Jim Kadlecek, once an influential Colorado state senator, died July 14 while on a trip to Colorado.
Kadlecek, who was living in San Miguel, N.M., near Las Cruces, collapsed in a supermarket in Broomfield on July 13 while visiting his daughter, Kathryn Erbaugh of Broomfield. He was 70.
“He taught me that helping others is what makes a really good life,” she said. She said his cause of death has not been determined.
A real-estate broker, Kadlecek did consulting work in Michigan, Colorado and New Mexico. He specialized in public policy, economic development and housing.
One of the most notable bills Kadlecek wrote and got through the legislature was named for him. It limited state expenditures to an annual increase of 7 percent.
The controversial law was passed in 1977, and in a 1979 editorial, The Denver Post called it “notorious” and a law that put the state on a “severely restricted fiscal diet.”
Still, Carl Miller, a former political editor at The Denver Post, described Kadlecek as “brilliant when it came to the budget.”
The budget “is always a complicated mess, and Jim could explain it and tell the truth,” said Miller, now a government-relations consultant in Denver.
Kadlecek, who was a Democrat representing Weld County in the legislature from 1976 to 1984, was politically active in New Mexico, where he lived for about 12 years. He was chairman of Southern New Mexico Common Cause and worked with several other organizations.
“He was very thoughtful (and) extremely levelheaded and knew that you have to compromise to get anything done,” said Lynn Ellins, a former University of Colorado regent who also lives in New Mexico.
James M. Kadlecek was born Aug. 18, 1937, in Sterling.
He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Northern Colorado, a master’s in public administration at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a doctorate in the same subject at Western Michigan University in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Kadlecek was married and divorced twice. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, James J. Kadlecek of Estes Park; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
