Introduced by Gene Hainer, Colorado State Librarian
- Where are Colorado Libraries today?
- A lot of good things going on operationally despite the budget problems
- State library lost 79% of funding in 2002
- Talking book library
- lost all the regional systems
- replaced by CLiC
- State aid to school libraries
- loss of $11 million in local funding
- homework help line now gone (grant funded)
- Request for courier support for CLiC was approved (review and consideration in governor’s office)
- State Aid restoration has been requested
- Database funding has also been requested
Colorado Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff
- [M: First democrat to hold the office since 1972]
- [M: His district is
- [M: Teaches PoliSci at
- Thanks for helping pass Referendum C
- What does it mean and where do we go from here?
- Librarians help enlighten
- Unfortunately enlightenment is optional in the budget
- This is not an end to our fiscal crisis
- We still need to economize
- This is a state where people do agree with each other
- Ref C was totally bipartisan
- Both the Boulder and CO Springs city councils supported it
- CO fell further and faster in job growth than any other state in the nation
- We lost a lot of high tech industries
- Drought
- forest fires
- tourism due to terrorist attacks
- We couldn’t wait for the national economy to turn around
- This state can deliver on what the employers want
- low taxes
- high quality of life
- skilled workforce
- good education system
- We’re 49th in higher education support
- second highest rate of college grads
- also high rate of high school dropouts
- The businesses go where the good education is
- Governors of other states are happy we’re cutting since the result is that jobs go to their states
- We’ve also got to compete with the educational systems in other countries
- Ref C allows us to restore services that have been cut over the last few years but we can’t restore all of them
- “once you’ve fallen into as hole you should stop digging”
- Ref C is not a blank check or an authorized spending spree
- It was passed by a very narrow margin (52-48%)
- that should humble us
- general population growing, prison pop growing, medicaide pop growing
- Most folks don’t know who their rep is, that’s not good
- Bills not killed, just postponed indefinitely
- Tell the legislator what you thing we’re going wrong
- We’re better representatives if we stay in touch with those who we represent
- Denver Broncos are better known that the legislators and that’s not the way it should be
- Current debate: What role, if any, government ought to play
- There are things we can do better together than separately. We’re stronger ogether than separately
- Q&A [mostly about specific legislative items and asking for advice on better getting “our agenda” passed]
[M: This guy is funny!]
