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August 27, 2012 07:07 PM UTC

Max Tyler: "Get to work, CDOT."

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

There’s been road construction projects popping up all over Jefferson County lately, with workers and trucks dotting streets from the Sixth and Simms interchange in Lakewood to the Youngfield ramp off I-70 in Wheat Ridge. And, if State Representative Max Tyler had his druthers, you may soon be seeing even more men in reflective vests and hard hats.

From Tyler’s office:

Rep. Max Tyler (D-Lakewood) received the Transportation Legislation Review Committee’s preliminary support today for finding ways to work with the Colorado Department of Transportation to speed up the process of turning its project designs into reality.  

“The Department of Transportation has got $1 billion in cash sitting in the bank, unused, for projects,” Rep. Tyler told a TLRC hearing today. “That money could go out on the road for construction projects faster.”

At Rep. Tyler’s request, TLRC staff will draft a letter asking CDOT how it plans to decrease the lag time between the approval, design and construction phases of projects, to identify the projects that can be moved forward, and asking what additional resources in engineering, planning or project management may be necessary to get these plans moving forward.

“The money’s just sitting there, earning hardly any interest, when it could be creating jobs and boosting the economy,” Rep. Tyler said.

The TLRC voted unanimously to have the letter drafted.

As any New Deal historian would tell you, capital construction is especially useful to pull local economies out of recession: it creates short-term jobs that can’t be outsourced while simultaneously bolstering local infrastructure.

By encouraging CDOT to speed up its project review and construction process, Tyler can now frame himself as a valiant job creator, slashing through red tape to improve the economy and infrastructure in Lakewood.

Sure, Republican Rick Enstrom and his allies can fire back that Tyler’s encouraging an already-too-big government to spend more money, but those attacks will fall flat. This money has already been allocated for construction projects. It can’t, for example, be returned to taxpayers or re-allocated to fill budget holes instead of potholes.

Tyler, then, is simply working to ensure that taxpayer money is actually being used to create jobs and improve the economy. Sure, the TLRC can merely recommend that CDOT quicken the pace at which it moves projects forward, but that Tyler spearheaded that recommendation process allows him to continue trumpeting his ability to use government to create jobs.

(Cross-posted from Jeffco Pols)

Comments

18 thoughts on “Max Tyler: “Get to work, CDOT.”

  1. Government doesn’t create jobs. Government workers are not real workers. The money they pay doesn’t go back into the economy, it goes into a black hole with the 1.5 trillion Obama cut for Medicare.

    (Covering ArapaGOP in advance)

    1. But told from people with a straight face. Unbelievable.  I was working an Unexploded Ordnance job last year in California.  The Safety Guy was a Former Seal Team 6 Operator, and like all the vets I worked with out there, conservative to a fault.  They decried that the government can’t create jobs at all.  First of all, who trained you to disarm bombs, second of all, who is paying to clean this up?  These men had worked for the government for their entire lives and could tell me, with full honest conviction, that the government doesn’t create jobs.  Honestly, having to deal with fascists is the number 2 reason I got out of that business.  

      1. My letter carrier was in the military and now she tells me that she isn’t a government employee, the USPS is separate from the government.

        A high school friend who has only worked for the government, is his union rep for the letter carriers, asks me to not send anything political, he’s a conservative.

        Forty years of Fox, Ailles, and Murdock have done the seemingly impossible:  Taught people that up is down.

        1. Just a guess here, but I’ll bet any of you that over 51% of Ameicans, if polled, believe that unlike the government it is not fiscally sustainable to spend $4 while earning $3 and borrowing $1.

          Hey the USA is only one budget bill from turning the corner to the Greek way, yet also only one budget bill from getting on the right track to fiscal sanity.

          Why won’t the democrats standup for Obamas budget bill, they nearly all voted against it. Do they consider his budget to be unamerican?

            1. that last one is definitely a, “Yes”.

              Too much time has already been wasted by too many minds, much better that mine, trying to answer that first one, however.  The conversation has now almost entirely moved on to pathology . .  

    2. if you want to create jobs you have to stash your millions in some foreign tax haven — the Caymans or Switzerland — it’s what all America’s selfless patriots are doing these days.  

  2. This one made the top 19 in the nation list:

    I-25 over the South Platte River (Denver, CO)

    Average Daily Traffic: 203,000 vehicles

    Sufficiency rating: 24.5 percent

    Why is it deficient?: The FHWA rates the condition of the bridge’s superstructure as “serious”, and its structural evaluation states that its condition is “basically intolerable requiring high priority of corrective action.”

