Is the Western Slope paranoid? During the decade I served as President of Club 20, I was often confronted by Front Range leaders accusing us of unfounded distrust. “No one here is ignoring the Western Slope,” they assured us. We encountered the same charge in Washington, D.C., when a top federal official said, “you always act like the poor picked-on stepchildren.” Once even a California official told Club 20’s board, “The Western Slope always thinks someone’s trying to steal its water.” The accusation of paranoia was so common that I had a standard response: “Well, we have long memories.”
Western Colorado leaders have spent generations defending their interests against threats from elsewhere. It’s not that state and national leaders dislike our region (they often include beautiful West Slope pictures in their own tourism promotions). It’s just that people generally put their own interests first. Realistically, we must acknowledge that rural and urban interests often differ significantly. Should decisions be based on population or land area? On the supply of water or the demand for water? On miles of road or traffic counts?
These questions will never be answered to the satisfaction of all, and they will always be the basis for many of Colorado’s toughest policy debates. The 20 counties of Western Colorado are the source of most of the State’s tourism (its largest industry), three-fourths of its water, nearly all of its minerals, fourteeners, ski areas, and wildlife. But 80 percent of the State’s population lives on the Front Range, where those resources are always in demand, so conflict is inevitable.
The current disagreement about how to repair the State’s deteriorating roads and bridges has some people asking, “Why should people in one region be taxed to pay for roads in another?” The answer is short and sweet: because without a statewide approach, there won’t be any roads in rural areas. That is the reason Club 20 was founded in 1953, and it may be more important now than ever before.
This year Club 20 has joined several other business coalitions in backing a proposed state sales tax increase for transportation, because the traditional fuel taxes no longer generate enough money to meet all the needs. That’s partly because gas taxes now pay not only for roads, but also for mass transit, bike trails, sound barriers, landscaping, and other amenities. It’s also because cars are much more fuel-efficient than those of the 1950s, so even as Americans travel more, they use less fuel to do so.
With a growing recognition of the State’s transportation crisis, six different sales tax increase plans have been proposed for this November’s ballot, and one measure that requires significant funding without new taxes. Whichever plan you like, they all have one thing in common – they are statewide, both in collection and distribution.
However, despite almost-universal agreement that there is a funding crisis, not everyone is on board. The opposition of the Mayor and other officials in Colorado’s second-largest city, Colorado Springs, may be enough to defeat all these plans. Their opposition is especially notable because that City already passed its own local tax measure to fix its own roads. Now, with that opposition, Club 20’s worst fear, articulated by Western Slope leaders for generations, has come true.
Eventually, some of the names may be sadly forgotten, but leaders like Preston Walker, Lyman Thomas, Perk Vickers, Wayne Keith, Dan Noble, Ben Vigil, Bill Cleary, Stan Dodson, and many others, spent decades protecting the Western Slope’s share of highway funding. Crucial to their success was an unbending insistence on a statewide approach. They vigorously opposed all proposals to allow local taxation for communities to fix their own roads. They warned that if Colorado Springs or Denver were ever allowed to pay their own way, their residents would have no further incentive to vote for statewide projects.
Sure enough. In 2015 Colorado Springs voters raised local sales taxes to put $50 million a year into bridges and roads. Only three years later, they are actively opposing statewide highway funding increases. Don’t blame them – the rest of the State should have seen this coming in 2015, and stopped it by providing a statewide solution.
Elie Wiesel said, “Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” Club 20 is the keeper of Western Colorado’s memory on such issues. The united front it presents, on behalf of otherwise very diverse communities, is rural Colorado’s best chance for getting a fair shake. That is not paranoia; it is history.
A version of this column was published in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel June 22, 2018.
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