By David Grant Long

Gov. Bill Owens drew his loudest applause in Cortez Tuesday when he suggested that Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt will be replaced by someone more amenable to local concerns if his friend, Texas Gov. George Bush, wins the White House next year.

"If Gov. Bush gets elected I’ll have a lot better access," he said, "and we’ll do better with another administration other than Secretary Babbitt."

Many area residents fear that Babbitt may ask President Clinton to declare 160,000 acres of BLM land west of Cortez a national monument, which would lead to further restrictions on its use.

Owens admitted he was unfamiliar with the controversy, which has simmered here since last spring and gotten the attention of the area’s Congressional delegation as well as the state director of natural resources, and said he would want to hear from both sides before taking a position.

Touring the hustings to whip up voter support for Referendum A, a plan to borrow a maximum of $2.3 billion to accelerate road projects across the state, the governor addressed variety of issues before a crowd of about 100.

Also known as the Transportation Revenue Anticipation Notes, the referendum would speed up 24 projects in the state, he explained, and save money by avoiding some of the inevitable inflation in the construction industry, which has been running about 9 percent annually for the past three years. TRANS wouldn’t directly affect any projects in Montezuma County, but would speed up the widening of Wolf Creek Pass and a project in La Plata County by three years, according to proponents.

Already 44 states finance such projects this way, Owens said, and have far better roads than Colorado as a result.

"If you’re wondering whether bonding makes sense," he said, "travel to those states that do it and compare their highways to states like ours, where we try to do it on a pay-as-you go basis."

On economic matters, Owens said that while Colorado is mirroring national prosperity, the Front Range corridor stretching from Ft. Collins to Colorado Springs has been doing so well that it skews the overall picture in the rest of the state, or "the other Colorado" as he termed it.

"We’re ranked as having the third-best diversified economy out of all 50 states," he said. "But there’s a lot of risk that we’re leaving some people behind."

Outside the Denver metro area, the average wage drops 35 percent, he pointed out, and the unemployment rate is 40 percent higher.

Things are even worse in the southeast quadrant of the state, he added, with nearly half the households earning less than $25,000 annually, and the mountain areas are also lagging behind when the mostly non-resident owners of trophy vacation homes are excluded from the calculations.

"Coloradoans are doing very well on average," he said, "but average doesn’t mean that all of our children are well-fed and that we’re all doing well.

Therefore, he explained, the state is developing policies that would promote economic development in the less prosperous areas.

"When companies come to Colorado and want to see some locations for plants and employment centers, we’re trying to show them areas other than Broomfield, Boulder, Golden, Longmont and Loveland."

And this meets with the approval of residents of the congested Front Range.

"The folks in Denver, with our traffic problems, our lack of water, the air pollution, they’re ready to see some of this move out," he said.

Part of this effort includes a telecommunications "beanpole" bill intended to promote more rapid development of high-speed Internet service in rural areas, he said, since many high-paying jobs skills are in this field.

Still, the abysmal results of tests recently administered to students in the state’s public schools -- a major portion, in some cases more than half, cannot read and write at their grade level -- indicate much needs to be done if they are to qualify for these high-tech jobs, Owens said.

"So the problems and challenges we face are fairly daunting," he said, "because in order to prepare today’s kids for the future . . . we have to make sure they can read and write."

Owens said this can be turned around by following the lead of a grade school in the poorest part of Pueblo that has been hugely successful in raising those test scores by returning its curriculum to the basics, with less emphasis on "self-esteem" courses.

"(School officials) decided that these kids would feel better about themselves if they learned to read and write," he said.

Owens was asked how using a major portion of TRANS funding to speed the widening of 1-25 in the metro area, now regularly clogged with traffic during rush hour, would contribute to this effort, since it would make additional growth around Denver more attractive.

"Would your suggestion be that we should cripple Denver so that we can encourage growth elsewhere?" he retorted.

"The real solution to too-fast growth is really simple," he added sarcastically. "Don’t fix the roads, don’t fix the schools and let out a lot of criminals -- you’ll have high crime, poor schools and gridlock and that would force people elsewhere."

But, he added, "I would be insensitive to the fact that I’m governor of all Colorado if I did that."

Moreover, he pointed out, "The department of transportation is going to go ahead and widen 1-25 regardless of the vote on Nov. 2 -- that’s not what you’re voting on. The issue is how should we finance the projects that are going to be built."

"If you want to hurt rural Colorado, have us continue to pay for that huge project with cash," he added. "It will be very expensive and you’ll feel very good that you taught Denver a lesson, but in fact you will have hurt yourselves."

Owens, apparently sensitive to the fact that he was talking to a conservative crowd that has traditionally voted against borrowing and spending measures in the past, conceded that "reasonable people" could differ on Referendum A, however, and ask that his arguments at least be considered.

"If you want to help the non-Denver part of the state, allow us to bond, which is the cheapest and most effective way of widening I-25 and free up additional dollars" that can be spent elsewhere, he said.

On other matters, Owens:

Said state funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that provide birth-control services and medical exams -- but not abortions -- to low-income women will probably be restored if his staff finds that those clinics have separated – "in fact, not in theory" from the Planned Parenthood clinics that do provide abortions.

He explained that a constitutional amendment passed in 1984 prohibited the state from "directly or indirectly" funding abortion clinics, and that a recent decision to end funding to those clinics that don’t provide abortions was based on a legal opinion that this was indirect funding of those that do. Since that decision, Planned Parenthood announced it was dividing into two separate organizations to resolve the problem.

"If it has divided in fact, I’m sure (the contract administrator) will award contracts to Planned Parenthood for family counseling," he said.

When an employee of the local clinic asked what she should tell her clients who need an annual exam or mammograms in the meantime, Owens suggested she explain this constitutional question to them.

"What I would tell them is that they have a governor who is trying to enforce what the voters have on two separate occasions told us -- we’re not going to provide taxpayers’ dollars directly or indirectly" for abortions.

-- Stoutly defended his belief that no one under 21 should be allowed to buy firearms or ammunition.

In response to a young man’s complaint that his Second Amendment rights were being abridged, Owens pointed out that there are many things that 18-year-olds can’t legally do, such as drink alcohol and serve in Congress.

He said that while many people of the questioner’s age are mature enough to buy and own weapons, others are not.

"We have a responsibility to make sure children and criminals don’t have access to firearm," he said, although no more gun laws are needed to accomplish this.