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Search as I might through books about Colorado
government and politics, I don't find the title Governor
of Denver.
But it must lurk there somewhere, since Roy
Romer is doing such a job of it.
This first struck me almost four years ago when the governor unveiled his proposal to increase the state sales tax, with the proceeds going to education.
At the time, Salida was spending about $3,500 per year per student, while Denver and Cherry Creek schools spent about $7,000.
Nothing in the governor's proposal appeared to redress
this imbalance, and so I asked Why is a kid in Denver
worth two kids in Salida? Is there something wrong with my
children, that they don't matter as much to the state?
Since I never got an answer, except that we'll have to
look at that later,
I didn't see any reason to support
that tax increase. It isn't like we'd pay a lower sales tax
just because our children would get less.
Last week, Romer came up with the state's official response to the proposed merger between the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads.
In exchange for supporting the merger, he got a guarantee that an office building in Denver will remain occupied by about 800 SP employees for at least a year.
However, the merger will mean the abandonment of the 173 miles of SP track between Cañon City and Dotsero. No figures are available from the SP concerning employment associated with this trackage (the CIA might be able to get information out of the SP, but I've never been able to).
On average, though, American Class I railroads have 1.5 employees per mile. So that's about 260 direct rail jobs -- jobs that pay about $40,000 a year -- that will be lost on account of the merger.
Losing the railroad connection at Leadville would be
the death knell for this operation,
according to Sid
Lloyd, manager of the Asarco Black Cloud Mine east of
Leadville.
The mine ships about 40 carloads a month of lead and zinc concentrates to a smelter in East Helena, Mont., and the higher cost of truck transportation is more than the Black Cloud can afford.
Black Cloud employs about 150 miners -- and again, these are jobs that pay fairly decent wages. We're already up to 410 year-round jobs in the boondocks that Romer is willing to jettison, and there's some other rail-related employment hereabouts at small quarries and mineral processors that ship or receive an occasional carload.
So, Romer gave up at least 400 more-or-less permanent jobs in exchange for 800 one-year jobs. By the curious arithmetic that prevails in the governor's office, this is a good deal, since the one-year jobs are in Denver where they matter, and the permanent jobs aren't and thus don't.
Further, Lake and Chaffee counties will lose about $225,000 in property taxes paid each year by the railroad, and if by those mines and quarries manage to stay in business, they will ship by truck, thus increasing the demands and dangers on our rural highways and the costs of maintaining the roads.
But that doesn't seem to matter, either. Romer also
persuaded the UP-SP to keep the locomotive maintenance
facility in Denver. It should, since Colorado subsidizes it
with a sales-tax exemption. We don't give special
rights
to homosexuals in Colorado, but we sure do give
them to billionaires.
Colorado has nothing to gain from this railroad merger. The argument advanced by UP is that SP is financially weak, and that if UP doesn't acquire it, the SP will eventually fall apart with various railroads picking up the pieces.
It is true that the SP is hurting financially. It stays afloat by selling California real estate while it has one of the worst service reputations in the rail industry.
But the D&RGW portion of the SP consistently shows an annual profit of about $35 million. So if the SP fell apart, somebody would certainly pick up that piece, and Colorado would be none the worse off.
By opposing the merger, Colorado could have encouraged a
carrier like Montana Rail Link or Wisconsin Central to take
over the Central Corridor
so that the state would
enjoy competitive rail service.
To put it another way, it makes no difference to UP whether it hauls coal from the Powder River mines of Wyoming or from Paonia in Colorado, but it makes a big difference to a railroad that serves Paonia but not Wyoming. The Paonia railroad would be more likely to offer good rates and service to its Colorado customers, thereby providing more employment in the state.
These things don't seem to matter much to Roy Romer, though. He managed to keep a few jobs in Denver for a few months -- jobs that might have stayed even if he had opposed the merger -- and the rest of the territory, which expects the state government to look after its interests, can rot away for all that Romer cares.
It's great for Denver that the city has such an energetic governor to look after its interests, but when do the rest of us get one?
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