To no one’s surprise, the final bills that Gov. Bill Ritter signed Friday involved energy.
The Denver Democrat has signed 56 pieces of energy-related legislation during his four years of office, making Colorado what Ritter likes to call a national model for a “new energy economy.” That focus earned Ritter an invitation to the White House Rose Garden on Earth Day this year.
Ritter stunned Coloradans in January when he dropped his re-election bid, saying he could not find the right balance to be a governor, father, husband and candidate.
By then he was fighting with his own party over labor issues, battling with Republicans on almost everything and watching his approval ratings drop.
Gov. Bill Ritter sat down with The Denver Post this week for a brief Q&A as he prepared to sign the final bills of his gubernatorial career.
Q: What are you going to do during your remaining seven months in office?
A: Plenty. I just won’t be campaigning or building a legislative agenda for next year, but everything else that has to do with running the state remains.
The implementation of House Bill 1365 (the conversion of coal-fired power plants to natural gas) is really critical. It has to go through the Public Utilities Commission and the Regional Air Quality Council.
We’re going to continue to do significant economic development. Ushering in health care reform is something I think the states have a real responsibility to do. We also have to file a budget. We’ll have to wait for the June forecast to really know what the budget looks like. If cuts are necessary, we’ll work with the departments.
Q: How do you respond to people who say “He’s a nice guy, charismatic, but he’s not that good at politics?”
A: (Laughing) That may be some kind of faint praise.
Q: A Democrat gave me an example of what he says is your lack of political mojo. The first bridge you’re repairing with FASTER funds — money generated by raising vehicle-registration fees — is in southeastern Colorado, where both state Rep. Wes McKinley and Sen. Ken Kester voted against the bill. Why not start a project in a district with a vulnerable Democrat who voted for the bill?
A: This is Colorado. This isn’t some state where we decide to spend money based upon the political vulnerability of lawmakers. The people of the state expect we have an objective way of deciding what is the most critical need and then responding with state resources. If we had behaved otherwise, that would be rather offensive.
Q: How did a former district attorney end up as the “green” governor?
A: We needed to modernize our thinking. We needed as a state to come kicking and screaming into the 21st century, acknowledge we had all those resources, like sun and wind and geothermal and biomass. We had technology available to modernize the way we operate as consumers of energy — think smart grid — and all of this stuff was being developed and actually being developed here. It was a matter of taking a leadership role and saying, “This is something the state can become.”
Q: What weren’t you prepared for when you became governor in 2007? (Ritter was the first Democratic governor since 1962 to have a Democratic legislature).
A: When Republicans had a majority in the legislature and there was a Democratic governor, there was a mix of people willing to work with the governor to get things done.
Republicans made a conscious decision to just shut down and just basically oppose almost anything we did until this session. I expected better. I finally got bipartisanship this year, but I got it when I decided not to run.
Q: Democrat John Hickenlooper criticized you on the campaign trail for how your administration handled controversial new oil-and-gas rules. You weren’t happy.
A: This is politics. I think people would be disappointed if John Hickenlooper somehow turned out to be a cookie cutout of me.
But where the rules were concerned, I am really, I suppose, defensive because it was a big fight inside this building. I really believe it was the right thing to do. At the end of the day, taking the long view here, we will be proved right. To have put in place a modern set of rules gives us the ability to then promote drilling.
Q: Your friends say you’re not a legacy kind of person, but what will your legacy be? What should it be?
A: We’ve done tremendous work in energy. I’m very proud of what we’ve done on our education side. There are health care economists out there who say no state is positioned better to usher in health care reform.
Q: What’s been the best part about this job?
A: You get to make an impact on people’s lives. The passage of House Bill 1365 — think of what it means to people’s health.
If you put in place an ombudsman in the child-care system, as we did this year, then folks upset about the county system have an outlet.
In all of these different ways, we’ve made this dramatic difference in people’s lives. In 12 years, there will be kids who graduate from high school because they were in an at-risk preschool program we fully funded.
The gratifying part often has a lag effect.
Q: What are you going to do next?
A: For right now I don’t know. I haven’t even entertained any overtures because I’ve been dealing with legislation. Sometime in August or September, I’ll begin to think about that.
This interview was edited for clarity and length. Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327 or lbartels@denverpost.com
Signed on Friday and earlier
Gov. Bill Ritter signed bills Friday that will create a smart-grid task force, start a green jobs training program and set up a green jobs advisory council.
Since taking office in 2007, he has signed 56 pieces of clean-energy legislation, including new laws to increase the requirement that utilities must get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020 to 30 percent. Other bills offered incentives and loans to homeowners to go solar and made it easier to finance renewable energy by folding it into a home mortgage.
The Associated Press
