This is a boondoggle

I attended the Colorado Springs Front Range Rail Meeting. The rail service’s plan is to utilize the existing freight train rails (that run about 12-16 trains a day – no firm answer) and they are still in the negotiation/planning stage. They plan to begin with 3 one hour and forty five minute trips to Denver’s Union Station. This long travel time is because of sharing the rails and speed limitations.

So first, you’d spend time (5-30 minutes depending) to get to the Colorado Springs station, then probably have to pay for parking. I hope you are attending a downtown Denver event because you’ll add additional time (Uber, friend, bus, or the Light Rail) getting to your final destination. Will I ever do this 2-1/2 hours train process to get to my kids’ houses in Denver that I can drive to in one hour? I’ve lived in 3 European countries and love their train service. I believe this is a boondoggle or a our “pie in the sky” dream. Instead, we need to invest all this time, energy and money to repair and rebuild our Colorado roads.

Lindsay Clewe

Colorado Springs

A diversion of funds

A recent article on another TABOR fight, this time the democrats’ plan to redirect TABOR refunds to K-12 education, contained one paragraph revealing the true, hidden, intent of the measure.

While couched in terms of providing more funding to schools, it is, in reality, a diversion of funds to other areas. Pay close attention to the following sentence from the article. Kevin Vick, president of the Colorado Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union, is reported to have said: “the measure will help the entire state budget because, when education funding is removed from the TABOR cap, it will reduce pressure on Medicaid, behavioral health infrastructure, roads and public safety.”

The only way removing the TABOR cap on education can reduce pressure on other areas of state spending is if other, current, funding for education is diverted to these other areas. This means the increased revenue from removing the TABOR cap is not a net increase in education funding. Some money is going elsewhere in the state budget.

Don’t be mislead by the half-truths coming from democrats in Denver and their union allies.

Chuck Graham

Colorado Springs

No really means no

This is really getting ridiculous. I guess the “Tax and Spend” squad in Denver needs remedial training in basic budgeting. They also just don’t understand what the word no means. How many times do we taxpayers need to say no before they get it through their thick skulls that no means no?

Doug Bruce put TABOR together well over 30 years ago (thank you, Doug), and it has been a thorn in the side of Democrats ever since. They just can’t stand having tax money they can’t spend! It just irks the daylights out of the fact that it really is “excess” and they have to give it back! They keep forgetting that they work for us, not the other way around!

If they think K-12 needs that money so desperately, they need to look real closely at where the K-12 money is actually being spent. By the way, enrollment is declining, so keep that in mind. That budget can be adjusted to be used more effectively. By the way, we aren’t stupid. We know this is just another end around play to try to kill TABOR. If they still want more, then they need to dig around in the budget at their other pet projects. They will find it. And don’t go threatening us with cuts to Medicaid. That is a subject for another letter. Where they need to start is a look at their priorities. Are they realistic? Are they wants? Are they needs? Are they promises to campaign donors? Just asking.

Billie Nigro

Colorado Springs

The public record is clear

Election season has a predictable pattern: when opponents cannot win on facts, they start inventing them. I call it lying about them.

That is exactly what is happening in the current attacks on Representative Terri Carver over Colorado House Bill 17-1186. Critics are claiming that Rep. Carver “voted for abortion” when she supported the bill. Anyone making that claim either has not read the legislation or is deliberately misrepresenting it.

HB17-1186 had one narrow purpose: it allowed prescription birth control to be dispensed in larger quantities so patients would not have to visit a pharmacy every month for refills.

Before the bill passed, many insurance companies required women to refill birth-control prescriptions every 30 days. HB17-1186 allowed an initial three-month supply and up to a twelve-month supply for subsequent refills of the same medication. Insurance plans that already covered contraception were required to reimburse pharmacies for dispensing those larger quantities.

The bill applied to standard contraceptives such as birth-control pills, contraceptive patches, and vaginal rings.

That is the entire policy change.

HB17-1186 did not expand abortion access. It did not authorize abortion drugs. It did not require insurance plans to cover abortion medications such as mifepristone or misoprostol. Those drugs are not even included in the bill’s definition of contraceptives.

The legislation addressed dispensing practices for medications already prescribed and already covered by insurance. Nothing more.

Yet critics now attempt to rewrite the bill’s meaning for campaign purposes. That tactic relies on one simple assumption: that voters will never read the legislation for themselves.

But the public record is clear.

HB17-1186 dealt with how pharmacies dispense prescription contraception. It did not legislate abortion policy. Suggesting otherwise is not an interpretation of the bill. It is a distortion of it.

Representative Terri Carver supported a practical policy change that allowed patients to obtain medications they were already prescribed without unnecessary monthly trips to the pharmacy. Portraying that vote as support for abortion is a political attack built on a false premise.

Colorado voters deserve serious debate about public policy, not campaign-season attempts to manufacture outrage over legislation that says nothing about abortion.

Anyone interested in the truth can read HB17-1186 themselves. The accusations currently circulating about Rep. Carver collapse the moment the actual text of the bill is examined.

Former State Representative Lois Landgraf

Colorado Springs