Lathen touts record as county commissioner in bid to be Colorado Springs mayor
Amy Lathen came out guns blazing with ideas about how she would transform the Colorado Springs mayor’s office and local government.
She would work to eliminate the business personal property tax; she would move the mayor’s office into City Hall for better communication with the City Council; and she would approach the city’s budget through a regional lens to see where the city, county and even neighboring towns could share resources.
“I have no turf wars,” she said. “I have no desire to take credit for or control everyone and everything.”
Lathen, 47, a wife, a mother and an El Paso County commissioner, was the first to announce in September her intention to run for mayor, the city’s chief executive. In 2010, voters changed the city’s form of government to council-mayor and elected its first strong mayor in 2011.
In the switch, voters eliminated the city manager’s position and put the mayor in charge of administrative affairs, as well as developing the city’s budget and writing the city’s strategic plan – both to be approved by the City Council. And voters made the job a full-time position with a $96,000 annual salary.
In its infancy, the new form of city government still is being defined. The council, mayor and city attorney have publicly clashed over the roles of the executive branch and legislative branch and smoothing out that relationship has become a key campaign platform for all of the candidates, including Lathen.
“I do not believe that the strong mayor form of government describes a dictator form of government, and I believe that we all deserve better,” she said in a speech to launch her campaign.
Lathen, a Rampart High School graduate, has been an active member of the El Paso County Republican Party for more than a decade, working on fundraising events and becoming a bonus member of the local executive committee. That won’t help now, however – the El Paso County Republican Party does not make endorsements in nonpartisan races, according to the group’s executive director, Daniel Cole.
Instead, Lathen will rely on her track record at the county, where she filled a vacancy on El Paso Board of County Commissioners in 2008 and was then elected to a full term that same year. She was re-elected in 2012 in District 2, representing the most eastern side of the county. Her term expires in 2016. County commissioner salaries are set by state law, which is currently at $87,300 per year.
Lathen says that during her tenure, the county has cut its budget, increased its credit rating, joined forces with Fort Carson to build the largest Colorado shooting complex, consolidated and moved county offices out of multiple aging facilities into one location, and taken a lead role on a regional stormwater task force.
But it has not always been smooth sailing. Lathen and other county commissioners were severely criticized over the term limit debacle when in 2010 voters approved upping terms from two to three terms but then afterward said the ballot language was deliberately confusing. Voters reversed the 2010 vote on term limits in 2012. There also were red flags raised over how the county financed the purchase of the former Intel complex on Garden of the Gods Road, a move Lathen defends.
One active member of many county citizen committees and commissions said she believes Lathen to be fair and willing to see issues from multiple angles.
“When people are testifying, she takes notes. She pays strict attention,” said Joan Lucia-Treese, a member of the El Paso County Highway Advisory Commission of which Lathen is the commissioners’ liaison. “She has a wonderful way of interacting with people and even people who disagree with her.”
Lathen’s campaign got off to a solid start and by January she had raised about $61,000. But she hit a political snag in February when after weeks of rumors, Lathen confirmed that someone in the business community asked her to drop out of the race and she said that she was “offered a position as chief of staff by someone who financially supports John Suthers’ campaign. However, the John Suthers camp itself has not made any such offer.” She would not name the person who made the offer and she added that she did not approach the media with the story but when asked about the rumors by reporters she answered. Suthers said no one from his campaign approached Lathen about dropping out of the race and he said he never would make a job offer to anyone prior to the election.
Businessman Ted Robertson said the incident was a turnoff. He was concerned that Colorado Springs would again be fodder for national headlines because of political shenanigans – something the business community has repeatedly expressed concern about when trying to attract new businesses.
“I see negative campaign tactics and unsupported charges of political payoff and we could very well attract the kind of national attention we don’t want,” he said. “I’m hoping those things don’t keep happening.”
A local mayoral candidates’ survey by Springs Unigroup, an advocacy group that formed in 2002, shows Lathen in third place, behind Suthers and former Colorado Springs Mayor Mary Lou Makepeace – with Suthers at about 37 to 42 percent, Makepeace at an average of 28 to 33 percent, Lathen at 17 percent and Joel Miller at about 11 percent.
Rick Wehner, who runs the survey, said that the Unigroup surveys have been 82 percent accurate in candidate races and 91 percent accurate in issues. When Unigroup combined its totals with The Gazette and KKTV online surveys – which ran on their websites Feb. 19 for 24 hours – the combined percentages shake out the same way. However, Lathen and Suthers were tied in The Gazette’s poll.
Lathen said that of all the candidates she best understands the services the city is trying to deliver. But she said she’s not afraid to consult with experts, staff and citizens. Her involvement in the Pikes Peak Regional Stormwater Task Force is an example, she said, of developing a financial plan based on citizen input, science and data.
