Mount Virtus

Greg Kolomitz, once upon a time the campaign manager for Gov. Bill Ritter, is now embroiled in a bitter legal showdown with his former boss over campaign violations totaling $300,000 (or more). Interestingly, Kolomitz’s laptop computer (containing relevant, important records) disappeared under mysterious circumstances just as the story went public.

Now the Denver Post reports that Greg Kolomitz now is raising money to defend himself legally against alleged “false accusations,” apparently made by Bill Ritter:

The e-mail plea never mentions Ritter by name, but leaves no doubt about who the family thinks is responsible for the “false” accusations that led to an ongoing investigation of Kolomitz.

“We have found ourselves in a legal battle with someone whom we believed to be our friend. Someone who Greg (and I to a lesser extent) gave our lives to — in a political battle — to elect as governor of our wonderful state, Colorado,” wrote Carla Lucero Kolomitz, in an e-mail circulated to the couple’s friends.

This certainly isn’t a first (Just ask Cory Voorhis): Candidate and Governor Bill Ritter has been leaving a trail of legal defense fund victims in his wake.

If you’re running a statewide ballot initiative campaign, these are the kind of numbers you want to see:

A national survey conducted jointly by the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post.com, and Quinnipiac University released Thursday shows that the majority of Colorado voters — Democrat and Republican alike — overwhelmingly support Amendment 46, also known as the Colorado Civil Rights Initiative. The proposed constitutional amendment would prohibit government from considering race or gender in education, government employment, or public contracting.

The poll, conducted last week, showed that 66 percent of all voters surveyed were supportive of the initiative’s language, with just 15 percent saying they were opposed. Democrats were much more likely to support the initiative than Republicans, with 71 percent of all registered Democrats surveyed supporting the initiative’s language, compared to 61 percent of all registered Republicans.

The Colorado Civil Rights Initiative is a winning issue for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it’s eminently fair, decent, and reasonable. (If this is the best argument against the Initiative, there is no wonder it’s polling so high.) The survey results are good news for Amendment 46.

The Rocky Mountain News reports today on outgoing House Speaker Andrew Romanoff’s intense efforts to place an initiative on the ballot that would forever end TABOR refunds for Colorado taxpayers. Of course, the skewed way the Rocky describes the ballot measure, you wonder what sensible person could oppose it:

While the rest of Colorado is hiking, rafting, barbecuing or putting in some serious hammock time, Romanoff, D-Denver, and a group of volunteers will hit the streets attempting to gather about 120,000 signatures from registered voters….

The proposal aims to unsnarl the fiscal knot of conflicting spending mandates and limits embedded in the state’s constitution.

Called SAFE (Savings Account for Education), the effort would seek to extend the fiscal relief that voters provided when they approved a 5-year timeout from the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights. That timeout is set to expire in 2010.

Ari Armstrong has a better idea for Romanoff’s SAFE acronym:

The older SAFE stood for Sane Alternatives to the Firearms Epidemic. Call this one Statist Alternatives to the Freedom Epidemic.

Armstrong also suggests the tag “Referendum C: Part II,” since Romanoff’s new proposal basically concedes the 2005 multi-billion dollar permanent tax and spending increase just wasn’t quite enough. For the tax-consuming bureaucrats in state government, there is no such thing as enough.

Gutting TABOR, as this measure effectively would do, has been on the Democrat agenda for years. Colorado will be better off if Romanoff’s not-so “SAFE” initiative doesn’t qualify for the ballot.

Someone needs to invite Romanoff to go for a hike or to come over for a barbecue.

The hackles have been raised over at the Dead Guvs, as a post by reliable conservative blogger El Presidente has been promoted to the front page: For whatever it’s worth, he highlights the revelation of the story behind the online debate between Bob Schaffer and Mark Udall that never materialized.

