Owens shows a responsive side.

WHAT'S UP WITH GOVERNOR BILL?

Voters took him to the woodshed (he's a Texan, so he'll understand what that means) over Referendum A and FasTracks. Have those whuppings finally convinced Bill Owens to open up a little, become a little more flexible and pick up the reins of government not just to slow down the old horse, but to let it run?

Owens picked John Suthers, an admittedly conservative Colorado Springs career prosecutor (which can also be translated as trial-lawyer, by the way), to succeed former state Attorney General Ken Salazar, who is on the cover of this power issue of our magazine.

Suthers was on Salazar's suggested list of successors, and perhaps Owens' choice of him suggests the governor has started to listen to advice from his "Democratic friends" in the legislature and elsewhere, as he likes to call people who are not Republican.

Owens also told the Rocky Mountain News last month--after the presidents of colleges across the state complained to the legislature's Joint Budget Committee that the administration was not going to allow a step enough tuition hike at their schools to keep them competitive with other states' universities--that there may be room to raise the 5.5 percent tuition rate hike dictated by the state Commission on Higher Education.

That concession on tuition came, too, after I had suggested on our website, www.cobizmag.com, that the tuition hike might be the governor's first opportunity to show he is sincere when he says he is willing to work with the new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate of the General Assembly.

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Both Colorado's political and business leadership have to join together to solve the financial problems facing this state as conflicting constitutional amendments approved by voters threaten to dismantle not only the state's public higher education system, including its community colleges, but also any meaningful help for the poor in terms of Medicaid, and any significant state participation in economic development, including solutions to its water problems.

Dan Ritchie, chancellor and one of the state's rescuers of its premier private university, the University of Denver, last month called together a panel of 16 civic and business leaders to take a fresh, nonpartisan look at state finances, the first such summit in 45 years.

That means examining taxes and spending, fees and investment strategies, as well as untangling the crisscrossed amendments in the state Constitution.

James Griesemer, former dean of DU's Daniels College of Business, will chair the study group. He has already told The Denver Post that state and local-government financial problems and their solutions may not be "as simple as everyone thinks."

All the more reason to expect the governor of the state to fully participate in crafting those solutions, not merely sit back and nay-say future proposals.

I hope his new signs of flexibility are a har-binger of much more to come.

ROBERT SCHWAB IS THE EDITOR OF ColoradoBiz.

READ SCHWAB'S WEB EXCLUSIVE COLUMN, SCHWAB ON BUSINESS, AT COBIZMAG.COM OR E-MAIL HIM AT [e-mail]