Interview: Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper

Hickenlooper’s first priority as governor was to develop an economic plan that could move Colorado forward. He collected ideas from leaders in all 64 counties, and then formulated the “Blueprint for Colorado.” The plan targets six areas for economic improvement:  I. Build a Business-Friendly Environment; II. Recruit, Grow and Retain Businesses; III. Increase Access to Capital; IV. Create and Market a Stronger Colorado Brand; V. Educate and Train the Workforce of the Future; and VI. Cultivate Innovation and Technology.

Tanya Ishikawa: Of the Blueprint for Colorado’s six major areas, which points will have the most direct impact on creating jobs?

GOV. HICKENLOOPER: I think all of them. Obviously, creating a business-friendly environment whereby we cut red tape. We think about small businesses as our partners. You can be passionate about underserved communities, low-income families, kids, but without resources, your hands are tied. Our challenge is to say ‘All right, let’s recognize that in this state, we need our businesses and we need them to prosper.’ It doesn’t mean we can’t hold businesses to the highest ethical standards, the highest environmental and ecological standards, but we need to be pro-business.

And then that leads you to the brand: How do we communicate that to the rest of the country so that young entrepreneurs want to come here? I’m not crazy about offering [incentives], and we don’t have the money to offer large incentives. But, even small incentives, you have to do it, because that’s the way the world works these days. I’d much rather brand the state as a place where we do cut red tape, where we do have extra access to capital, where we have an education system, a way of training our workers that is second to none, and makes us a place where any entrepreneur, no matter where they live now, would want to build their business, build their family, build their life.

Boulder County is known for its entrepreneurial spirit and successes. How will the Blueprint support local and small businesses?

One of the things we’ve looked at in terms of increasing the entrepreneurial relationship between state government and the business community is: Where are those places where we could leverage assets that we have that we haven’t used? How many retired CEOs, CFOs, CMOs have moved to Colorado, and not just Vail and Aspen? They’re in Boulder County, they’re in Colorado Springs, and they’re in Grand Junction. They moved here for not just the climate and the Colorado Rockies, but also for a sense of what Colorado is. And I think many of them, if we just asked them, would be only too happy to sit on the board of a young, emerging company that’s got a great idea, but maybe the entrepreneurs behind it don’t have the experience in a high-growth company. Sometimes—I know this from personal experience—one or two board members can add tremendous value in terms of helping a company grow sustainably and successfully.

The recently announced Colorado Innovation Network (CoIN) is a way to break down the “silos”*  that separate all of our labs in Colorado: the material sciences at Colorado School of Mines, the biotech at CU, the veterinary medicine and agricultural research at CSU, but also NREL—the National Renewable Energy Lab—NOAA, all those federal labs. We’re going to do a two-day conference, but tie it in with all the business schools, right? ... Our goal is to have a $250,000 prize and have a juried competition for business plans where the winning business plan gets a $250,000 investment, where we are able to really help accelerate an idea from germination to when it creates jobs. And a lot of that is just breaking down silos and getting more people understanding what’s going on in other realms. Those conversations, I think, are the lubricant, they’re the accelerant, to job creation.
Insert at end of answer: [* “Silo” is a business term for a vertical, windowless mentality within an independent organization or department that impedes helpful communication with other organizations or departments. — Ed.]

Tourism is important in Boulder County. How will the plan strengthen that segment of Boulder’s economy? What steps will you take to “rebrand” Colorado?

We spend $15 million a year for tourism marketing, and they [the state tourism office] do their own rebranding. They’ve got a budget. What we’ve asked is, can that rebranding include rebranding the state? And can’t you, as you market tourism, also be marketing economic development? Imagine a billboard outside New York City: “Come spend your next vacation in beautiful Colorado; you might just want to open an office here.” Right? I don’t think that’s a complicated message, and the big message is to get people to come and vacation here.   

You know, people have come and seen what’s happened to Denver in the last 10 years—the restaurants, the nightlife, and what’s really going on. They suddenly go, “Huh. I could run a business here. I could build a life here, raise a family.’”

We’re in the top 10 states in terms of pro-business tax environments. We’ve always had a highly educated, highly trained workforce. But we’ve never really talked about these things and integrated them into a kind of a rebranding effort.

Governor Ritter made green-technology development a key piece of his economic plan, which helped support Boulder County business. How much importance do you place on continuing to fund emerging green technologies?

Colorado has a clear advantage in green technology in that we have NREL. We have a number of the top green labs in the country, plus a lot of horsepower in our private and public universities. What we have to do is build on that. That’s why we were so aggressive in going after the GE thin-film solar manufacturing facility [to be built in Aurora]. That is going to be the cutting edge of photovoltaic solar electrical generation for the next couple decades at least. We thought it should be here because we’ve got everything else, and they agreed, and GE has plants all over the country—they have them everywhere. We competed against more than 10 states, but they recognized that we have a critical mass here. We only have a few places where we really are a clear national leader. One of them is this green sector. I think in aerospace we are; we are just clearly one of the national and world leaders in that.