She rose as one of the leaders of the stormwater task force, a 40-member group of county and city elected officials, Colorado Springs Utilities water experts, business leaders and citizen volunteers tasked with designing a regional funding program for flood control and drainage projects. After about a year of meeting, Mayor Steve Bach parted ways with the task force and directed city staff not to participate after he questioned the escalating price tag for stormwater needs.
Without the city, the county took the lead in writing the proposed intergovernmental agreements and eventually the ballot language that went to voters in November.
“She (Lathen) is a person who strongly believes in collaborative, cooperative relations and solutions,” said Dave Munger, who took the reins as the co-chair of the citizens stormwater task force.
“The whole thing demonstrated to me that there was nothing ideological in her approach to solving the problem. It was ‘let’s find a scientific solution to this problem and let’s make it happen.’ She was clearly, if not the leader, a leader, and clearly convinced stormwater was a problem that needed to be fixed, and fixed while she was in public office.”
In November, voters in four cities and part of the county rejected a proposal for a property fee and a government authority to collect about $40 million a year for 20 years to pay for stormwater projects across the region.
Lathen believes a sticking point was that it was a 20-year funding plan. But the stormwater needs are there, she said, and she wants to work with citizens to design a new funding proposal.
“I want to go forward and continue the conversation,” she said. “About 47 percent (of voters) said it was OK. What would you like us to change? Maybe we ask again, but only after we learn more about what the people want.”
Another issue the new mayor will inherit is the City for Champions, four planned tourism projects aimed at drawing new out-of-state tourists to the region. The project was approved under the state’s Regional Tourism Act program and is eligible for $120.5 million in state sales tax over 30 years to help fund construction.
Organizers of three of the projects – an Olympic museum, an Air Force Academy visitors center and a university sports medicine complex – expect to raise private money for the construction costs not covered by the state sales tax. However, the funding plan for a proposed downtown sports and events center has not been developed. The plan could include financing the project with local sales tax dollars – something that has drawn criticism.
Lathen said she would advocate for a public vote on the sports and events center project if any local tax money is used.
“For me, this goes to the trust issue,” Lathen said. “If we go by the letter of the law, then there is no public vote. We believe we need to have the public at the table and talking about the way this could be done.”
But Lathen wasn’t so adamant when it came to the financing of the county’s Citizens Service Center, said John Bass, who served as the county assessor from 1999 to 2006. Voters never got a say in the financing of the $50.5 million in securities, for which $22 million was used to buy the Intel building to turn it into the county offices. The county issued a combination of certificates of participation and one-time Build America Bonds, which the Obama administration reinstated as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Technically, the county did not have to ask voters for approval.
Bass said the county needed a new facility. But he said he resents that the debt the county took on for the purchase of the building was not explained and voters were not asked if they wanted to incur it – something he says skirts the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
“The problem with Lathen and her ilk is they say, ‘Oh, you know this is too complicated for people to get, let’s just do it.’ Maybe that is true but that does not make it right,” Bass said.
Lathen said the county needed to act quickly to take advantage of the low sale price on the Intel property and that no money was taken from the county’s general fund. She added that county tenants in the Citizens Service Center pay rent, which is used to pay the debt.
As for the City for Champions, she said the law does not require a public vote if the city uses a financing mechanism called tax increment financing – where a portion of sales taxes from a set geographic area is used to pay off bonds – but she would request that the City Council put the financing plan on a ballot.
“That is what people are demanding,” she said. “That makes sense. That kind of local level infrastructure investment has to be a vote of the people.”
Lathen says she wants to be mayor because she believes in what is possible for the city. She says her style of leadership is open and joyful.
“I just believe in something very exciting and very special at the city level that I think I and a team of people can bring into this city,” she said. “I want to bring in a different type of leadership. I want to bring a regional approach to this city that we have not seen in years. I want to bring the leadership that empowers people to be amazing at their expertise.”
Editor’s note. This story was corrected to eliminate an incorrect reference to a county office that does not pay rent at the Citizen Service Center.
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Contact Monica Mendoza: 636-0187
Twitter @ Mendo1987
Amy Lathen fields questions at a meet and greet event Saturday, January 31, 2015 at the Gold Hill Police Substation. Photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette
Amy Lathen fields questions at a meet and greet event Saturday, January 31, 2015 at the Gold Hill Police Substation. Photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette
Amy Lathen For Mayor stickers at a campaign event Saturday, January 31, 2015. Photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette
Amy Lathen fields questions at a meet and greet event Saturday, January 31, 2015 at the Gold Hill Police Substation. Photo by Mark Reis, The Gazette