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Much as I would like to join the Broncomanic euphoria, I can't just dye my beard orange and forget all my worries. Undone work is piled around me, as are unpaid bills, and the legislature is in session. Its first priority this year is economic development.
In the view of certain legislators, our economy is hurting because Colorado rejected the 1976 Winter Olympics back in 1972, and thereby gained a reputation for being anti-growth and anti-business.
If that's true, then the state's economy should have been totally depressed during the 1970s, when those anti-growth and anti-business sentiments carried considerable political clout. You might recall, though, that Colorado boomed during that decade.
Colorado boomed then because there were rising markets for what Colorado had to sell: minerals, fuels, crops and easy-payment 35-acre parcels of sagebrush. Rural towns grew wildly, and Denver, as their supply and financial center, prospered accordingly. Thanks to changes in the national and international economies, the market for traditional Colorado products is depressed. There is absolutely nothing the legislature can do about that.
But there are things the legislature could do to improve business conditions in the hinterlands.
The telephone is an indispensable tool, and in the city, you can take full advantage of it, with services like call-forwarding, call-waiting, competitive long-distance companies, etc. That's because the metropolitan areas have modern electronic telephone exchanges.
Out in the boondocks, we still have party lines and antique mechanical switching systems. It isn't really Mountain Bell's fault that these haven't been upgraded; state regulations, aimed at keeping rates low, require Mountain Bell to amortize such equipment over 40 years, and the phone company would be foolish to upgrade the systems with no prospect of recovering its costs.
This year, however, Mountain Bell wants something from the state -- some deregulation. In return, the state could extract something from Mountain Bell -- state-of-the-art equipment in every Colorado exchange. And then it would be easier to do business out here.
Tied with communication is transportation, and it gets increasingly harder to get from here to there.
As soon as Continental Trailways pulls out, the only way I'll be able to get from Salida to anywhere is to drive. If I took a bus or rode a train, I could spend my travel time productively -- reading, figuring or writing -- and the same is true for anyone in any business. But when I drive, that's all I can be doing, and if I'm driving to Denver, my arrival just means more pollution and congestion. Clearly, an improved business environment means improved transportation.
Our highways are all we have, and they continue to decay because there isn't enough money to repair them; heavy trucks don't pay for anywhere near the amount of damage they cause.
To date, the legislature has refused to make truckers pay their own way. The legislature hasn't looked into any sort of transportation besides those unproductive highways. Any time a governor proposes a Colorado Department of Transportation, the legislature shoots it down. We're stuck with a Department of Highways even though a sensible approach to economic development means a broader approach to transportation.
We could look at education. Colorado competes in a world economy, in which Japanese kids go to school 240 days a year, not just 180, and each schoolday is longer, too. But our legislature can't even come up with a way to make sure that children from our poorest school districts have the same opportunities as children from the richer ones, let alone make Colorado competitive with the rest of the world.
That would cost money, and the legislature says it is encouraging business by keeping taxes low. So why is it that business leaders have been prominent among those advocating a tax increase so that Colorado can improve its educational system?
Colorado deserves a reputation as a difficult place to do business. And if you wonder where that reputation comes from, drop by the state capitol when the General Assembly is in session.
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