Time right for Senate farewell

Time right for Senate farewell

Mar. 27, 2001

Capitol Report
By Senator Jim Dyer

Mickey Mantle of the hated New York Yankees won the triple crown in 1956, hitting 52 home runs, 132 ribbies and averaging .353. Twelve years later, his body nearly expended, he hit .237, an average barely above the Mendoza line. Mantle’s game, but futile, last season dragged his lifetime average below .300 to .298. He didn’t have a graceful exit from the game he had played so well.

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Last Wednesday afternoon, wife Shari and I accompanied Gov. Bill Owens into his office where four television news crews and a dozen reporters and members of his staff were assembled for his announcement of my nomination to serve on the three-member Colorado Public Utilities Commission.

This was not something I’d aspired to.

About a month ago the PUC liaison at the Capitol mentioned to me that the governor and his staff were having a hard time finding a Democrat to serve on that panel. Two Denver-area Republicans were in place, but the law doesn’t allow all three members to come from the same party, and Democrats that share some of Owens’ free-market viewpoints are few.

I expressed an interest to the governor’s legislative contact, and Owens, with whom I’d served in the House years ago and have remained friends, also expressed an interest.

I brought news of this mutual interest home to Shari over the next weekend. The news was not well received.

So I told the governor’s office that I was not their guy. The auditions for the missing Democrat continued — unsuccessfully.

By happenstance last week, Shari took a rare week’s vacation from her demanding chores as head of the Victim Witness Unit in crime-fighting District Attorney Sarah Law’s office. She joined me in Denver and we stayed in our downtown loft.

Amidst the fu of a few days of city living, Shari spent a day at the capitol watching the madness un-fold: floor work, committee, lobbyists, old friends, checking out the view from my newly assigned majority-party office. Things are just pretty darn good. Maybe not the stuff of triple crowns, but well above .300.

Then as we were leaving, by chance, we met the governor’s point man, who asked us to meet with Roy Palmer, the governor’s chief of staff. Roy was very persuasive, I thought, but Shari’s body language told me "no sale."

That night we had Mexican carry-out and a studious avoiding of the PUC question.

Next morning Shari brewed a pot of Earl Gray and I went out for the papers. And we had the conversation that would signal a major change in our lives.

We determined that with e-mail, fax, cell phones, teleconferencing and a whole lot of time on United Express (at our expense), I’d not be away from home much more than I am now, particularly since I’d been appointed to several committees that meet between regular legislative sessions, and with a special session pending.

With Shari’s agreement, I told Owens that we were in, and he immediately scheduled the news conference. My nomination will be sent to the Secretary of the Senate. There my colleagues will confirm me ... or not. Probably they will, but not after dragging me through a knothole.

If this happens, I’ll resign from the Senate at midnight May 9, the 120th and final day of the session. I’ll begin my PUC duties the next day.

This will be a new challenge. In my 15 legislative sessions I’ve heard testimony and voted on many of the PUC issues: telecommunications, electric rates and availability, transportation. And given the brownouts in California that may be rolling our way, I believe that it would be good for rural Colorado to have a denizen of the Western Slope at the table.

If the PUC has been a green-eyeshade operation in the past, I believe it is where the action will be in the future, more so than in the General Assembly. So in a way, I’m again riding toward the sound of the cannon.

Of course, with nearly everything I do, politics is never far away.

Within 10 days after I resign my Senate seat, the Democratic chairpersons from the nine counties will meet and select my successor. He or she will have a year and one-half, and a whole legislative session in 2002, before facing a general election.

Conspiracy theorists see dark motives in Owens’ selecting me, getting me off the political stage so that the GOP can claim the 6th District seat and swing majority control back to their side. That’s not how it came down, and I can assure you I was not a lock on winning next time, if I even decided to run. On a personal basis, I will miss most the unique relationship an elected official has with his constituency — you.

Jim Dyer is a state senator from Durango. He can be reached in Durango at (970) 259-1942 or at the Capitol in Denver at (303) 866-4884.