Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday signed into law the largest increase in transportation funding the Colorado Legislature has approved in more than a decade — and was met by a collective yawn by many of the organizations that had pushed for help with the state’s highways and transit system.
Senate Bill 1, inked at a ceremony in Loveland, allocates one-time spending of $645 million over the next two years, as well as an additional $50 million general-fund contribution to highways and transit annually for 20 years. Plus, it allows voters to cast ballots in 2019 on whether to approve as much as $2.3 billion in bond sales to begin to address the state’s most crucial choke points — if no citizen-led transportation-funding measure receives statewide approval during the 2018 election.
But while the House and Senate leaders who crafted the compromise that allowed SB 1 to pass through both chambers on the penultimate day of the session early this month called it a significant move toward relieving congestion on the state’s highways, the Democratic governor himself said on the day after the session ended earlier this month that he was “disappointed” that elected officials couldn’t find more money for transportation. And he said at the time that he was leaning toward supporting a proposed 0.62-cent sales tax hike for transportation that the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce is trying to get onto the November ballot, believing more is needed to address the long-running problem.