Curry, Korkowski, Wilson square off

House District 61

The candidates for House District 61, including (I) Kathleen Curry, (D) Roger Wilson, and (R) Luke Korkowski, answered a number of challenging questions during the Candidates’ Forum on Sunday, October 17. They followed an in-depth presentation by Kristi Hargrove on Amendments 60, 61 and Proposition 101—and all three candidates were against those measures. However, their stances on a number of other issues were far less congruent.

Korkowski was questioned first by moderator Denis Hall: “This ad says you would eliminate all protections for Western Slope water because they aren’t spelled out in the constitution. I wonder about that.”

Korkowski: “If you believe what you get in the mail, or what you hear on the radio, then I have some oceanfront property I’d like to sell you in Arizona. It is really interesting how these folks can come up with creative ways to take words that you have said and cut and paste them. I’ve said thousands of words in the history of speaking, and apparently if you cut and paste them together you can make them say whatever you want. I haven’t seen that piece, and it doesn’t sound like it represents my views at all. If you want to know where I stand on an issue, ask me. Go to VoteLuke.com. Read what I have said. If you go to my website and read what it says about water, it says ‘Protect Western Slope water.’”

“What are your views on Amendments 60, 61, and Proposition 101?”
Curry: “I’m opposed to the three. The last one, even though it is a statutory change, the General Assembly is not inclined usually to overturn a vote from the people. Most legislators will not try and roll the public after they’ve spoken. If that one were to pass, that one’s gonna stick. And Kristi [Hargrove] is right, the money is not there at the state level to do the backfilling that would be required.”
Korkowski: “I’m against them. I’ve already voted against them. I am very much a fiscal conservative; I’m all about low taxes, less government.”
Wilson: “It’s a great lesson to just discuss these things… it’s not public works to keep people employed, it’s to be able to get to the store in the first place. You’ve got to have a road and you’ve got to maintain that road. In general, if 101’s gonna cut down on water, health, compliance, auditing… we won’t know what’s wrong because we won’t have the staff to audit it. If Amendment 61 passes we’re not going to trust our sewer and water systems and we’re not going to be able to fix them. We’re going to have all kinds of failures of our infrastructure. That’s really going to be ‘great’ for the reputation of Colorado.”

Curry was asked, “Were you to get elected, what happens to your seniority on committees, and your access to committees? How does that work?”
Curry: “I served this last session as an unaffiliated member so I can answer that fairly accurately. Each member is entitled to serve on at least one committee, so I can’t be stripped of that assignment. This last year I sat on Ag [agriculture] again. I’ll hold at least one, hopefully more than one—we are all entitled to run five bills so you can’t be denied the right to run five bills. We’re all entitled to the help of the staff, we’re all entitled to a seat on the floor, and I found that it worked out better than I thought. Most of my colleagues are more interested in the policy question at hand than they are so much focused on whether you have an ‘R’ or a ‘D’ or a ‘U’ behind your name. I will continue to be a very sought-after vote.”

“Where can we find more money for taking care of Western State and higher education, and lower to middle education in this state?”
Wilson: “We have mandates for health and human services. We will get sued if our prisons are deplorable. Unfortunately, it means without raising taxes, what’s left is parts of higher education and parts of K-12. We can get more funding in the long run by fixing our structural problem with the economy, that means going back after Tabor, after Gallagher… We need to consider how we have funding in good and bad times.”
Korkowski: “There are a number of issues at play here. When it comes to education, I think anything that introduces more competition in an appropriate way is a good thing. Command and control economies don’t work. Fundamentally, we have bad government. That starts with the constitution. It is contradictory in places. If we don’t attack that structural problem, and we don’t have a long-term perspective, we’re going to perpetually be in this situation where education and other things that we value are defunded and just done at a generally poor level.”
Curry: “The voters have spoken. They don’t want to pay any more taxes or fees—that’s the message I get everywhere I go. What we can do is recognize the long-term structural problem that’s been identified here. The general assembly could provide leadership on trying to unravel that by putting a question in front of the voters. The 2011 cycle makes sense, because that’s the year when we can do that kind of question. I don’t think we have bad government, I think we have a constitution that’s too easy to amend. That’s the other thing we need to address. It will be up to you all, and what you vote for.”

“What is your vision for balancing sustainability and economic growth, and is there such a thing as sustainable economic growth?”
Korkowski: “There is such a thing, and I’m very much a believer in free markets. Free market is allowing people to compete on a level playing field, where the government doesn’t support one industry over another.”
Korkowski (cont.): “Any time you regulate, you have to first of all examine whether the regulations, regardless of their intentions, are likely to achieve their stated ends. The oil and gas regulations that have recently been changed, I’ve had a look at some of those, and if you are an independent operator it’s almost impossible to start a business. That’s what environmentalist-type folks tend not to see. That’s crony capitalism. That means only the big guys get to be in business, not the small operators. That to me is the completely wrong approach.”
Curry: “The first thing that came to my mind was sustaining the businesses we have. When I hear sustainable growth I think, what does work here? The Ag economy hardly gets any conversation at these forums. The Ag guys are still going to the hardware store and they’re still working, and the one thing we can do is sustain what we have, what we know works here, at least not make it more difficult, and look at things like the small business, and tourism. The hard nut to crack would be construction… and I think we probably have to face the facts we went too far with that. The first thing I think of is, how do we sustain the businesses we have?”
Wilson: “I think there’s no conflict; I think they go together. Future, long-term economic health and growth requires a sustainable future. We should have Colorado be a leader [in solar], so that people come here to play and have a great time in our tourist economy, go to Western State and other places here and learn how to design, install and maintain these systems. It’s a great future and we should work hard to maintain it and go forward.”