Let me begin by congratulating our newest members, Representatives Mark Ferrandino and Christine Scanlan. We look forward to serving with each of you.
I would also like you to welcome my mother to the chamber.
Thank you for allowing me to share some thoughts with you on this occasion. This is the fifth year I’ve had the privilege – it’s also the last.
Representatives Borodkin, Garcia, Hodge, Jahn, Madden, Marshall, Stafford, White and I came in together – and we’re going out together. Congratulations to each of you.
Today I want to tell you a story. It’s not a story with a lot of characters in it. We’re going to have plenty of those stories in the months ahead. We’ll be talking about the 12,000 students who drop out of Colorado’s high schools each year, the 107,000 Coloradans who don’t have jobs, the 792,000 who don’t have health insurance.
This morning I want to focus on just one person. A child, to be specific. A baby.
Some 70,000 babies will be born in Colorado in 2008 – enough to populate a House district.
This little fellow was one of the first to arrive. His name is Wyatt James Sheets. He was born on New Year’s Day, at Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs. He weighed in at 6 pounds and measured 18½ inches long.
Wyatt showed up four weeks ahead of schedule. His parents live in Colorado Springs, but they spent the holidays on the Western Slope. Wyatt’s mother began having contractions during a New Year’s Day service at the Rocky Mountain Baptist Church in Rifle, where her father-in-law is a pastor. I think Wyatt was just in a hurry to make good on his father’s wish – that he become a NASCAR driver (His dad wanted to name him Dale, as in Earnhardt, but he lost that argument.)
Wyatt’s father, James, is an Army mechanic at Fort Carson. He served two tours of duty in Iraq, where he drove a tank with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Wyatt’s mother, Alicea, directed an after-school program and takes care of their three daughters. Wyatt’s sisters helped decorate his room and pick out his crib. His oldest sister, Ashley, even said she thought it was “cool to have a little brother.”
James and Alicea want what all parents want – a better quality of life for their children. They want Wyatt to get the best education in the world. They want a doctor or a nurse to care for him when he gets sick and to help make sure that he stays healthy. They want Wyatt to live a happy and rewarding life.
James and Alicea have high expectations for their son – and for the state in which they plan to raise him. But for Wyatt to fulfill his potential, we have to fulfill ours.
Wyatt’s well-being will depend on the decisions that James and Alicea make in the months and years ahead. In the long run, his success will hinge on the decisions that he makes for himself.
But the quality of Wyatt’s life will also rest on the decisions that we make here, in this chamber, this year. We’re not his parents; nobody can take their place. But we can make it easier for James and Alicea to prosper and for Wyatt to thrive. That’s what I want to talk about this morning.
Let’s fast forward a few years. It’s 2011 or 2012, and Wyatt is old enough to start preschool. Whether he does is a choice his parents will have to make. But right now, you and I have a choice to make as well. Let’s make the right choice. Let’s say yes to high-quality preschool and full-day kindergarten.
Early childhood education is one of the single most effective investments we can make. Let’s help more parents like James and Alicea give their children a smart start on school.
By 2014, Wyatt will be old enough to start first grade. Most of the teachers he’ll have then have already been hired or are being recruited right now.
We need to do a better job of training, retaining and rewarding high-skilled teachers, especially those who agree to work in the schools, with the students, and in the subjects that present the greatest challenges.
Let’s equip our teachers with the tools they need – the time, the training, the technology – to give Wyatt a world-class education. Let’s put a top-flight teacher in his classroom, and in every classroom.
Of course, even the best teacher in the world will find it tough to teach in a school that’s falling down. Wyatt deserves a learning environment that is safe and healthy and educationally enriching – not a building where the roof is caving in or the floorboards are so rotten that they can’t even hold up his desk. Yet students are going to back to school this week in buildings just like that, especially in rural Colorado – in the San Luis Valley and the Arkansas Valley and the Eastern Plains.
That is fundamentally unacceptable in a state as affluent as ours. Dozens of factors will affect Wyatt’s ability to get a good education, but his zip code shouldn’t be one of them.
It’s time for the BEST plan – to Build Excellent Schools Today, schools designed not for the 19th century or the 20th century but for Wyatt’s century, the 21st century. This plan will allow us to meet our schools’ most critical health and safety needs. I want to thank Treasurer Kennedy for helping us identify nearly $1 billion in state and local resources. This will be the most significant investment in school construction since statehood.
It’s a little too soon to ask Wyatt what he wants to be when he grows up. But here’s one thing we do know: What he earns will depend on what he learns.
The workforce Wyatt enters 20 or 25 years from now will face stiff competition not just from other states but from other countries, too. We should prepare Wyatt to meet the demands of a global economy. He’ll need more than a high-school diploma. He’ll need some form of higher education – whether that means vocational training or an advanced degree.
Let’s keep the cost of college within his reach. Wyatt and his classmates should be able to get a good education even if their parents aren’t very well off. In our country, where you come from shouldn’t dictate where you end up.
Wyatt may be a long way from joining the workforce, but there are some steps we can take right now to strengthen the economy that awaits him. First, we should continue to invest in our infrastructure. Wyatt shouldn’t have to spend all of his money fixing the roads and bridges that you and I neglected.
Second, we should support homegrown industries like aerospace, bioscience and renewable energy – industries in which Colorado is already gaining a competitive edge.
