Ritter picks three to lead transportation money search

Kevin Flynn, Rocky Mountain News

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

Gov. Bill Ritter named three people today to head his blue-ribbon transportation panel that will investigate different ways to get money for projects and how to decide which ones to build.

The effort could lead to a ballot question asking Colorado voters to overhaul the current tax system, the buying power of which is shrinking year by year.

Ritter picked Doug Aden, the chairman of the Colorado Transportation Commission, State Treasurer Cary Kennedy and Bob Tointon, president of the construction management firm Phelps-Tointon.

"We talk a lot about the impacts of transportation and economic development," Ritter said. "But there is such an important relationship between those two things."

In addition to investigating different ways to fund projects, Ritter wants the group to look at how projects are picked in the first place. He wants more leverage given to projects that would boost economic development and have local support.

Aden, of Grand Junction, is a retired banker who has been on the transportation commission, the oversight board for the Colorado Department of Transportation, for 10 years.

Kennedy, of Denver, was elected in November. She worked on budgeting and finance in Gov. Roy Romer’s administration and helped lead the education-funding Amendment 23 and the Referendum C efforts.

Tointon, of Greeley, is a 2003 inductee into the Colorado Business Hall of Fame. An engineer who came to work at Hensel-Phelps Construction in Greeley in 1963, he was president of that company until co-founding Phelps-Tointon in 1989.

Ritter acknowledged that blue-ribbon transportation panels aren’t new. Former governors Bill Owens and Romer both had theirs.

But Ritter is willing to use the "T" word — taxes — as part of the panel’s mission.

Owens’ transportation financing panel came up with many recommendations but Owens put talk of new taxes off-limits.

"This effort will differ because all options will be on the table," Ritter said. "We will not limit the panel’s ability to explore new ideas and creative solutions."

The state’s gas tax is a per-gallon levy that remains static while inflation has raised construction costs. Greater fuel efficiency also cuts into the revenue.

Ritter plans to name between 20 and 30 members to the panel by April 9. Sometime in April, the panel will kick off with a statewide summit meeting, then hold regional summit meetings in at least five areas of the state during the spring and summer.