June 08, 2012 06:36 PM UTC

Stapleton Plays Politics With State's Good Credit?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Reading media watchdog blogger Jason Salzman’s report on a talk radio interview with Treasurer Walker Stapleton this week, in which Stapleton expresses his hope that the FASTER registration fees for road and bridge repair would be ruled unconstitutional in court, we remembered a story from the Denver paper’s Tim Hoover from December of 2010. And we realized there’s a more fundamental angle here worth calling out.

In Hoover’s December 2010 story, it’s explained that Republicans were unlikely to pursue a legislative repeal of the FASTER fee hikes, both out of sheer necessity for the fees, but more immediately because hundreds of millions of dollars in state-issued bonds backed by these fees would lose their repayment mechanism–forcing the state to make up the money elsewhere.

Needless to say, this makes the statements of Treasurer Stapleton seem quite irresponsible, since the state’s chief financial officer should probably, make that definitely, never support anything that could hurt the state’s bond rating: as Rep. Glenn Vaad of the House Transportation Committee warned could be a consequence of repealing FASTER.

This isn’t idle partisan criticism, folks. Much like Congress pushing the nation’s credit rating toward downgrade during last year’s debt-ceiling impasse, the statements of elected public officials in a position of fiduciary responsibility mean things. Bond traders hear that a state treasurer hopes his state loses the repayment mechanism for hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds. If you were a bond trader, would that make these bonds more attractive to you?

If anything, shouldn’t a treasurer be held to a higher standard than some half-cocked legislator?