May 14, 2007 04:47 PM UTC

Rocky Columnists Doing Pat Waak's Job

• 9 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Perhaps sensing a vacuum where the Democratic response to Dick Wadhams should be, preeminent Rocky Mountain News bridge troll (we mean that affectionately) Mike Littwin waded into the property tax/education funding “battle” you’ll be hearing about all summer (and probably longer):

The topic is the property-tax freeze, the bill he had just signed into law. And now, Ritter finds himself under attack by a gleeful Dick Wadhams and the other usual suspects. Wadhams says the freeze would cost $1.8 billion over 10 years. He doesn’t just say it. He keeps saying it. I’m guessing he sings it in the shower. Under intense questioning, however, he put the actual number at $1.7431 billion.

“I rounded up,” he admits. And rounding up may not be his worst sin. This is another fight over yet another TABOR glitch. And apparently some people – you know which people – won’t believe many Coloradans actually want to pay for, say, education…

“We’ll go out and take our case to the people of this state,” Ritter is saying, his hoarse voice rising. “We’re not afraid of our shadows. We’re not afraid of what might happen in 2008.”

The reason not to be timid – following what may not have been the boldest legislative session – is that Ritter can remind people that Senate Republicans, then in control, voted for almost the exact same bill in 2004. I’ll say it again. Senate Republicans voted for almost the exact same bill in 2004.

Littwin continues:

Republicans explain this phenomenon by saying they didn’t understand exactly what they were voting for back then, meaning they were either not paying attention or are not very bright. And I suppose you thought they were just hypocrites.

I ask Wadhams about which one of those failings might apply, and he demurs. This is worth noting. Wadhams is many things, but not an active demurrer.

Former Senate President John Andrews doesn’t demur. He says he was duped – not by Democrats, but by Republican Norma Anderson, who was trying to fix the TABOR glitch. (I tried to reach Anderson, but she’s apparently out of the country.)

“It was an ill-informed vote – one I wish I could have back,” Andrews says. “You don’t serve down there without making some dumb votes. That was one.”

I ask Steve Johnson, who voted for the bill in 2004 and against the one this year. He says he wasn’t exactly duped, but that he does know more this time…

Columnist Jason Salzman picks up the narrative here, from his trademark media-accountability angle:

I’m surprised that the dailies haven’t explained why the Republican-controlled Colorado Senate overwhelmingly passed a property-tax rate freeze three years ago but – flippity flop – many Republicans are against it now, saying it’s a “tax increase.”

This sure looks like hypocrisy to me, but it may not be.

“I voted for it without realizing I was voting for it,” Republican John Andrews told me. And he was no back bencher. He was Senate president at the time.

“You voted for it without realizing you were voting for it?” I asked, thinking that he sounded an awful lot like poor Sen. John Kerry.

“I voted for it without having had the tax-increase feature of it brought to my attention. I plead guilty to casting an ill-informed vote. But I have to plead not guilty to the idea that I was an active proponent or advocate for this approach.”

Andrews says it took fellow Republican Norma Anderson’s “sleight of hand in 2004 to get the thing on the bill, out of committee, and out of the Senate.” [Pols emphasis]

Reporters should ask Anderson and others what the Republicans were thinking in 2004, and why. She was not reachable this week, unfortunately.

Four current Republican senators voted for the tax-rate freeze in 2004, and reversed their position this year. Neither the Rocky Mountain News nor The Denver Post interviewed them.

Post reporter Mark Couch told me he regrets not talking to them, though he quoted Sen. Majority Leader Andy McElhany as saying that these flip-floppers were, at worst, confused. One of them, Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, in an e-mail to me Wednesday, offered an explanation similar to Andrews’. The others did not return my calls.

Unlike the Post, the Rocky hasn’t reported that some Republican leaders support the tax-rate freeze, signed into law by Gov. Bill Ritter Wednesday. The law frees up money in the state budget for stuff like higher education and health care.

These supportive Republicans include former Sen. Hank Brown, former state lawmaker Tim Foster, Bill Owens’ Budget Director Nancy McCallin, and others.

Why are these folks bucking Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams, who’s “licking his chops,” as a Rocky headline of April 24 put it, to accuse Democrats in the next election of increasing taxes?

Good grist for a discussion that just about everyone agrees will last longer than they’d prefer: especially state Democratic chair Pat Waak, who you just know is not looking forward to all this extra work. Funny, though, how Wadhams doesn’t seem to mind.