This Spring, there are a handful of city council campaigns and local ballot initiatives taking shape across Colorado. In particular, ballot issue 1A in Colorado Springs, which would extend the city's property tax with a goal of garnering greater funding for job creation programs, is getting lots of attention.
As the Colorado Springs Gazette recently reported, money has been pouring into the campaign. But Sean Paige, a local activist and former editorial page editor for the Gazette, believes if the city's past track record is any indication, 1A might spell trouble.
For example, Colorado Springs has a $53 million “private-public partnership” to provide the U.S. Olympic Committee with a new downtown headquarters. Legal issues, however, are arising around the project’s developer, Ray Marshall. Rumors are also rampant that Mayor Lionel Rivera, vice president of investments at UBS Financial Services in Colorado Springs, had business dealings with Marshall that would pose a conflict of interest.
Paige says this should raise major red flags about the city’s judgment on investments. “I take no delight in the USOC situation,” he writes in a piece carried in the Colorado Springs Business Journal. “It will be a major embarrassment for the city if it all falls apart. But it also serves as a warning about the dangers that arise when city insiders begin brokering business ‘deals’ and playing ‘the incentives game’ with other people’s money.”