    Percentage of structurally deficient bridges in Colorado: 6.8% percent

    Daily statewide traffic on deficient bridges: 5,117,359 vehicles

    The good news is, at least it is being addressed now:

    Paving Operations on Southbound I-25 between 23rd Avenue and Colfax Avenue to Cause Delays Next Week

    August 17, 2012 – TRAFFIC ADVISORY – Denver Metro Colorado/CDOT Region 6 – DENVER – Beginning Sunday, August 19, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) will perform paving operations as part of Phase II of the I-25 bridge replacement project over the South Platte River, also known as the Bronco Arch Bridge.

    I wish Max Tyler success in getting even more projects kickstarted, and not just in Jeffco.

      1. Us old farts just aren’t dying off fast enough, so yeah, Social Security spending inexorably goes up.

        And we insist on the most inefficient, expensive health delivery service in the developed world.

        But at least we account for 50% of world-wide military spending.

        It’s all about priorities.  Some might say they are misplaced.  Depending on the political party, it’s only a matter of deciding which is which.

        1. We’re talking about Medicaid, not Social Security. Democrats have irresponsibly expended Medicaid and then threaten Colorado voters with bad roads. But the truth is, we could pay for road repair if we could just stop expanding entitlements.

          This post is about road repair.

          1. You want to discuss throwing children and the poor off of Medicaid — that’s your choice.

            I’m talking about infrastructure — whether local regional or national.  It needs to be a priority — which you and I both agree.

            Where we’d carve the needed monies from, well, yes, we disagree.  Happy to discuss.

          2. I understand that SS is funded by a so-called Ponzi scheme.  It needs tweaking, such as removing the earnings cap for contributions.  But it is a sound system.  I also understand that I will get many more $$$ in benefits than I ever paid in, interest included.  

            In the summer of 2007 I moved from Colorado to Florida to help take care of my parents.  Mostly because Dad was given some six months to live.  Well, he hung on for two and half years, and on the day he died, literally, my mother started requiring lots of care.  That’s been going on for almost three years.  

            In the meantime, I could not get a job for two reasons:  Needs of my family, and NO jobs in SW Florida due to the Second Republican Great Depression.

            After my father died, I filed for SS because we needed that income to replace Dad’s.  I was 63.  So much for my plans to work until I was 70.  

            What I would like you to recognize, and I don’t see how you can’t, is that I put those famous Republican family values before my own preferences and income.

            One day I stepped on a nail and needed a tetanus shot.  I found help at low cost at a local indigent care clinic.  So, while Medicare spent almost $300K on Dad’s treatments, his primary caregiver had to use a non-profit, low quality provider to get a fucking tetanus shot.  Thank you, pre-Obamacare American medical “system.”

            A little over a year ago I went on Medicare.  Through lots of research I found out that the state of Florida will pay for my Part B and Part D premiums. So, yes, I’m on Medicaid.  Just like many old people dying in nursing homes.  It’s not just the young poor.

            If my sister hadn’t been able to retire from her Republican damned government job – law enforcement – three years ago, I don’t know what we would do.  She is an indefagitable caregiver of our very frail 95 year old mother.  We can’t afford a nursing home, if we put her in one on Medicaid, they would take all her income and her house would go into foreclosure in a few months.  It’s the house I live in, and represents perhaps a few tens of thousands of dollars in inheritance if I’m luckyl

            I’m off track, sorry.  Point being that w/o these “entitlements”, the Verizzo family would be thrown to the wolves.  Those wolves have Republican fangs.  I am so grateful that these programs are in place.  

            So do you have NO family members that were or are supported by SS and Medicaid?  Family that you didn’t have to support, or you supported less?  I’d be real surprised if not.

            Did you know that 55-65% of the discretionary budget goes to pay for wars past, present, and future?  That’s were we need to cut.

            And I thank you for your contributions via your taxes.  I was always so happy to pay mine because I believe we are all in this together.  You know, like your faith (has tried) teaches you. Matthew 25, blind man.

            1. heroism isn’t just a valiant death in battle;

              it’s also every day getting up and laying down your life for someone else.  

              God bless you.  

              1. I agree completely, and it’s nice to see a vet say what I’ve held for a long time.

                But I’m no hero compared to the many who have it much worse than I do. Think parents with shitty jobs raising their delinquent or perhaps disabled kids, day after day.  At least I know my caregiving will end relatively soon.  

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