ColoradoBiz speaks: ColoradoBiz speaks reflects the opinions of the Editorial Board of our magazine.

ColoradoBiz endorses Bob Beauprez for governor.

Intellectually, Bob Beauprez likes to ramble, like a small boy from a farm who likes to ramble through an adjoining wood, finding what he finds and only occasionally stumbling into a hornet's nest or a bramble bush.

But the State of Colorado can't afford a four-year term for a governor who likes to intellectually ramble among the pressing issues facing our state.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Colorado needs someone who is focused on solving its problems as quickly and practically as possible, and Bob Beauprez's predilection to ramble almost cost him this magazine's endorsement. Still, we endorsed the Republican Beauprez over his major rival, Democratic candidate Bill Ritter, on a split 4-3 vote.

The magazine's Editorial Board decided it can forgive a candidate's mistakes as long as the candidate subscribes to taking action that will make up for them.

In separate interviews with both men, although we found former Denver district attorney Ritter much more focused and precise in his answers to questions about state problems, we also found Beauprez to have a wider knowledge and grasp of the complex issues that face us and their possible solutions: from education, to transportation, to business development, to immigration, to water problems, to energy development, to business development.

Beauprez's opposition to Referendums C&D last year, which the magazine strongly endorsed and urged voters to approve, was a big strike against the Republican candidate. Some editorial board members said Beauprez should be held accountable for that position even a year later because the business community solidly supported passage of the referenda, and a vote against the two measures was in actuality a vote against business in Colorado.

Other board members decried Beauprez's recent bumbling citation during a public radio interview of an absurdly high percentage of African-American women who Beauprez said had received abortions. Days later, Beauprez apologized for the remark in newspaper stories that also showed how very wrong he had been in repeating his misinformation.

The abortion statistic was not a hornet's nest that Beauprez kicked up in his interview with ColoradoBiz, but it is one that can come from uninformed intellectual rambling over ground that shouldn't really be able to trip up a man with the wherewithal to run a state of more than 4.5 million people, including more than 200,000 black people.

Yet people learn from their mistakes, and it seemed Beauprez was the kind of man who will.

Ritter on the other hand, although impressive, seemed somewhat rigid in his presentation of well-thought-out, pre-rehearsed positions; and he seemed unwilling to commit politically to a change of mind without first establishing a commission or a committee to give him advice.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A telling case in point was the two candidates' answers to a question during the ColoradoBiz interviews regarding state-provided incentives offered to businesses that might be considering locating some of their operations in Colorado.

Our state for most of its modern legislative history has been extremely reluctant to offer incentives, especially taxpayer-funded incentives, to businesses that might be considering investment in facilities based here. ColoradoBiz, however, has written more than once about how many business leaders from around the state have concluded that now may be the time for a change in that traditional political stance.

But when asked whether the candidates, if elected governor, would be "proactive" in promoting such business incentives in the legislature, Beauprez said, he would, and Ritter waffled. We believe each man's (shortened) answer to the question is reflective of what we might expect in his method of governing Colorado if elected:

Beauprez: "The short answer is yes. I think we've existed for a very long time in assuming that those beautiful mountains and recreational opportunities and great climate, and all those things we know and take for granted out here are adequate. The game's changed. I was down in Lamar and Springfield, Baca County, (and) they were trying to entice a very large dairy operation. It would create a lot of jobs, been a prime employer, and create a good market for a lot of feed that's raised there instead of sending it out of state, as almost all of it is done.

"And yet what they found out is that both Oklahoma and Texas were offering considerably greater incentives, and guess where the dairy went. It went to Dalhart, Texas.

"We've got to get more aggressive. That may mean some tax incentives; it almost always does. I'm willing to look at that."

Ritter: "We have never been a big state for offering incentives. We've looked at what the last two governors have done, what Gov. Romer and Gov. Owens have done, and neither of them have put incentives on the table.

"We have to be careful about how we answer this. This state budget: Although we passed Referendum C, we're still arguing about scarcity of resources; and so to say we're going to put incentives on the table I think is something that we have to be careful about when there are other things I think we can do. And part of that is being a better salesman for the state. I think that's the right kind of commitment.

"I think you have to do what John Hickenlooper has done: Pull people like John Huggins out of the private sector and make them your economic czar and give them some rein in going about business development and economic development. Those things are actually, I think, more important than putting incentives on the table.

"The second thing is, I think, you have to make the case in the state for why a company should move here. We think that one of the basic elements of that is what your commitment is to higher education and to transportation."

Both answers have their merits, yet Beauprez's was more assertive and paid less deference to factions within his own party who might disagree with him. His answer also showed an independence of thought, and some progress in his thinking about what needs to be done in Colorado to keep its economy innovative and growing.

Offering taxpayer-based business incentives to recruit new business to a state, in fact, has been more of a Democratic Party position than a Republican one, and Beauprez was taking a stance that could lose him more votes within in his own party than he might gain from it.

