Has the battle over transportation funding really come down to saving lives or saving the Democrats’ statehouse majority?
Say it isn’t so.
Even though they control the House, the Senate and the governor’s mansion, Democrats this year failed to push through a hike in vehicle registration fees that would have raised more money for Colorado’s highways and bridges.
Instead of manning up to their failure, as Carmelo Anthony might say, Democrats initially blamed the minority party Republicans.
Worse, Senate President Peter Groff went so far as to suggest that we could face catastrophe because Republicans wouldn’t sign on to the Democrats’ plans.
“So, we are now just crossing our fingers and hoping a bridge doesn’t fall between now” and January, he said.
Really? Our roads and bridges are so bad that we’re left crossing our fingers, hoping not to lose human lives — yet Democrats, who control the House by a 40-to-25 margin and the Senate by a 20-to-15 margin, couldn’t muster enough of their own votes to win a simple majority to fix bridges? Even if it meant potentially saving Coloradans’ lives?
If Sen. Groff truly believes that, I can’t imagine he’ll sleep at night from now until January.
No one should be surprised that the Republicans stood in the way. That’s what minority parties do.
The 2008 legislative session will go down as the year the Republicans learned how to play the loyal opposition.
“That’s true,” Democratic House Speaker Andrew Romanoff said, “except for the ‘loyal’ part.”
Now, if only the Democrats could learn how to play the majority party. Loyal or otherwise.
Romanoff lamented that Republicans early on made a “deliberate and bad decision to just oppose” everything. “The other team has decided that the union bashing, gay bashing, [and] teacher bashing doesn’t work, so they just vote no,” the speaker said.
Yet when pushed on why they couldn’t get the job done with strong majorities in both houses, Democrats finally admitted the truth: It’s about their own re-elections and maintaining their majority status.
“There are a lot of Democrats, and they have every right to feel and think this way, who know that they’re freshmen, they’re incumbents, they’re in districts that for a long time have been Republican districts,” Gov. Bill Ritter said at a press conference last week. “And then they have to go and get beat over the head by a Republican opponent saying that they unilaterally increased fees for transportation funding without us having conducted the necessary education campaign.”
Oh.
At least they admit it.
No one since Walter Mondale in 1984 has wanted to be seen as a tax hiker. But at some point, Democrats and Republicans — and voters — will have to face the reality that someone has to pay more to improve our roads.
Coloradans handed the keys of state government to Democrats in 2004 because they weren’t happy with Republicans. If Colorado isn’t moving forward, the Democrats can blame Republicans all they want, but voters eventually will blame the party in power.
Welcome back
I hope you noticed that an old friend has returned to The Post.
Colorado historian and professor Tom Noel has brought his “Dr. Colorado” column back to The Post after a several-year absence, including a stint at The Other Paper.
The column on today’s cover about the 1908 Democratic National Convention in Denver is a good example of what Noel will bring to these pages.
Welcome back, Tom.
Editorial page editor Dan Haley can be reached at dhaley@denverpost.com.
