Happy birthday to us.

• Author: Schwab, Robert

OH, IF ONLY I WERE 30 AGAIN.

One of my daughters thinks I'm weird when, occasionally, because I know she counts down the days to her birthday from day 364, I'll turn to her and wish her a happy birthday out of the blue.

She giggles, and then starts calculating again exactly how many more days it will be before my greeting is no longer a joke.

That ColoradoBiz turns 30 this year is no joke. It has taken a lifetime of blood, sweat, probably some tears, and laughter, too, to get the magazine this far along the path to covering Colorado's statewide business community.

And it's been a pleasure reading about it in former editor David Lewis' feature recapping the adventure, It starts on page 18, and I hope you'll follow the gameboard path to the story's end.

Which, of course, is a new beginning.

And judging from two events I attended last month, we're all in for some new beginnings this year.

Of course, voters on Election Day handed the state over to Colorado Republicans, from the governor's manse through the statehouse. "What's in it for business?" a well-connected lobbying group, Capitol Solutions, asked as the title of a breakfast and executive briefing it co-hosted with the Denver Business Journal at the Pinnacle Club on Dec. 10.

Colorado's new Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, new Senate President John Andrews and new House Majority Leader Keith King all spoke. Andrews and King made it clear charter schools are going to have friends in high places when the legislature meets later this month, and King indicated higher education in Colorado may find its solution to funding problems in...