Colorado Department of Transportation executive director Russell George has named Denver lawyer and public-finance expert Michael Cheroutes as the first director of the state’s High Performance Transportation Enterprise, or HPTE.
HPTE is the successor to the Colorado Tolling Enterprise, and the group has the charge within CDOT of exploring new ways of financing strategic transportation projects, including the use of tolling and public-private partnerships.
Cheroutes, who has practiced law for a number of high-profile Denver firms for more than 40 years, played an active role with Gov. Bill Ritter’s special panel on transportation finance. He also helped craft the FASTER bill during the 2009 Colorado legislative session that set up the HPTE and raised vehicle-registration fees to fund road, bridge and transit projects across the state.
Seventeen years ago, Cheroutes helped start the Denver office of the national law firm Hogan & Hartson, now known as Hogan Lovells.
Cheroutes said he will leave the firm today and assume the HPTE post Thursday. He will make $114,000.
Cheroutes said he is joining HPTE because “I care about what happens to this state. . . . This happens to be a great opportunity.”
Ritter named Cheroutes to the Colorado Transportation Commission in August 2009, and he was one of the commission’s representatives on the HPTE’s board of directors as well as the board’s chairman.
In February, Cheroutes resigned from his position on the transportation commission — severing as well his roles with HPTE — after the state attorney general’s office determined that Cheroutes’ law firm could not bid to do legal work for CDOT while he sat on the commission.
Cheroutes said his reading of state law allowed transportation commission members to recuse themselves from votes or decisions related to their business affiliations, but the AG’s office saw it otherwise when it came to legal contracts that it must sign off on.
Cheroutes said he left the commission because he did not want to hinder his firm’s opportunity to bid for CDOT contracts.
George said there is no conflict in Cheroutes’ getting the top HPTE post after helping write the bill that created the enterprise.
“It’s no different than me. I wrote good law for nearly a decade, and now I’m helping administer it,” said George, who served for eight years in the Colorado House, the last two, 1999 and 2000, as speaker.
Of Cheroutes, George said, “None of us even dreamed that we could have him on staff.” George added that Cheroutes, as an architect of the FASTER law, is the ideal person to help carry out its public-policy intent.
From 1972 to 1974, Cheroutes served as chief of staff for Democratic U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
