When Gov. Bill Ritter’s resuscitated “blue-ribbon” transportation panel met last week, there was a new spirit among the members.
It wasn’t so much a “back to the basics” spirit as “back to the grass roots.”
The panel met throughout 2007 to devise a menu of options that would raise from $500 million to $2 billion a year to repair and upgrade Colorado’s crumbling transportation network.
The volunteers received high praise for their work, but the legislature and Ritter treated their pleas to raise taxes or fees in an election year like the proverbial skunk at a garden party.
Instead of adopting the recommendations, the legislature actually cut transportation funding $227 million in the budget that goes into effect July 1.
Ritter then decided to extend the panel’s life for another year and expand its mission, charging the advocates with “developing a broad public-education campaign and crafting specific funding proposals that we can present to the 67th General Assembly in January.”
To their credit, the hard-working panelists wasted little time rehashing their funding proposals. Instead, they focused on the need to go back to their communities and arouse awareness about what they rightly labeled the “quiet crisis” in our transportation system, from potholed highways and crumbling viaducts to inadequate or nonexistent public transit.
That focus on building a “bottom-up” grassroots effort is wise. The panel doesn’t need to waste time exploring funding alternatives — it’s already identified a plethora of them. It just needs to pick a specific plan and fight like lions for it in the statehouse next year, with thousands of roused Coloradans lending their support.
We won’t tell the panel which specific recommendation is best, but we agree with Rep. Bernie Buescher’s advice that “you have to come up with a specific dollar amount that is responsible and significant enough that it’s not just a Band-Aid. Nobody wants to go through the brain damage of voting for something or seeking voter approval of a plan that’s too small to do the job.”
We believe Colorado voters, if informed of the facts, will approve the transportation network needed for our 21st-century economy in 2009. And we’re delighted to see the transportation panelists fanning out throughout the state like evangelists spreading the word.
