Romero promises economic development across state agencies

Dwayne Romero, the state's new economic development director, officially resigns from his seat as an Aspen city councilman today and has promised a cross-agency approach to economic development problems like mountain congestion on Interstate 70.

"I think that's an integrated approach, a cross-sectional, cross-agency state of mind, and a philosophical approach to how this particular administration chooses to pursue its work," Romero said in an interview last week.

I asked him whether he considers taking part in the decade-long discussion over how to fix I-70 congestion, largely the purview of the Colorado Department of Transportation, was a legitimate role for the director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade.

"I do," said Romero. "You know traffic and congestion around I-70 isn't going to go away overnight," he said. "These are difficult, meaty, hairy issues." And I-70 traffic cannot be considered a narrow concern for just transportation experts.

"It clearly feeds jobs in the tourism economy," he said. "Every time a new business looks to the state, they measure things like the strength of our infrastructure, and how well it's adapted to, and it services our constituents," he said. "And choke points along I-70 do not help that story."

I asked him the question because I have long considered the economic development director to be in a unique position to influence practically any state government undertaking, since any new government undertaking is going to involve private businesses as contractors.

From straightening out the human-services department's computer problems, to building a transmission line across the state, to fixing the state's roads and bridges, government agencies don't do the work itself, but hire and pay private contractors to do it.

But hiring private contractors in Colorado has long been a convoluted and time-wasting (therefore money-wasting) process that often discourages local small businesses and even medium-sized firms from taking part. Romero would do well to involve his department in reforming that area of state government as well. Or at least inject itself into reforms on the side of small businesses and all Colorado companies.

Romero said during the interview that OEDIT, his department, will also be greatly concerned with carrying out Gov. John Hickenlooper's primary dictate to all state agencies, which, in Romero's words, is: "Getting our budget balanced and at the same time focus on how we improve the performance of government."

"We understand that at the state level we need to make sure that our government is run like a very effective business, and we're responsible for our revenues, and we're responsible for the delivery of our services," he said. He wants small business and all business across the state to respect the administration's business-like efficiency, and gain enough confidence in Colorado's economy to add jobs and grow.

That will require his department and other state agencies to craft "efficiencies and economies that help, if you will, deliver more effectively on the services that we provide, perhaps at a slightly less dollar value," suggesting a tightening of the state workforce in order to meet budget demands.

"That's where I would rely on my private-sector, small-business and business management experience," he said when I asked whether new duties would not stretch his current department's staffing requirements.

"No," he said. "That concept of dropping or diluting to zero other initiatives or other focuses is just foreign to me. You know, when you make priorities, you focus your resources and energies. Really strong leadership would suggest you still are able to perform your other missions and your other capacities. Having a priority of effort is what small business has to do every day." 

Pinnacol could be a hero

By the time I'm writing this, a House committee has approved the first of two measures sent it by the Senate that would lead to the transfer of $500 million in surplus assets of Pinnacol Assurance to balance the state budget.

And Gov. Bill Ritter has made it clear that $300 million in cuts to the state's institutions of higher education are unacceptable.

That's a good move on the governor's part; it signals to the legislature that lawmakers must come up with a way to make up the higher-education funding by re-writing the current budget as approved by the Senate, and leaves the raid on Pinnacol's assets as a viable way to do it.

There are other ways, and despite resistance of members of the Joint Budget Committee to considering elimination of tax exemptions to make up the money, or imposing salary reductions for state workers, the governor also has signaled those options are viable, too.

One way or another, Ritter, a good Democrat, has said the General Assembly should find a new way to balance the budget besides its traditional dumping of the chore on the backs of the state's college students and faculty. A state constitutional amendment now protects the backs of public-school students.

Pinnacol can afford to give up the money for the greater good. As a creation of the state, it would be nice to see the company figure out a way to help out.

Give and take at the legislature

Cutting state-employee salaries rather than the budgets of the state colleges is a good idea, especially if state legislators take several hundred more millions of dollars from Pinnacol Assurance to plug the budget sink holes.

Generally, Republican lawmakers favor the salary cuts and oppose the Pinnacol raid, and Democrats, generally, mirror those positions in reverse, meaning they favor the raid on assets and oppose the salary cuts.

But Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter's administration has grown the state payroll, so he should be just as willing to cut back to save the state dough in its financial crisis.

At the same time, Pinnacol has grown its surplus by keeping the cost of workers-comp insurance low for businesses throughout the state. To give some of the money up for the best interests of all the people, shouldn't be too hard a political stretch. Ken Ross, president and CEO of Pinnacol, may already have seen that light on the subject.

Compromise is the height of lawmaking, so our legislators, who usually plum the debths of partisanship, should get together on this and work out a solution.

It would be refreshing to see it get done.