Colorado ballots have been mailed out and Election Day is coming up real soon.
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The candidates in this upcoming General Election for House District 64 are Dean Ormiston (D) and Richard Holtorf (R).
We sent out a questionnaire to the candidates regarding the recovery of COVID-19 economic impacts, legislation they hope to introduce and what they think should be done to help fund our schools. Here are the responses:
Dean Ormiston
Q: How should the General Assembly work to recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19?
A: Get financial incentives for businesses to keep jobs for the people in Colorado and make it more efficient to get schools open.
Q: If elected, what is one piece of legislation you hope to introduce and why?
A: Make wages and retirement more reasonable and usable for citizens.
Q: School funding has become a topic of discussion in recent years- what do you think needs to be done to fund our schools?
A: Use more lottery and marajauna money for education.
Richard Holtorf
Q: How should the General Assembly work to recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19?
A: Get our state economy going again and most of the problems will be solved through economic recovery. Make laws that uplift our economy, our families, our communities, and our human interactions that are more closely aligned with pre-COVID conditions.
Q: If elected, what is one piece of legislation you hope to introduce and why?
A: I am a veteran of 29 years of service and I am a huge supporter of our veterans. I plan to run a bill that will give Purple Heart award recipients free entry to our Colorado Outdoors and our state parks. These service members have suffered in their service to protect and defend our American way of life and they deserve lifelong rewards for this service. This bill would be one way to not just give their service to our country lip service but gives tangible recognition from our state to these American heroes.
Q: School funding has become a topic of discussion in recent years- what do you think needs to be done to fund our schools?
A: This is a huge challenge but throwing more money than the state budget does not have will not solve this growing problem. The current schemes that the legislature is devising are not the answer either. A task force needs to be set up to look at how we streamline education and make the cost per student go down and not up! Additionally, we need to analyze how we fund education and not just try to create a cost-shifting scheme that shifts the cost to the taxpayer or to municipalities, or county or other state departments or agencies. The General Assembly can not try to punt the cost of Education using a football analogy!