We should make sure there are plenty of good jobs for Wyatt to choose from – whether he farms wind or wheat, pilots a jet or peers into a microscope.
Third, we should simplify our tax code, so that Wyatt’s employer doesn’t have to hire an army of accountants just to do business here. And as for our smallest employers – the 45,000 entrepreneurs who form the backbone of Colorado’s economy – we should spare them the burden of the business personal property tax once and for all.
There’s one other step we should take to shore up Wyatt’s financial future – and that is to save for a downturn. Even in a state as sunny as Colorado, a rainy-day fund makes good sense.
We’ve talked about helping Wyatt get a smart start, a top-flight teacher, and a safe place to go to school. We’ve talked about his prospects for college and for work. But more than anything else, what will enable Wyatt to live a long and productive life – the top priority of every parent – is his health.
If Wyatt had been born in 1908, he would have been lucky to live past the age of 50. That was the average life expectancy in America a hundred years ago. Babies born in the United States today can expect to live 78 years or more. Wyatt’s parents hope that he’ll live to see the 22nd century.
Wyatt is lucky to have been born in the most prosperous nation on the face of the earth. America’s medical facilities and services are among the finest in the world. What we need to figure out, as a state and as a nation, is how to make those services available to Wyatt and his parents, at a price they can afford – and how to help them stay healthy enough to avoid having to go to a hospital in the first place.
Those are some of the questions we’re going to answer over the next four months. But there are several steps we should take right now.
First, we should cut the cost of health care. Administrative expenses eat up as much as a quarter of every health-care dollar.
We can get a much bigger bang for our buck. We can save more than $100 million just by standardizing ID cards and claim forms, streamlining the processes we use to verify eligibility and credential providers, and simplifying procedures for prior authorization and appeals.
When Wyatt was born, his condition, his progress and his test results were all recorded on paper. Valley View Hospital is still developing an electronic information system. We can save money and reduce the risk of medical errors – without compromising Wyatt’s privacy – by bringing more of our hospitals into the 21st century.
Second, we should reduce the ranks of the uninsured. Wyatt’s family has health insurance. But one out of every six people in this state doesn’t. The average family in Colorado will spend $1,000 this year treating the uninsured.
Here’s one point I hope we can agree on – every child should have health coverage. Children without insurance are 10 times more likely to miss out on the immunizations and check-ups they need to stay healthy. Uninsured children are more likely to get sick. They are more likely to stay sick. And they are more likely to die. Let’s end this debate and cover our kids.
Third, we should put a premium on prevention. The emergency room ought to be a last resort, not a primary source of care. We should give Wyatt and his parents every incentive to stay healthy – and to exercise personal responsibility. Let’s reduce their premiums if they curb their cholesterol, lower their blood pressure, or quit smoking. Let’s minimize their co-payments for preventive care and chronic-care management. Let’s encourage them to take advantage of health and wellness programs.
The last – and in some ways, the most important – step we can take to improve Wyatt’s health is to protect his environment. The more we contaminate Colorado – the more we foul our air and pollute our water – the more we diminish Wyatt’s quality of life.
We can do better. We can restore the health of our forests and replenish our rivers. We can help our ranchers and farmers hold on to their lands for future generations. And – this is key – we can find new and more efficient ways to heat our homes, fuel our cars, and power our economy.
Greenhouse gases pose the most serious threat to Wyatt’s environment. If we don’t acknowledge and attack the causes of global warming – if we don’t become, in Governor Ritter’s words, more “stubborn stewards” of this fragile planet – we will jeopardize Wyatt’s chances of surviving on it.
Now some folks will try to trick James and Alicea into believing that they have to choose between a high standard of living for themselves or for their son. That’s a false choice. When it comes to energy, James and Alicea do have choices to make – and so do we. But these choices won’t enslave Wyatt’s family or bankrupt their budget. In fact, our new energy economy is already creating thousands of new jobs.
We don’t have to savage the economy in order to salvage the environment. Quite the opposite: we can sustain both.
For James and Alicea, that means conserving more energy. It may even mean generating their own.
For us, it means providing rebates, loans and credit for those who produce renewable energy, and removing the barriers that stand in their way.
For Wyatt, it will mean a cleaner, greener place to call home.
In the end, what James and Alicea want – what Wyatt deserves – is a shot at the American Dream: the chance to enjoy a solid education, a steady job, a safe and healthy place to live and grow up. That’s not too much for them to expect, and it’s not too much for us to deliver.
There may be some distant corner of the earth where it is considered acceptable for children to languish without those opportunities. There have certainly been such times in our nation’s history. But not here, not now, not in the 21st century.
By the time Wyatt reaches the ripe old age of 42, this century will be half-over, or half-begun. Colorado will be home to nine million people – four-and-a-half times as many as there were when I was born, 42 years ago.
What will become of Wyatt, of James and Alicea, and of all the people lucky enough to live here in the year 2050? That’s mostly up to them. But for the next 120 days, it’s also up to us. Let’s get started.
Sincerely,
Andrew Romanoff
Speaker of the House
-- Posted by Staff
"Our agenda is ambitious: to build the best public schools in America, to become the renewable energy capital of the world, and to bring health care to all Coloradans. That's what the Colorado Promise is all about." —House Speaker Andrew Romanoff
DENVER -- 
