Prepared text of Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald’s speech to convene the new legislative session, January 10, 2007.
The Legislature is a river: make every drop count
Introduction
Good morning and welcome to the opening of the 66th General Assembly.
Members, we have a lot of work to do, so in the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I will “Be sincere, be brief, and be seated.”
For some of you, family and friends of incoming Senators you will find your first visit to these chambers to be awe-inspiring. We are all humbled by the personalities on our stained glass windows, members of this chamber who left their imprint on this state and its people.
I hope that each of us takes time every day we are here to realize that those visionaries whose images we see were weighed down with many of the same cares and concerns that will drive this session.
People like Governor Edwin Johnson, who in the 1930’s was a champion of highway construction and water projects or Emily Griffith who was a pioneer in adult education.
They may not have been perfect, but just like you and me; they dedicated their careers to a better Colorado.
Today, with term limits, no one is graced with a long service in the Senate. The General Assembly is a changing institution. Term limits can make us distracted and complacent or they can push us to be dynamic and full of a sense of urgency.
I would like to welcome our newest members of this body. Please stand as I call your name-first, those who are joining us from the House: Senators Ted Harvey, Josh Penry and Dave Schultheis. Welcome to the Senate.
We also welcome new Senators who have not served in this building, but all of whom have already participated in public service elsewhere. Please join me in welcoming Senators Mike Kopp, served as a Ranger in the 82nd Airborne Divisions, John Morse former police chief of Fountain, Scott Renfroe, former school board member in Eaton, Chris Romer, founder and past president of Colorado I Have a Dream Foundation, Gail Schwartz, former CU Regent and Steve Ward, former Arapahoe County Commissioner and former mayor and city councilman of Glendale.
As you can see in just one election cycle, with all of these new members, almost a quarter of the state Senate has changed.
Public service is never easy and the sacrifices can be great. For the past eight years we have worked with Governor Bill Owens and our challenges in the lean times were enormous. I know you all join me in wishing the Governor and Mrs. Owens well as they go on to their next great adventure.
I.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me talk about our time here together and just how precious it is and why the work we do here is so important.
Time in the legislature is similar to the journey of the Colorado River.
The river starts out in Grand County as a small stream, just like our policies here. We may think that a vote here, a vote there is not that much in itself, but like the Colorado River, the policies we create and the laws we enact, can someday carve Grand Canyons.
We see the river work its magic where it irrigates the cottonwoods that line its banks. Our votes, just like the water, can irrigate the institutions and infrastructure that change peoples’ lives-like schools, hospitals and roads.
There are only 120 days in the session and we must not let our water fall on fallow land. To again quote FDR, “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.”
In preparing for this session I have had the opportunity to reflect on where the river that is Colorado has been.
I can remember coming to the Senate for my first term in 2001. The economy was booming and the state was flush with money. Then the dot-com industry went bust and a recession settled over the state. In just two short years, the state went into an economic drought and we had to start making painful decisions that impacted people’s lives.
Many suffered including those who dedicated their lives to public service including state workers who made a tremendous sacrifice through some very rough times. The Senate thanks you.
But as we know, adversity creates a need for creative solutions and action. We started to take control of our destiny and point our raft downriver. We had to be responsible enough to ask the hard questions about how we could forge a better future.
In the last two years we started working a lot more closely together as a body and with the governor and made significant progress, especially in restoring the fiscal well-being of the state budget.
We joined with Senators Jim Isgar, Jack Taylor and the Governor to increase funding for tourism from $5 million to $20 million. We have already seen that pay dividends.
Senator Groff and our caucus worked with Governor Owens, Steve Johnson, Norma Anderson and many others who paved the way for a compromise to fix TABOR. When voters passed Referendum C, the river started running again. We saw the promise of a brighter future.
We have stopped the hemorrhaging from the state budget, but we are under no illusions that we are now overflowing with money. We are still stretched very thin, and as we did last year, we must practice extreme fiscal responsibility.
II.
With Referendum C, our state was at a grand junction. We made a promise to Coloradans for a different direction for the state and we intend to honor that promise. Let me talk about some of our priorities for the next session.
First, there are fantastic possibilities to create a new energy future. We have untapped potential in Colorado and already have the resources right in our backyard with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and a favorable landscape for wind and solar power.
I look forward to joining with Governor Ritter to encourage investments in renewable energy. We should increase our use of renewable energy around the state to at least 20 percent of total energy use.
Rural and urban Colorado should be ready technologically and economically to position Colorado as a national leader in renewable energy. That is why I am, today, announcing a Senate Select Committee on Colorado’s Energy Future. There is a moral imperative for us to do our share in reducing our contribution to global warming as well ass contribute another component to Colorado’s economy
We must commit ourselves to funding higher education. Let’s begin by restoring some of the devastating cuts we made during the last several years. 81 faculty positions remain unfilled due to budget constraints. A third of library materials were cut.
We cut funding for the Health Sciences Center by nearly forty percent. As a result, our medical school places 73rd out of 75 public medical schools for public funding.
We will have the opportunity this session to assure Colorado that our best and brightest young physicians can afford to learn at CU Medical School and that quality faculty will be retained.
We must rebuild our higher education system. It is perhaps the greatest investment we can make as a state.
In K-12, we must ensure that children are ready to learn when they reach kindergarten by increasing the number of preschool slots. Requiring that 6-year-olds attend school, not just 7-year-olds will go toward that end.
We made progress last year in lowering the cost of health care by supporting community health centers, but we must do more. Insurance costs continue to rise and more people cannot afford rising premiums.
Last year, we directed Referendum C dollars to expand basic healthcare for Coloradans. We eliminated waitlists for disabled children, so they can enjoy a fuller life.
This year we need to provide immediate relief from skyrocketing drug costs. We are introducing legislation to give the state power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices and allow bulk purchasing by the state. As it has done in other states, we can save taxpayers millions of dollars.
One of the most unique challenges we face this session is the pine beetle devastation in our forests. This dead timber presents a potential disaster for our watersheds, which includes the water systems for the Front Range. The dead trees increase the risk for catastrophic forest fires.
I have already convened several bipartisan meetings, with local officials, Denver Water, fire marshals, CDOT, the Division of Insurance and many others because we have to bring resources to the table to formulate a partnership to address this environmental challenge.
CONCLUSION
And so the river that is Colorado keeps running. It is an exciting time to be a part of this body. There will certainly be rapids ahead, but also magnificent scenery and many confluences. We have many canyons to carve and institutions to irrigate.
And this is my challenge to all of you in our limited time here: Create a better future in each and every bill you carry and vote you cast. Each day of the legislature is precious–Make every drop count.
To use the eloquent words of Robert F. Kennedy, “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself but each of us can work to change a small portion of events and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.”
God bless Colorado and God bless the United States of America.
Thank you.
