Minding public matters.

• Author: BRONIKOWSKI, LYNN
• Position: Colorado think tanks - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

COLORADO THINK TANKS MULTIPLY BY TWO DENVER SOFTWARE ENTREPRENEUR TURNED VENTURE CAPITALIST

Rutt Bridges sits at a conference table in his Republic Plaza office sounding an alarm: Suicide kills more people in Colorado than car accidents. "Suicide kills 13 people a week in Colorado," he says. "And it's the leading cause of death among 18- to 25-year-olds in this state. But it's all preventable."

After a brief silence, Bridges moves on. The conversation turns to traffic and an innovative program Bridges hopes will make commuters line up at pick-up and drop-off sites throughout the metro area to catch rides with solo drivers who want to use more traffic-efficient HOV lanes. "They're called casual carpools and they work great in Washington, D.C.," says the founder of the Bighorn Center for Public Policy, a social-policy think tank.

The far-flung discussion then shifts topics again. Bridges, who characterizes his center as being dedicated to quality-of-life issues, gets particularly animated detailing the Bighorn-sponsored bill prohibiting telemarketers from calling Coloradans whose names are on a no-call list. The anti-solicitation bill passed this year in the Colorado General Assembly but doesn't take effect until July 1. Still, nearly 300,000 Coloradans already have put their names on the no-call list through a Bighorn Center Web site. "We were the lobbyist for the people on this issue," says Bridges, 50, who maintains that Coloradans put great value in their privacy -- whether it's stopping sales calls or keeping junk e-mail from invading their homes.

Ideas flow freely at the Bighorn policy center, from statewide election reform to eliminate Colorado's antiquated caucus, to increased financial disclosure by charitable organizations to prevent fraud.

"We do whatever we think will have the biggest impact for the good of Colorado," said Bridges, who works full-time at the center but who also serves as chairman of Quest International Management Co., a Denver-based venture capital company.

Bighorn board members, who hold ideologies as varied as the ideas investigated by the center, include: Economist Tucker Hart Adams; former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart; former Gov. Richard Lamm; David Greenberg, founding partner of GBSM, a communications consultant; C. Edward McVaney, co-founder of JD Edwards & Co.; Steve Schuck, founder and chairman of Schuck Communities; and Albert C. Yates, president of CSU.

Think tanks such as the non-partisan Bighorn are part of a...