Ritter, on the other hand, seemed more deferential to the conservative middle ground of Colorado voters--territory he has to win over if he expects to win the office he seeks. In other words, his response was more "political" than practical, more campaign-centered than directed toward the job of really governing this state.

We believe growth of the business base of Colorado is a critical way to achieve broad-based prosperity for all Coloradans, and we believe business incentives, taxpayer funded or not, will prove to be a critical ingredient to growing our business community.

Neither candidate impressed the Editorial Board with any "great new ideas" for solving the state's problems; and, to be frank, we found that lack of big new ideas a little disappointing.

ColoradoBiz wants the next governor to lead his state to greater levels of prosperity and accomplishment, while at the same time holding fast to the style Colorado has created for itself over the past decade or so: a youthful, breezy, humorous, intelligent-yet-at-the-same-time-savvy, innovative style, one that attracts new people, new jobs, and, yes, new money to Colorado.

We want the next governor to be someone who knows where he comes from, and yet who knows where we all might be able to go.

In our view, Bob Beauprez seems to have a better grasp of all that than his opponent.

RELATED ARTICLE: 2006 BALLOT

MINIMUM WAGE--AMENDMENT 42 [check]NO

ColoradoBiz urges a no vote on Amendment 42, the initiative that would establish a statewide $6.85 per-hour minimum wage, overriding the current federally set $5.15 per hour. The Bell Policy Center, in a study, said about 138,000 workers in Colorado, which has a workforce of more than 2.4 million, would probably get a raise if voters approved this initiative, which would be written into the state's Constitution if passed.

Most of the time, the business argument against raising the minimum wage, both on a state level and nationwide, concerns small-business employer's reluctance to accept a mandated increase in their labor costs, resulting in job losses for people who are let go in order to help the employer maintain his balance sheet. The argument for raising the wage usually runs toward improving the lot of the lowest paid workers in a state or across the country.

Neither argument, however, is the reason ColoradoBiz urges voters to vote no on this initiative. The magazine does not believe voters should write a minimum-wage law into the state's Constitution, which is what a yes on this issue would do. In Colorado, as nationally, we have a representative form of government; congressmen and senators write the federal minimum-wage law, debate it and pass it to apply across the nation, as the federal law applies to Colorado employers now. That law however, is not written into the U.S. Constitution.

The Colorado General Assembly should write, debate and pass or defeat a statewide minimum-wage law that would pay a higher wage than the federal statute. State representatives and senators are capable of handling the task, and voters should contact them after the November election if they wish to see the issue taken up by the next session of the state legislature.

DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS--REFERENDUM I [check]YES

Referendum I would authorize domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, allowing statewide legal recognition of such relationships for determination of medical and insurance benefits, inheritance purposes, and some other financial arrangements. Many large businesses have long recognized such relationships, but there is no provision in Colorado law that requires treatment for legally recognized same-sex couples be equal to the legal treatment afforded heterosexual married couples. This Referendum, sent to voters by legislators, will also become part of the state's Constitution. It is more appropriate to constitutional amendment, however, since it deals with the basic rights of human beings who live here. ColoradoBiz recommends a yes vote for this measure.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT TAX CREDITS--REFERENDUM H [check]NO

ColoradoBiz is as opposed to illegal immigration as U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, in whose spirit this referendum was passed on to voters by the Colorado legislature. It is a referendum that came out of the special session of the legislature called by Gov. Bill Owens to give voters some say on the immigration issue, which at the time of the session had become so hotly discussed nationally that the Colorado General Assembly passed a package of the laws that now make Colorado more restrictive toward illegal immigration than any other state. At the same time, those laws throw much of the burden of protecting the state from illegal immigrants on the backs of Colorado business owners and employers. This referendum would write into the state Constitution one more penalty for business. Not only do we think--again--that this kind of law does not need to become a constitutional amendment, but we emphatically believe business should not become a fall guy for the failure of the federal government or even the state's political establishment to regulate immigration properly--to the benefit of the state's business community.

SCHOOL SPENDING--AMENDMENT 39 [check]NO

This initiative, which would require all local school districts to spend 65 percent of their budget on classroom education, would, like the old Amendment 23, write into the state's Constitution a school-funding formula that doesn't belong there. Some people now believe Amendment 23 is as onerous a hobble on state spending as the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights, TABOR, which was the reason the legislature went to voters last year with Referendum C. We believe the legislature, if it comes to the conclusion that local school districts are not spending state education funds properly, should deal with such school-funding directives with new state laws, not constitutional amendments.

VOTER INITIATIVES--AMENDMENT 38 [check]NO

Not surprisingly, given the opposition ColoradoBiz has already expressed in these pages to voter-initiated constitutional amendments, the magazine is also opposed to this amendment, since it would make the statewide process even easier and extend the process to local jurisdictions, cities and towns. Our state Constitution provides for representative government, the election of state representatives and senators, city councilmen and councilwomen, county commissioners, a governor and mayors and special-district chairmen and chairwomen. Those elected officials should consider the issues that concern their constituencies, and enact laws that reflect the majority opinion of those voters.

Weigh in at The Pub @ cobizmag.com