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While I was reading magazines at the library the other day, I was startled to see our governor's face. He was not visiting (his Salida stop was the swimming pool, which just re-opened); instead, he was on the cover of National Review, a sensible conservative publication which often supports ending the moronic War on Drugs.
The short article inside called Bill Owens America's
Best Governor.
That's not what I'd been hearing from
friends who work at libraries. It seems that back in June,
Owens exercised his line-item veto on about $4.7 million
that had been appropriated for Colorado libraries by our
legislature.
The main cut, $2.3 million, came out of the Colorado Resource Center at the Denver Public Library, which served smaller libraries around the state with expertise and books while providing toll-free reference services to all Coloradans.
Now, I realize that times are hard, and cuts have to be made somewhere. But I spend a lot more time in libraries than I do on highways, where the money appears to flow unabated. I'm probably atypical, though, since the statistics at hand show that in 1999, Colorado had 2,991,000 licensed drivers, and only 2,867,000 library-card holders.
We cheapskates who use libraries, though, might remind
our governor of an observation by John Adams, the second
president of the United States, an eloquent defender of
property, and a historical figure who is currently
fashionable: The preservation of the means of knowledge
among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public
than all the property of all the rich men in the
country.
Obviously, Owens was not guided by that philosophy when he was slashing state expenditures. It might well have been straight bare-knuckle political calculations -- i.e., a look at our legislature at work would certainly give on the impression that people who read are not a substantial proportion of the Colorado electorate, and are therefore a constituency which can be shafted without any real political price.
If you want to go by hard-ball political calculations, though, Owens doesn't even come close to being America's best governor. Most of us want a governor who can protect our state and deliver some programs, and by that reckoning, Florida has the best governor in the Republic.
Over in Delta County, rural residents are more than upset about new drilling for coal-bed methane. They don't like the trucks and the noise and the mess, and they're worried about what it could do to their water.
There's not a lot they've been able to do about this, though. A farmer may have the surface rights for his orchard, but the federal government retained certain mineral rights below, and the current federal administration is encouraging production, no matter how the landowners feel about it.
Similarly, there are worries that seismic thumping operations, another part of the federal administration's energy development policy, will damage ruins and artifacts in the new Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado.
Owens hasn't done much about this. But in Florida, where there's widespread support for protecting the clear coastal waters and white sand beaches from oil drilling, the governor has been able to been able to persuade the Department of Interior to reduce one lease from 5.9 million acres to 1.8. And at the governor's behest, the feds have bought back oil leases that had already been granted in both the Gulf and the Everglades.
Plus, the Florida governor keeps the money coming in. Colorado might have trouble getting funds to recover from fire and drought, but Florida gets more Economic Injury Disaster Loans than any other state -- indeed, it gets a quarter of the entire national pot.
So when it comes to protecting residents from noisy and sloppy oil drillers, and in assisting them with federal largess, our governor doesn't even come close to being as talented as Florida's.
This failure isn't entirely Bill Owens's fault, though. Florida is a swing state, one that can go either way in an election, and so the administration showers favors on it, just as it does with other swing states -- farm subsidies in the Midwest, steel tariffs for the Rust Belt. Colorado is reliably Republican, so there's nothing to gain by dispensing pork here.
Another problem is that our governor has the wrong last name. If Owens were from the proper family which provided a close relative in a position to help, and if he were in a close battle for re-election instead of holding a substantial lead in the polls, then he would be able to do as much for Colorado as Jeb Bush has been doing for Florida.
But as it is, our Bill Owens might mean well. But Jeb Bush delivers, and so it's surprising he's not atop the list of America's best governors.
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