Talking to Al White, you get the sense he would like to just shake somebody.
Maybe it was because our first chat occurred the evening before the legislature’s last day in session. You could tell the guy was wiped out. I had seen this coming on for weeks, and asked to talk with him about it.
The state senator is one of two Republicans on the powerful Joint Budget Committee, an assignment he says he both loves and hates. The love part has to do with making a deep impact on the workings of government, but now the bill for the deep impact thing was coming due.
He estimates he got at least 100 calls a day in the final weeks from folks decrying his votes, and calling him an uncaring, disloyal Republican knucklehead.
Much of it started with the attempt to forestall deep cuts to higher education by snagging at least $300 million from the surplus reserve of Pinnacol Assurance Co., the state’s workers’ compensation firm.
“Everybody came after us on the JBC instead of working to find a solution to this gaping hole in the budget,” White, R-Hayden, recalled. “The calls, the letters and e-mail never stopped.”
Facing a $600 million shortfall, JBC members scrambled, transferring money, slashing the statutory reserve in half and cutting virtually everything that moved.
A bill to do away with seniors’ homestead exemption, which gives those 65 and older who have lived in their home for 10 years a 50 percent reduction on the first $200,000 of their property-tax valuation, carried, by JBC rules, White’s name.
“I had older men and women calling me, saying how could I? That they were going to lose their home now based on what I did. You can see how that might get to you.”
People began noticing the stress he was carrying. ” ‘Al, buddy,’ they would all say. ‘Are you all right?’ ”
He says now he wasn’t.
The calls and letters reached such a peak, he decided to pen a letter to constituents, which also ran in the Craig and Steamboat Springs papers Wednesday.
“I wanted to try to redeem myself with the voters who supported me but who lost faith because of my job at the JBC,” White said. “I wanted to tell them I am going to be more effective for them by being on the JBC, and to bear with me when they think I’ve lost my mind.”
He is in his ninth year in the legislature, the previous eight spent in the House, a job he sought after running ski shops and a lodge in Winter Park for 25 years.
Seated in the sun in a white polo shirt and bluejeans, he runs his hands through his thick mop of graying hair, sighs and acknowledges that this session was tougher than even he had imagined.
It was, though, a piece of cake compared with what lies ahead, which he says has “all the makings of tragedy on a Shakespearean level.”
“Trust me, we’re coming up on Act III now,” he said, “and that’s when the real tragedy unfolds. It’s when Hamlet dies, when Romeo kicks the bucket.
“Unless revenues come back, and I can’t see how they will in time, there are going to be deep, deep, painful cuts across the board: K-12, Medicaid providers, higher ed, name it.”
White leans back in his chair. “We’re all out of tricks and gimmicks. Next year,” he says, not smiling, “everybody’s ox is going to get gored.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
