Aggravated with the lack of a statewide plan for fixing Colorado roads and bridges, local municipal leaders are pushing the legislature and Gov. Bill Ritter for new action — and making plans to act on their own if they are rebuffed.
City and county leaders in the metro region are discussing the possibility of creating their own regional transportation authorities, which could seek local tax increases to finance road improvements, officials said Tuesday.
“At some point, if the legislature doesn’t do something, then the local governments in the Front Range, in the metro Denver region, will have to take action ourselves,” said Centennial Mayor Randy Pye, chairman of the Metro Mayors Caucus, a nonpartisan group of 37 mayors that includes Denver’s John Hickenlooper, Aurora’s Ed Tauer and others.
The Mayors Caucus has drafted a letter to the legislature warning that if lawmakers don’t act next year, they may never get another opportunity to pass a statewide solution for road needs. The implication is that local governments will go forward with plans to create regional districts, removing the state’s largest electoral base in any future discussion of statewide needs.
It’s not clear how much support the letter, which has not yet been sent, has among the mayors who are members of the group. They take no formal votes. Hickenlooper declined to comment, but Greenwood Village Mayor Nancy Sharpe, the group’s co-vice chairwoman, said the mayors had formed a consensus around making a formal statement to state leaders, although the final version has not yet been discussed by all the mayors.
“The main point was to stress to the legislature how important adequate transportation funding is to the state and to the economy of the state,” said Sharpe, former chairwoman of the Denver Regional Council of Governments.
The mayors’ potential threat follows the collapse of discussions during the last legislative session intended to identify money for fixing the state’s roads. Democrats, who control both houses of the legislature and the governor’s office, failed to pass any financing plans for fear of repercussions at the ballot box.
Pye said the legislature two years ago authorized local governments to form their own regional transportation authorities, which could levy new taxes for fixing roads. Now, local municipalities and counties are considering using that new authority, mimicking what Colorado Springs already has done, he said.
He said that if metro-area governments form such authorities, a statewide solution for transportation improvements will go by the wayside for good.
Evan Dreyer, spokesman for Ritter, said the governor has reconvened a panel that planned upgrades to Colorado’s crumbling transportation network, which the legislature didn’t enact. The panel is charged with crafting possible legislation and convincing the public that change is needed, Dreyer said.
“It is true that there was not substantive transportation funding out of the ’08 legislative session, but what did come out was an increased recognition of the urgency and importance of the issue, and that is productive,” Dreyer said.
At a Transportation Legislation Review Committee meeting Tuesday, Sen. Chris Romer, D-Denver, told Colorado Department of Transportation officials they must more aggressively promote a statewide approach for solving Colorado’s transportation-funding crisis or else regions of the state will break away and try to solve the problem locally themselves.
“The fear of balkanization is real,” said Ken Smith of the Colorado Contractors Association, which has been actively working with Ritter’s special panel on transportation finance for more than a year. “We prefer to address transportation-funding needs and mechanisms on a statewide basis.”
Pye said he has participated in meetings in which two counties and three local governments discussed forming a transportation taxing authority but agreed to give the legislature one more year to craft a solution. He declined to reveal the government entities involved in those discussions, but he stressed that interest in the concept has spread throughout the metro region.
Pye said two critical local needs were languishing. Interstate 70 from the the foothills all the way to Denver International Airport needs huge repairs as well as Interstate 25 north of Santa Fe Drive. He added that a CDOT official, whom he declined to name, had told him some bridges in the metro area were in such disrepair that he wouldn’t stop on them.
Recently, Pye and other members of the Mayors Caucus met in Winter Park with leaders of other entities representing counties and cities in other areas of the state.
Pye said that discussion included a blunt challenge. Either the other entities — Club 20, which represents governments on the Western Slope; Progressive 15, a consortium of northeastern counties; and Action 22, which is composed of southern counties — would sign the letter the metro mayors drafted demanding action from the legislature or governments in the Denver region would pick up the pace on possibly forming new taxing authorities.
Pye said the organizations in other areas of the state agreed to participate in sending the letter. The sister organizations still must review the draft and comment on it, he said. Then, Pye said, the Metro Mayors Caucus will discuss the final version.
He said the letter will be sent after the upcoming elections to generate maximum effect and to ensure that new legislators receive it, he said.
“We need to work collectively,” said Rep. Buffie McFadyen, D-Pueblo West, chairwoman of the House Transportation & Energy Committee. “I believe after this election, we’ll see more cooperation on both sides of the aisle.”
Staff writer Jeffrey Leib contributed to this report.
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