The debate was the brainchild of respectable liberal blogger David Thielen, who had hosted several of these debates during the Democratic primary. For the U.S. Senate race, he sought the fair and balanced approach, and I agreed to co-moderate. Kudos to David for promoting El Presidente’s entry, for verifying the facts presented, and for defending the truth against the slings and arrows of outrageous insults.

My already significant respect for Mr. Thielen has risen even higher. I expected (and was quite amused) to be called absurdly false names like “sockpuppet” and “paid shill.” He on the other hand is taking grief from people who generally agree with his political point of view.

Meanwhile, a watcher offers his own perspective on the excuse alleged by the Mark Udall campaign for running away from the online debate, in three parts: here (where he writes, “Mark Udall is, after all, a coward”), here, and here.

Quite an amusing saga that says more about Mark Udall and most of the Lefties who defend him on the Internet than anyone.

Over at the Colorado Index, one of my new favorite bloggers Civil Sense clues readers in to a new taxpayer-funded television ad, starring our hapless Gov. Bill Ritter:

The ads range from 10 to 30 seconds, and they send a simple message: Turn down the thermostat, unplug unused appliances, turn off lights and use alternative transportation.

Good advice. I think I’ll be turning off the television whenever this commercial comes on my set.

Oh joy, I’ve finally figured out who my Republican Congressional candidate is: John Lerew, not John LeGrew (how bad is it when your name gets misspelled in a key publication that introduces your candidacy to a key audience of activists?).

Longtime Colorado blogger Jack Ott, whom I met back in 2004, has posted information about Mr. Lerew. Certainly, he seems an ardent and passionate conservative, but it’s apparent the GOP went pretty deep onto the bench to bring him forward as the candidate. Or, as one Lefty blogger quite accurately put it, Mr. Lerew is “the sacrificial lamb” to run against incumbent Rep. Ed Perlmutter.

(I feel out of the loop to have taken so long to learn about this one. But it also speaks ill of the candidate’s credibility that he seemingly has no website to define his online presence, raise funds, recruit volunteers, etc. In 2008? A Congressional candidate, even a “sacrificial lamb” … no website? Sigh. We’ll learn eventually. Tune into The Next Right.)

Anyway, Jack Ott also has information about something hopefully of more lasting significance - that’s the new Denver metro chapter of the Coalition for a Conservative Majority - where incidentally, John Lerew evidently spoke at the last meeting. If you’re an ardent conservative looking to get involved as an activist, you should at least take a look at joining your local CCM chapter.

From Face The State’s latest “Buzz”:

Americans for Prosperity, a center-right grassroots organization currently focusing on encouraging responsible energy policy, has announced that it is opening shop in Colorado with its 22nd chapter. The effort is being headed up by social conservative Jim Pfaff, a former president of the Colorado Family Council known and praised for his ability to make nice with social libertarians.

This can’t be seen as a positive development by Colorado’s liberal Tim Gill-Pat Stryker-Mark Udall-Bill Ritter axis. Whenever the fiscal conservatives and social conservatives start playing nice, working behind a savvy and respected person like Jim Pfaff, that means the Left can’t fall back so easily on its “divide and conquer” strategy.

It’s still a long uphill climb, though, for Colorado supporters of limited government and fiscal responsibility. But the signs of a trend are encouraging.

With a little shameless self-promotion, I tie it all together on the longest day of the calendar year.

First, news broke earlier this week that Gov. Bill Ritter has done the inevitable, by agreeing to appeal a district court ruling that came to the clear and appropriate conclusion that Ritter erred in raising school property taxes without voter permission. Sure, I could link to lots of articles that highlight this news, but only the one in the Denver Daily News quotes the author of this blog:

“I believe the district court judge did the right thing by recognizing that Colorado voters should be asked before they endure a tax increase,” said Ben DeGrow, a policy analyst at the Independence Institute. “It’s simply a matter of honoring the state constitution.”

Don’t take my word for it. The Attorney General came to the same conclusion. The only response from the governor’s spokesman?:

But Ritter’s office believes the case is more complex than how the Independence Institute sees it.