Another one we have is food innovation. And this is a place where people ask, “How does Boulder fit into rebranding?” Well, what is naturally evolving in Boulder is not just the restaurants and the farm-to-table; I’m talking about everything from Celestial Seasonings to Justin’s Nut Butters. We have this long tradition, a real legacy of entrepreneurs in Boulder that approach food from a completely different perspective, right? It’s got to taste good, but it’s also got to be healthy, it’s got to be convenient. There are ideas, whether you are talking about biscuits and wafers or nut butters, or whether you are talking about juices, or almost anything—there’s some group of entrepreneurs in Boulder that are working on how to do it better. And I’m not sure if that happens in any other place that I’m aware of.

So, what we’re trying to do is take those places where we do have a nexus, a natural critical mass, and try to fan those flames a little bit, and see how we can help it, and we’re also trying to tell the story, and talk about the narrative. [It’s] the same thing with outdoor recreational equipment. Osprey Packs, down outside Durango, they’re down in Cortez. You go down to SmartWool socks outside Steamboat. You can just go down the list of company after company after company that have been innovating and coming up with fresh, new ideas of how to do outdoor recreation, and they happen to be here. Coleman products is moving back to Colorado for that very reason. They want to be close to ground zero where new ideas are occurring.

Reducing Colorado’s carbon footprint and supporting sustainability are priorities for many Boulderites. What steps will you take to tackle those issues?

When I was mayor of Denver, Denver was the first city in America to transform all of our traffic signals to LEDs, to look at those kinds of changes. Not only are you reducing your carbon footprint but you’re also saving money. That’s that crossing point where no one argues, and you begin to build up that momentum, and you allow yourself to get new REC [renewable energy credits] standards. Right now, if you’re building facilities from scratch, it is less expensive to build wind generation for electricity than it is [to use] coal. ... And this is without including anything for health aspects, without even talking about how much better it is not to have to import oil or dig for oil. Wind energy is now the cheapest source of energy. We need to keep pursuing that.

Actually, the cheapest sources of energy are insulation and conservation. My wife and I just put a roof on our house, and we spent almost as much insulating as we did on the roof itself. And I think you sit and look at the numbers, and it might take six or seven years for that to pay off, but it will pay off, so it’s a good investment. I always want to make 6 percent; that’s where I draw the line at a good investment. So it’s a 6-percent investment year after year after year; we’re going to make 6 percent on that, and it makes the world better. What’s not to like about that?

So, how do we begin to take our scarce public resources and put them where they do the most good? We know that [in] low-income families, if they can get an extra 10 or 20 bucks in their hands each month per household, the fights go down, the kids do better. It makes sense to try and find the resources [to] insulate their homes, and they get the savings. Those utility savings usually are passed right straight through to the tenant. Those kinds of little things can sometimes add up to a big difference.

You’ve supported looking at increased extraction in coal, oil and gas energy operations. How can Colorado expand extraction without creating environmental problems, especially water issues?

My goal: From the beginning I’ve said that we want to be business-friendly and yet hold our businesses to the highest environmental standards, the highest ethical standards. What I told the oil and gas industry was, “I’ll cut the red tape. I think red tape doesn’t serve anyone. Instead of waiting 120 days to get a drilling permit, let’s get the drilling permit in 25 days or 20 days.” But that being said, if you spill frack fluid into a pond or into a stream, your fine should double. We should not tolerate, just because people are careless or not paying attention, that kind of pollution. I think making their industry more efficient allows them to put more money towards precautions and ensuring that they don’t make mistakes. It becomes a win-win.

I look at compressed natural gas. Again, this country spends, I don’t know, a billion dollars a day importing oil, sending that billion dollars a day—a large part of it—to foreign dictatorships. If we can use compressed natural gas, even with the price of gas at a high point and imported gasoline at a low point, [it’s] still a buck and a half per gallon equivalent cheaper to run a vehicle on compressed natural gas. So, for our school buses, our trash trucks, the vans and lightweight pickup trucks that counties use, that cities use, that the state uses, compressed natural gas is not only a dollar and a half cheaper than imported oil, it not only keeps us from sending billions of dollars to foreign dictatorships, but it keeps our air cleaner.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to get up to solar cars and to wind-generated cars, or electric cars that can run off of any kind of solar or wind-generated electricity. But it’s going to be a while. They’re not here yet. In the meantime, we got all this natural gas. It’s cleaner, it’s cheaper and safer than what we’re using in imported oil right now.

One of the great challenges for people to consider: What if we figure out a way to burn coal and to pull all the CO2[subscript 2], all the climate exhaust gases off of it, and put them to other beneficial use? What if there was a clean way to burn coal? A lot of people still don’t want us to burn it. But the reality is, what I’ve said from the beginning is, we should be open, right? This is the 21st century.

