Colorado feels bite of West Nile.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Editorial

THE BUSINESSMAN'S TONE REEKED WITH DISAPPOINTMENT when he mentioned the J.D. Edwards buyout by PeopleSoft. Home-grown J.D. Edwards was being merged with a California rival, and the job losses that usually accompany such consolidations were expected to hit Colorado particularly hard.

But nobody has even tried to stop it, said the participant at the Colorado Innovation Summit held in July on the University of Denver campus. He then shook his head again. It was as if he were already counting the new row of software engineers joining the unemployment line.

I thought about that conversation as we put together this issue of ColoradoBiz. From the cover picture of new Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to Jeff Rundles' column about DIA and United Airlines on page 66, the issue is largely about leadership. Town leadership in Black Hawk; Gov. Bill Owens' leadership in recruiting Hickenlooper to join him on a business-development mission to California.

But then I thought about the multiplying numbers of West Nile infections that have branded the state as the hardest hit by West Nile in the nation this year. And I wondered where our state leadership was last spring when some people in the state health department were predicting a bad virus this summer. Fighting a budget battle in the legislature no doubt. Hoping for rain so as not to repeat a summer firestorm, hut not perhaps thinking that spring rains would also help grow mosquito populations.

In all the reporting of the deaths and illnesses of Colorado victims of West Nile this year, no one has particularly pointed to the governor's office--or the legislature, for that matter--and asked why the state hadn't done something earlier than June to stop the prolific spread of the virus.

Actually it did. In April, with the help of some county officials, state health department people launched a "Fight the Bite" Web site (www.fightthebitecolorado.com) and started printing and distributing 400,000 wallet-sized cards with lips on how to avoid being infected, which essentially comes down to avoiding mosquito bites.

Those cards, 200,000 brochures and 7,000 posters, have cost...