“It’s a complex case,” said Evan Dreyer, Ritter’s spokesman. “The supreme court is a more proper venue for a full airing on a constitutional issue like this.” [Link Added]

With supreme court decisions like the one highlighted in my op-ed in today’s Greeley Tribune, you can understand the confidence of our Democrat governor:

Teachers unions and other labor groups do not deserve special treatment under our state’s election laws, even if some judges seem determined to give it to them.

On May 19, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that unions could spend member dues money to provide free services to partisan political campaigns.

My reasoning in the op-ed is better developed, but the conclusion is roughly the same as my initial reaction to the outrageous 5-2 ruling in Rutt v Poudre Education Association:

The state supreme court has just sent a clear signal that it’s okay for Big Labor to coordinate with (overwhelmingly Democrat) political candidates, allowing their campaigns to outsource the cost of electioneering activities to be covered by general union dues collected from members.

More clearly than ever, unions are on the advance in Colorado - and this time at the expense of fair elections and individual rights….

The other thing in common between these two issues? Both are intricately tied into the debate about public education, but actually have nothing to do with education per se: Bill Ritter’s “Colorado Children’s Amendment” property tax hike that guarantees no money for schools, and a labor union built around public education tax dollars with a tilted electoral advantage over the taxpayers who fund the system.

Good thing summertime is here, giving opportunity for longer and more sustained outdoor mental health breaks. Speaking of which, thankfully the weekend is almost here.

A couple days ago I had the pleasure of pointing out the defects in Denver Post editorialist Bob Ewegen’s arguments against Right-to-Work. I wrote:

Even more telling than comparisons of static earnings are rates of growth. In both job growth and in overall economic growth, Right-to-Work states have performed better.

I therefore found it interesting that another insightful blogger only last week posted an analysis of new economic growth data. Here’s the chart Will Franklin produced showing just how much Right-to-Work states outperform states that allow union coercion:

Combined with the other flaws in Bob Ewegen’s argument, this interesting find only makes the case for Right-to-Work look even stronger.

From KRDO in Colorado Springs:

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has notified prosecutors that more spending violations have been uncovered from his 2006 campaign, and that a former aide has written his campaign a check for $10,340 to correct the problem.

Sure, it’s not as much as the $200,000+ illegally spent out of Bill Ritter’s inaugural fund that got him into hot water in the first place. But every time another one of these campaign violations trickles out - or word spreads that a computer with key facts pertaining to the investigation conveniently disappeared - it further calls into question the governor’s leadership.

If Bill Ritter can’t provide oversight to his own campaign funds, how can he provide oversight to the state budget and taxpayers’ money?

In his weekend column, liberal Denver Post editorialist Bob Ewegen carried the water for Big Labor leaders who are working to undermine Colorado’s Right-to-Work initiative. Once you move past his weak attempt at irony, you find problems with the facts he chose to use to make his case:

If you’re lucky enough to find a job at all, the only right the Coors plan gives you is the right to work for less. Quite a bit less, actually. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that an average worker in the 22 states with right-to-work laws earns about $7,131 a year less than workers in free bargaining states ($30,656 versus $37,787). Nationwide, union members earn $9,308 a year more than non-union workers, $41,652 versus $32,344.

These facts aren’t in dispute. To be fair, however, there is considerable controversy among labor economists about whether right-to-work laws cause low wages or whether economic backwaters are more likely to pass anti-union laws. Probably, the truth is a mixture of both.

Right-to-work states have a poverty rate of 13.5 percent, compared with 12.2 percent in free bargaining states. The infant mortality rate is 7.94 percent higher and the uninsured population rate is 15 percent higher on average in right-to-work states. And they spend $1,680 less per pupil in elementary and secondary school.

Well, Bob Ewegen’s recitation overlooks some key points, among them:
Read the rest of this entry »

In a column for the Sterling Journal-Advocate, newly elected Republican National Committeeman Mark Hillman (be ready to be greeted by his smiling face) asks the nagging question on the minds of many Colorado taxpayers:

Is it typical political spin or something more tangible that makes Gov. Bill Ritter so incredibly confident that the Colorado Supreme Court will vindicate his strategy to raise your property taxes without your permission?