We know that perhaps the single clearest, essential element for lifting people out of poverty is affordable energy; the less expensive your energy is, the better. It doesn’t mean we should pollute. But look at what’s happening in China now, India. If we can find them clean, renewable, inexpensive energy, we’re going to help lift those people out of poverty. I think that’s everyone’s obligation, and ultimately will benefit Colorado and the United States as well. But to do that, we can’t be saying “Well, we’re just never going to use coal.” What I say is, “We’re not going to use coal as long as it pollutes in such a way that it puts our health at risk.” But if you can figure out a way to do that, and some people think they can, we should encourage them.

I’m a huge believer in collaboration. I say all the time, “Collaboration is the new competition.” Because you’re just going to get a lot more done collaborating than you are through competition. That being said, competition between states or competition between forms of energy is not a bad thing as long as in the end, we all make decisions that support the greatest good, the best we can get for everyone.

One of the Blueprint’s focus areas is to educate and train the workforce of the future. How can education be improved when its budget is constantly getting cut?

Well, certainly there’s no fun cutting the budget. When I was in the restaurant business for 15 years, 16 years, often the times we made the greatest positive changes and discovered the most significant innovation was when we had drops in revenue and we had less money. So it’s not necessarily true that the fact that we’re having to cut budgets means that we’re not going to do better. We might actually innovate more. Certainly we’ve increased spending dramatically over the last 10 or 15 years, and we haven’t seen significant results. So, that being said, we obviously are going to have to look at “Do we have enough resources?” I think that is a legitimate question that we should ask statewide.

If you go back and look at the amount of money we spent per citizen in Colorado, we’ve had our population growing and yet our revenues we’ve spent going down. We’re below where we were in the early 1990s. I don’t remember the specific year, but in terms of the spending per citizen, we’ve come way down. That’s a challenge. Because we are more efficient and more productive, but I’m not sure that we’re that much more efficient and that much more productive.

Funding for CU has also been cut. How do you fund higher education? Do you support the privatization of CU?

Well, every study I’ve seen demonstrates that the single closest correlation to your future economic vitality is your spending on higher education. Now that could be through tuition; it could be through the state money, however you want to dice it. But we are strong believers in the importance of higher education, and our ability to find the resources obviously is challenging now.

But you look at what CU does, not just for Boulder but for the state—the jobs that spin out of CU, the number of entrepreneurs who came out to go to college at åCU and then just stayed. And they end up in Pueblo or Fort Collins or Durango or Denver or Boulder. That’s a continuous injection of talent into our system. It’s a very high level of talent. For a big public school—and they talk about what a party school it is—it is one of the top public universities in America, by almost any measure. So, not only do we have to reverse this constriction that we’ve had on the funding, but we have to figure out a way to get them the money that they need more rapidly.

What surprised you the most about being governor?

Well, the thing that surprised me most about being governor was sort of how much I liked it. Everyone warned me that it’s no where near as much fun as being mayor; you don’t have as much power.

To get to travel this entire state—easily the most beautiful state in America—and spend real time talking about real issues with people at their kitchen tables has been one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given. And I love all the different people who are willing to give a few years of their life to help reinvent state government. Whether you’re talking about the small mountain towns or eastern plains, I love this notion that we’re all Coloradoans, that we all do share certain common values. I’m trying to figure out what they are, how do they as a state make it great. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.

Balancing family time with work time is an issue for any parent. Was it easier achieving that balance as a business owner or as mayor?

I’ve always been a hard worker. Every place I’ve ever worked, there was never anybody who worked harder than I did. That’s just the nature of the kids my mom raised. That being said, your scheduler becomes incredibly important, and my goal is to try and be home at least a couple of hours four or five nights a week, and we do a pretty good job of that. I try to only do one big event on weekends. Now, obviously, there’s a lot of work to be done, a lot of reading. I do spend a fair amount of time on the phone on weekends. If you were to ask my son whether he’s spending as much time with me as his friends spend with their fathers, a lot of these guys are out working 60-hour weeks, too. I think we hold up pretty good in comparison. Obviously I would always cherish more time with my family.

At the end of your service as governor, how would you like Colorado to look for your son and his generation?

I guess I’d like Colorado to evolve to a point where my son could go wherever he wants to go for college, and probably work some several years in another city, another place, and see what it’s like. Maybe even five years, 10 years. But I’d like to think that he could come back to Colorado and be able to find a job that was challenging and rewarding for him. That requires a certain size. I think Denver is just about there. We do have a lot more businesses and opportunities here than you would have found even 15 years ago. But I hope that keeps happening, so that more of our kids, when they go away to college, they want to come back. I talk to them and I know most of them do want to come back to Colorado, but they won’t come back if they can’t get a good job. So hopefully they’ll come back for that good job and feel proud of the public school system and the healthcare system and higher ed and transportation—that those core elements of our infrastructure are all, every one of them, something that they would be proud to be a part of.

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Tanya Ishikawa is a freelance writer and editor. She is vice-president of the the Open Media Foundation board, and was elected in November to the Federal Heights City Council.

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