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In a little less than a month -- even sooner in venues with mail-in ballots -- we will get to decide whether Gov. Bill Owens can keep his 1998 campaign promise to accelerate highway construction.
If statewide Referendum A passes, the state would be able to borrow up to $1.7 billion for highway expansion and improvement. The money would be repaid with funds the state plans to get from its share of the federal gasoline tax in future years.
How many future years? That's one of those things that will be revealed in due time, I gather, along with the interest rate and the exact number of highway projects.
Another question: How is this possible in Colorado when
our constitution says The state shall not contract debt
by loan in any form
?
One answer is that no one pays any attention to our
state constitution anyway. Another is that the state
supreme court has ruled that this isn't really state debt,
but instead a multi-year fiscal obligation.
Remember that when you fill out a credit application --
those car payments aren't actually debt, they're
multi-year fiscal obligations,
so you really don't
need to mention them. And if anyone objects, like a loan
officer, remember that you've got the Colorado Supreme
Court on your side.
Even so, I still think I'm going to vote for it. The more I look at this, the more I find to like, assuming that the Colorado Transportation Commission pursues the projects that were listed in the little blue book that was recently mailed out by the Legislative Council.
Every one of these projects is at least 90 miles from Salida. The closest is an interchange improvement in Pueblo, and the rest are even more removed. Money that the state spends on highway construction elsewhere is money that cannot be used to funnel more noise, congestion and crime toward Salida.
Granted, I'm acting somewhat selfish here, but then again, Salida isn't the only place that will benefit because these proposed projects are somewhere else.
Aside from some widening on Berthoud Pass, the entire northwest corner of the state comes out unscathed. Northeastern Colorado, except for a wider highway between I-25 and Greeley, is likewise preserved.
U.S. 50 west of Cañon City, often promoted for four-laning by this region's boosters, is untouched by that blight, except for the stretch between Delta and Grand Junction, where work was already underway anyway.
Wolf Creek Pass will get some attention, but that's
listed as reconstruction,
so that shouldn't change
much.
U.S. 550 from Durango south to the state line is
supposed to get major widening,
which will make it
easier for La Plata County residents to shop in Farmington,
N.M., and thereby deprive their local governments of sales
tax revenue.
But that's about the extent of potential damage. All in all, the projects as listed do a fair job of leaving rural places rural.
There are other benefits, too. Expanding and improving I-25 between Denver and Colorado Springs means more subdivisions and more residents in Arapaho, Douglas and El Paso counties, and thus more Family Values Republicans to keep us wholesome.
I don't know about you, but I've been backsliding lately
from the high standards of official Colorado virtue. In
the grocery store the other day I met a woman who'd had an
abortion, and I was cordial to her. When I got home, I
corresponded with an admitted homosexual while a
Parental Guidance
CD was playing where innocent
children might have heard it if the window had been
open.
A bigger I-25 producing a bigger bloc of Orange County refugees will eventually beget stronger laws to discourage the weaker among us, myself included, from succumbing to the powerful temptations to greet friends, to answer letters and to listen to wicked music.
Perhaps the best item on the highway improvement list,
though, is the $1.1 billion proposed on I-70 between DIA
and the Eagle County Airport. The book does not say
congestion reduction
for this stretch; it says the
money will go to congestion improvement.
The last time I drove there, the congestion seemed more than adequate. It was bumper-to-bumper stop-and-go, and that was just the on-ramp. I'm not sure how it might be done, but I do feel confident that our state government, if it gets the money, will find a way to improve the congestion.
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