Despite the hoopla over making state roads passable again with compromise state legislation and a new federal administration that promises to make America great again, serious trouble is brewing for Colorado.
Gov. John Hickenlooper signed into law this week a hard-fought measure that gives a temporary reprieve to rural hospitals on the verge of failure. The measure also raises some cash for the state’s crappy roads and deteriorating bridges.
No need to celebrate, Colorado. The effort was too little, too late to begin with, and news coming from the Trump White House this week is even more foreboding for Colorado. President Donald Trump has backed out of the critical Paris global climate change accord.
Both problems loom large in Colorado.
The measure Hickenlooper signed this week allows for the state to finally begin utilizing hospital provider fee cash, a system to help offset increasing Medicaid costs that Republicans have held hostage for years. But the fix is only temporary as potential changes to insurance, drug regulations, Medicaid and Medicare threaten to swamp the nation’s sinking health-care system.
And the deficient $1.8 billion dollars that this new measure puts toward the state’s growing $9 billion in critical transportation needs? The money is borrowed by mortgaging state buildings, without providing any serious way to pay the inadequate money back, other than unwisely raising pot taxes, which helps grow the black market.
Both problems have many more far-reaching consequences besides making our lives unpleasant here, stuck in traffic on deplorable roads or creating inconvenient lawn-water restrictions as roving droughts become a way of life.
The state’s premier economic engine is in danger here: tourism.
About 80 million tourists visit Colorado each year, bringing with them about $20 billion a year and leaving it behind. It’s Colorado’s life-blood that directly provides for more than 110,000 jobs, officials estimate.
But climate and transportation problems are real and serious threats to Colorado’s economic foundation.
Part of Colorado’s economic link to climate change is obvious: skiing. No snow or shortened seasons mean real dollars lost. Consecutive years of snow-droughts will move the industry to other states or Canada. Less obvious, however, is the connection between climate change and the loss of the state’s most valuable tourist resource: its mountains. Global warming and beetle kill are causing substantial visible and ecological damage to massive swaths of Colorado forest. And the changing climate is certain to bring more and larger forest fires to the state, recent experts reports.
Colorado has recently seen what “a state on fire” in the media can do to its tourism business. Repeated years like that will be a spiraling death knell.
Similarly, it’s not just word of mouth about Colorado’s shabby roads that will hurt state tourism. It’s gridlock.
Much of Colorado’s most valuable tourism real estate is along or dependent on the I-70 corridor, which has already become a very real deterrent to regional tourism. Visitors who lose days on Colorado roads, just trying to get there, won’t come back. Traveling in Colorado, especially to ski resorts, is too expensive to spend it inside an expensive rental car parked for hours on I-70.
Colorado must act.
Abandoning the only global effort able to address the grave problem of climate change only guarantees Colorado will have to find ways to address an environmental problem that risks not just state economics, but our lives as well.
And pretending that Colorado is all better now that legislators finally approved a band-aid solution is nearly as dangerous as having done nothing.
The state must not only cut spending, it must raise more revenue through taxes, tolls or fees to pay for the gargantuan list of needed transportation expansion and repairs. Colorado must have a workable, economically sound, long-term transportation plan in place.
Congress must find a way to join world governments in combating the effects of global climate change if Trump tries to stop it.
While there are some choices here, none are good, but others are much worse. Choose wisely and act now.