A bouquet would have been nice. Maybe a sheet cake.
But former Gov. Bill Owens, for whom “eliminating wasteful government spending” was practically a religion, instead gave his 12 Cabinet members $64,000 in going-away gifts on his way out the door last month.
As if it were his money to spend.
So exactly who got these tokens of appreciation on top of $309,000 in legitimate payments for unused sick leave and vacation time? Let’s see …
Joe Ortiz, director of the Department of Corrections, is one.
You remember Joe. In 2005, the state auditor’s office found that he had provided such lax oversight of privately owned prisons that inmates were dying for lack of basic medical care. In another spectacular stumble, a small inmate disturbance at the Crowley County Correctional Facility in 2004 erupted into a riot that left 13 people hospitalized and the prison in shambles after the DOC waited two hours before dispatching a response team to the facility – 7 miles away.
Ortiz got a $5,249.54 goodbye bonus.
Tom Norton, director of the Department of Transportation, got extra walking-around money from taxpayers too.
He’s the political appointee who tried to derail the FasTracks ballot measure a month before the election by musing publicly that state taxpayers might have to cover the cost of highway improvements to support the light-rail system.
When voters overwhelmingly approved FasTracks anyway, Norton, who theoretically is supposed to be in favor of transportation, tried to renege on an earlier agreement to exchange rights of way in a blatant attempt to stall light-rail construction and drive up costs.
He got $5,399.20.
Then there is Don Ament. Farmers in the throes of a devastating drought in 2002 wondered if the state commissioner of agriculture was a bit daft when he came out in favor of the nutty “Big Straw” project, which would have built a Rube Goldberg system of electric pumps and reservoirs to move Colorado River water 200 miles from the western border back over the Continental Divide to be sprinkled on Front Range lawns.
When he helped a pharmaceutical firm get approval for an experiment in biopharming in tornado alley, a lot of farmers quit wondering.
His bonus was $5,399.54.
Rick Grice, director of labor, who oversaw the installation of a $39 million computer system to track unemployment taxes and benefits, got $5,399.60, despite that the system didn’t work and cost the state $2.3 million more for a last-ditch effort to decode the bum software.
Director of Human Services Marva Hammons is taking extra cash into her retirement too, although she’s probably the only appointee to have been repeatedly threatened with citations for contempt of court.
Most recently she was criticized by a judge for failing to get mentally incompetent defendants out of the state’s jails and into mental hospitals. Another judge threatened her with jail time in 2001 for misspending state funds and disobeying court orders to provide housing and treatment for the chronically mentally ill under the 1994 Goebel Settlement.
Then there was her stunning mismanagement of the Colorado Benefits Management System, which resulted in tens of thousands of the state’s most vulnerable people being left without support for weeks. Yet another judge had to threaten Hammons with a contempt-of-court citation to get the problem solved.
Her take of the spoils: $5,571.04.
My favorite recipient of Bill Owens’ farewell palm-greasing, though, is Jenna Langer, director of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education.
Langer doesn’t have any prison riots or contempt of court citations on her résumé. In fact, she doesn’t have much to claim during her tenure as director of the agency, which is hardly surprising. She was appointed in the waning hours of Owens’ final term after Rick O’Donnell quit to run for Congress.
Langer held the position for less than nine months. She got $4,999.76.
Easy money.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