If you get a chance, read the whole thing.

Last week I similarly asked what Bill Ritter knows about the court’s coming ruling that makes him so confident to wager taxpayer money on the previous ruling being overturned. I’ll second Mark Hillman’s question, but I’m not very confident the governor is going to give an answer.

Gov. Bill Ritter’s November 2007 executive order at last has successfully completed the loop in unionizing state government in a very un-democratic fashion. Today’s Denver Post reports:

At least 22,500 secretaries, prison guards and other state employees will soon fall under a union contract following a vote tallied Wednesday, though the majority of eligible workers didn’t cast a ballot….

About 6,900 state workers from a pool of 22,500 who were eligible participated in the election, which gave them a choice between Colorado WINS [editorial comment: "Big Labor WINS, Colorado LOSES"] or no union representation. Of those, 5,481 supported the union.

That’s right. Fewer than one-quarter of eligible state employees voted to be unionized. This is a smaller number than the 30 percent who signed the union petition cards to hold the election in the first place!

Labor guru Mike Antonucci opts for the biting, cynical approach to characterizing the election returns:

In favor of unionizing - 5,481 (24.4%)

Against unionizing - 1,419 (6.3%)

Don’t give a crap - 15,600 (69.3%)

“Backroom” Bill Ritter opened the door to unionizing state employees without any sort of public debate, submitting a Friday afternoon executive order. More than six months later, the big election of state employees takes place, and at first glance it appears that most of them “don’t give a crap.”

We can only hope that Ritter lives up to his promise not to impose agency fees on non-union workers, because they might start caring then. Regardless of whether he holds to that promise or not, more and more Colorado taxpayers should start caring as the price of government services goes up.

Last week I highlighted the story of two Adams County commissioners on the take from the owner of a company with $12 million in no-bid county government contracts. I’ve since discovered another local blogger, who has offered some strong, unsolicited advice to commissioners Skip Fischer and Alice Nichol:

Accepting a contribution from the beneficiary of the no-bid contract creates, at the least, an appearance of graft.

If you aren’t going to do your job properly, at the minimum you, should act shocked that it happened, promise to get to the bottom of it and take the appropriate punitive and corrective actions. And make it completely obvious that you do not benefit in any way from the misdeed. Colluding with another Commissioner on stonewalling and keeping the money only make both look worse.

The Commissioner’s Mom’s should have told them this, but I guess we will have to do it for them. At this point resignation AND returning the money would be the only way to restore anyone’s trust. That, and a thorough independent investigation.

The only way to get rid of these fleas is to come clean, don’t you think?

All the more reason for government contracting reform.

One of Colorado’s top state legislative races this year - a very high target on the state Republican party’s list of potential takeovers - is Senate District 19 in north Jefferson County. The race pits Republican businesswoman Libby Szabo against liberal union activist and state school board member Evie Hudak.

Evie Hudak’s perceived strength in this race is the education issue, but if a 1999 commentary she wrote for the Denver Post gives any evidence, she holds a narrow, prejudiced, and uninformed view of one major type of education chosen by parents: homeschooling. Here are some excerpts: Read the rest of this entry »

Good news from the north. Fort Collins voters have overwhelmingly rejected the costly and ill-advised proposal to mandate collective bargaining and binding arbitration on city employees. Unions are on the move - they have the ear of our Governor “Backroom” Bill Ritter - but the people have spoken out clearly against the expansion of public employee unionism.

Meanwhile, a disturbing sidelight: a Fort Collins blogger points out that the local rag couldn’t bother to report on a local Republican candidate’s outspoken opposition to the measure:

Do you mean to tell me that the Coloradoan doesn’t believe it’s important for the citizens of Fort Collins to know where their candidates stand on public-employee unions? (This is, after all, a major statewide issue as well.)

