Referenda results force reassessment of CDOT projects, priorities: an interview with Tom Norton, executive director, Colorado Department of Transportation.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: Interview - Interview

Tom Norton, executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation, is willing to jump in the bucket of a front-end loader if it means boosting prospects for catching up with Colorado's road-building plans. Norton, though, is circumspect about his prospects for catching up quickly.

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He also, however, is clear about who will decide how quickly he can make up lost ground.

The legislature this session will decide how much money Norton's department gets to work with in 2006 and 2007 now that voters rejected Referendum D, which would have allowed Norton to catch up much more quickly and much more cheaply with road-building plans that have existed since 1996.

Gov. Bill Owens, in releasing a budget shortly after the referenda election that sought $296 million in road funds, when only $440 million in additional revenue was going to be produced for the state from Ref C, caused a quick, if short, firestorm of criticism that held Owens and Norton were trying an end around to get the money they wanted from Referendum D in the first place.

ColoradoBiz talked to Norton last month in hopes of putting the request in a business perspective. Here's the interview:

COBIZ: Explain what your CDOT priorities are for this legislative session.

NORTON: Our primary ones are simply money. We've got a real backlog of needed projects, and not enough money to do them. So we're going to be talking to the legislature, as I have with the governor, about how do we get some money to be able take full advantage of some of the earmarks from the federal government, matching those (to obtain funds), and matching some of the investments our local government partners want to make.

CB: What is the figure that you are asking for?

N: It's $216 million of Senate Bill 1 (funding) and about $80 million of general funds. What's really the result of (passing) Referendum C is the $80 million. The Senate Bill 1 (money) is existing law (and will flow through to the department as appropriations that were merely postponed by the legislature to accommodate past budget shortfalls).

CB: And...