  A lot of little cuts around the edges, some de facto corporate tax increases, direct attacks on the oil and gas industries, a few tax incentives and not much more. 

The Morning Papers, 5/22/08

Closer to the Ballot

The Title Setting Review Board has approved the ballot language of Andrew Romanoff's plan to eliminate Amendment 23 and Tabor's limit on the growth of the size of government.

Markey's Economic Plan

In today's Coloradoan.   (See point-by-point review above).

Three Unrelated

Pro and con.  The funny thing is, they're both right.  The law is both effective and unfair.

The Morning Papers, 5/21/08

It's Official: Gibson is Out

Apparently, Gibson's campaign collected about 2,000 towards the necessary 3,818 signatures.  That's actually a very impressive number for a local volunteer effort.  It's a testament to the depth of his support among his volunteer base.

Gibson has a long track record of public service, and I'm sure this isn't the way he wanted to leave office. 

Two Op-Eds Against Union Amendment

The Coloradoan has side-by-side op-eds against the proposed charter amendment that would allow public employee unions in Fort Collins.

From the Mayor and Council.

Erik Rush.

Markey Poll Has Markey Ahead

(They wouldn't have released it to the press if it didn't show her ahead).

It would be interesting to see the guts of the poll.  Benchmark polls like this ask the straight "horse race" question at the beginning of the questionnaire and then again at the end.  In between, they test messages and provide biographies of the candidates. 

For example, they might introduce Betsy Markey with a favorable biography and then use some of their upcoming attack messages to describe Marilyn Musgrave.  (They do this to determine which of those attack messages best move undecided voters).

If the numbers released by the campaign are from the beginning of the poll, they provide an accurate snapshot of the race.  If the numbers released by the campaign are from the end of the poll, after the pollster goes through potential messaging, then the numbers provide only a "What if?" look at the race, as in "What if we controlled all of the messaging in this race, were able to portray our opponent purely in a negative light and our candidate in a purely positive light?"

In other words, it's a bit premature to throw a Markey victory party.

Now THAT'S a Headline

In the Denver Post: "Forecast includes risk of fire, flood, lightning, hail and snow."

"Profiles in Political Cowardice"

That's Post Columnist Ed Quillen's take on the failure of Democrats to address transportation funding.

Vincent Carroll on the DNC's "Local" Food Mandate

A dose of reality:

Are we really expected to spurn the cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products and meats from the Midwest, California, Florida and elsewhere in this land, not to mention those from Europe, Central America, Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and dozens of other points across the globe? The mind boggles at the reactionary thrust of a movement celebrating pre-modern self-sufficiency as a virtue rather than the desperate necessity that it actually was.

Ah, but what about the welfare of local farmers, the creation of "sustainable economies" and the profligate use of fossil fuels to transport goods to distant markets? Well, local farmers will thrive, as many do, if they grow or raise what people want to buy. If you are prone to worry about the "carbon footprint" of getting food to market, meanwhile, you'd better start calculating the other inputs of farming and marketing - such as "water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used) . . . disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs," according to The New York Times - because the energy involved can easily overwhelm what is used in transportation.

Ross Kaminsky on Boulder's Anti-Business Movement

Sound familiar?

Boulder's City Council may "shiver" at a likely decline in sales tax revenue, but I'll bet you the tax on a free cup of coffee that they'll never look to where much of the blame belongs...and they can find that answer by standing in front of a mirror.

Boulder does everything it can to antagonize upper-income people from moving here and new businesses from setting up here, so, in addition to overall economic conditions, it's no surprise that sales tax receipts might weaken.

...

Environmentalist extremists may think that what Boulder needs is fewer humans and more prairie dogs, but most rational people don't agree. While the City Council and the County Commission both claim to care about a long-term prosperous and sustainable future for Boulder, almost every action they take seems derived from a complete lack of understanding of economics and a misguided contempt for successful businesses and successful people. When Boulder's economy begins to stagger, we should all remember who gave it the punch in the gut.

$50,000 to Local Nonprofits

... and $11 million over the past eight years.