DENVER Gov. John Hickenlooper released his bottom up economic recovery plan Wednesday, a document that keeps with his themes of innovation and government efficiency.
Governments not going to solve everyones problems, but it can create the environment and the context by which people solve their own problems, Hickenlooper said.
The Colorado Blueprint is drawn from meetings in all 64 counties attended by more than 5,000 people statewide. It sets 24 goals that Hickenloopers staff identified as common to the whole state.
Much of the plan is a marketing strategy to boost Colorados reputation for innovation in business and government.
The overarching goal is to give Colorado street cred as a place that turned around its economy without spending a lot of taxpayer money, said Dwayne Romero, co-chairman of the group that developed the plan.
The plan seeks to align the states efforts to recruit companies with local economic-development efforts, not to overtake the local groups, he said.
Local communities own their own economic activity, and, more importantly, they own their own recovery, Romero said.
It does not set specific goals for reducing the unemployment rate, but it does call for a few concrete outcomes, including extending reliable broadband Internet service to the whole state and attracting two technology companies to move to the state every year.
Hickenlooper thinks the plans high-tech, innovative theme will fit right in with agricultural communities.
In rural Colorado, both in mountain towns and the Eastern Plains, innovation and technology are a part of their everyday language and their everyday life. Until you spend a day with a dryland farmer in Southeast Colorado and see how innovative they have to be to make a profit on a very difficult landscape, you havent seen anything about innovation, Hickenlooper said.
The two most common pleas from local people were for high-speed Internet and access to loans for small businesses, Hickenlooper said. The Colorado Blueprint pledges to extend reliable Internet service to every town, and it calls for the state to work with banks to expand lending.
The plan contains a series of small steps to judge progress on most of the 24 goals, and Hickenlooper said citizens and the press will make sure his administration does not forsake the plan.
Several Western Slope counties local plans asked Hickenlooper to stop taking local government grant money to balance the state budget, but the final plan does not pledge to stop taking the money.
Most of the plan will not need approval by the Legislature, but it calls for Hickenlooper to develop a legislative agenda by September based on some of the bottom up input from local communities.
The plan is online at www.colorado.gov/ColoradoBlueprint, and Hickenloopers staff will take public comments on it until Aug. 10.
Reach Joe Hanel at joeh@cortezjournal.com.
