Salzman: GOP flip-flop overlooked

Some who voted for tax-rate freeze 3 years ago decry it now

Published May 12, 2007 at midnight

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Journalists love to expose hypocrisy, and more power to them.

So I'm surprised that the dailies haven't explained why the Republican-controlled Colorado Senate overwhelmingly passed a property-tax rate freeze three years ago but - flippity flop - many Republicans are against it now, saying it's a "tax increase."

This sure looks like hypocrisy to me, but it may not be.

"I voted for it without realizing I was voting for it," Republican John Andrews told me. And he was no back bencher. He was Senate president at the time.

"You voted for it without realizing you were voting for it?" I asked, thinking that he sounded an awful lot like poor Sen. John Kerry.

"I voted for it without having had the tax-increase feature of it brought to my attention. I plead guilty to casting an ill-informed vote. But I have to plead not guilty to the idea that I was an active proponent or advocate for this approach."

Andrews says it took fellow Republican Norma Anderson's "sleight of hand in 2004 to get the thing on the bill, out of committee, and out of the Senate."

Reporters should ask Anderson and others what the Republicans were thinking in 2004, and why. She was not reachable this week, unfortunately.

Four current Republican senators voted for the tax-rate freeze in 2004, and reversed their position this year. Neither the Rocky Mountain News nor The Denver Post interviewed them.

Post reporter Mark Couch told me he regrets not talking to them, though he quoted Sen. Majority Leader Andy McElhany as saying that these flip-floppers were, at worst, confused. One of them, Sen. Steve Johnson, R-Fort Collins, in an e-mail to me Wednesday, offered an explanation similar to Andrews'. The others did not return my calls.

Unlike the Post, the Rocky hasn't reported that some Republican leaders support the tax-rate freeze, signed into law by Gov. Bill Ritter Wednesday. The law frees up money in the state budget for stuff like higher education and health care.

These supportive Republicans include former Sen. Hank Brown, former state lawmaker Tim Foster, Bill Owens' Budget Director Nancy McCallin, and others.

Why are these folks bucking Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams, who's "licking his chops," as a Rocky headline of April 24 put it, to accuse Democrats in the next election of increasing taxes?

Rocky reporter Berny Morson says that as this issue unfolds, the Rocky will likely tell this story. (Not the Wadhams-is-a-wolf story, but the one about the Republicans supporting the tax-rate freeze.)

"You really can't look at these things, especially in an era when stories are getting shorter and shorter, and say, 'Why wasn't this included?' " says Morson, adding that one of his stories explained that Republican Anderson promoted the rate freeze in 2004 and that, generally, he's simply chosen to cover other important policy angles of the story.

Morson has a point.

And he's at least partially right when he says that flip-flops and past voting records are "good for political campaigns, but when you get down to what really happened, there's a lot of nuance involved."

He added that legislators legitimately might not remember an incident that occurred three years ago and that "people change their minds."

As Morson says, it's not too late to do more on this story, and, in fact, reporters should stay on it, especially given Wadhams' high-profile threats.

Why did Republican Rep. Al White of Winter Park side with the Democrats? What's the business community's position on the rate freeze? Are voters less hostile than they once were toward taxes for specific programs, as Colorado College's Robert Loevy told the Rocky Thursday?

And it would be worth reviewing what the Republicans were offering as alternatives to the rate freeze, to address the projected $100 million deficit in the state's school fund in four years.

Airport stress. The Rocky informed us on May 7 that the voice of 9News anchor Adele Arakawa will be used in the trains at DIA, saying euphemisms for stuff like, as Reynelda Muse put it, "Move your butt."

The article failed to offer the perspective that this isn't an appropriate job for Arakawa.

I've developed a Pavlovian response to TV news, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So for me, the voice of any local TV news anchor triggers thoughts of bad weather, which is not something stressed-out travelers need to be thinking about at the airport.

Neither should airport travelers be thinking about blue-collar crime, car crashes, and other mayhem - which I also associate with Arakawa, thanks to the overdose of these topics on local TV news.

The airport is already nerve-racking enough these days. We don't need the voices on the PA system making it worse.

Jason Salzman, president of Cause Communications and board chairman of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, is the author of Making the News: A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits. Reach him at salzmanj@RockyMountainNews.com.

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