There’s not a reporter over there on Riverside who even considered attending a press conference or asking some simple follow-up questions? (There was no Coloradoan reporter at the [Matt] Fries press conference.)

Is this neglect? Let’s hope so. Because the alternate explanation - that the Coloradoan is staying silent because they’re afraid of having to get Bob Bacon, John Kefalas and Randy Fisher on the record on this important issue - would be even worse. It would be inexcusable bias. After all, Bacon, Kefalas and Fischer would be forced to either come out against the union or against what in 2006 was 65 percent of the voting public of Fort Collins.

Well, we do have an idea where Bob Bacon may stand.

Even the editorial boards of smaller Colorado newspapers, in places that are hardly bastion of rock-ribbed conservatism, are assailing Gov. Bill Ritter for his property tax hike. From an editorial in today’s Vail Daily:

Thanks to the state’s Taxpayers Bill of Rights (TABOR), which stunts the growth of property taxes, those of us who own property in Eagle County shouldn’t expect to see our taxes skyrocket at the same rate as our property values without voter approval.

This year, however, taxpayers’ rights were usurped by Gov. Bill Ritter’s decision to freeze the statewide school district property tax rate. Because Eagle County has enjoyed a significant rise in property values — an average of about 40 percent countywide in the last two years — property owners here saw a spike in their property tax bills.

Not only was Ritter’s move a clear violation of the TABOR Amendment because it effectively raised taxes without voter approval, it didn’t benefit many of the state’s school districts. Funding for the Eagle County School District pretty much stayed the same. That’s because the state determines the amount of money each school district receives every year, then fills in what the districts can’t cover themselves.

What the mill levy freeze did is transfer the burden of funding Eagle County schools to local taxpayers and out of the state’s budget. The result? We paid $8 million more in property taxes to the school district. Meanwhile, the state’s contribution to Eagle County schools dropped by about $8 million.

But it’s for the children, right? The editorial goes on to explain that all Bill Ritter had to do was to ask voters first. Hopefully the Colorado Supreme Court comes down on the side of taxpayers.

It’s not just Democrat Governor Bill Ritter who is presuming to wager more than $100 million in taxpayer funds on his confidence in the state supreme court overturning a decision against his unconstitutional property tax increase. The Grand Junction Free Press reports about the lax attitude of a ranking Democrat incumbent from the Western Slope:

The appeal has not been scheduled, and Democratic Rep. Bernie Buescher of Grand Junction believes it’s too soon to make a plan for a change that may never come.

The article explains that the money collected starts to be spent on July 1. And while Republican lawmakers Rep. Steve King and Sen. Josh Penry want to work quickly to find a prudent solution, Bernie Buescher (pictured) has taken a lackadaisical approach to what to do with taxpayers’ money:

Calling a special session of the Legislature before the Supreme Court appeal is even scheduled would be premature, Buescher said. He speculated the timeline for the court case could be known in the next two weeks.

Buescher said he’s not ruling out finding a solution for dealing with the freeze being deemed unconstitutional May 30, but believes “if the Supreme Court should rule against the governor, the Legislature would have plenty of time to deal with the mill levy freeze.”

“Plenty of time”? I guess it’s “plenty of time” if you consider the money to belong to the government, even though Judge Christine Habas agrees with Attorney General John Suthers that Bill Ritter’s tax hike violates the state constitution. Ritter and the Democrats failed to ask first before collecting additional tax money from property owners, and now they act as if the money is rightfully theirs. How dare we question them!

At the same time, the State Board of Education decides this Thursday whether to appeal the district court decision or to leave Gov. Ritter all alone in defending his unconstitutional property tax hike.

While minority Republican legislators push for pro-active leadership on the property tax funding issue, Gov. Bill Ritter sits on his hands and Bernie Buescher makes excuses. Now you know the reason why Republican challenger Laura Bradford has a decent chance to upset Buescher in this fall’s election.