Colorado House Democrats

Michael Garcia's Resignation

Read by the Clerk this morning in the Statehouse:

Mr. Speaker, I hereby submit my letter of resignation from the Colorado House of Representatives.

Michael Garcia

Speaker Romanoff’s Opening Remarks Kick Off the 2008 Legislative Session

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

Aurora Civitan Club Honors Rep. Michael Garcia

(AURORA)  The Aurora Civitan Club has announced that State Representative Michael Garcia (D-Aurora), is the recipient of The Citizen of the Year Award for his work in the legislature to help persons with developmental disabilities and their families. He was honored on the 29th of September at the Doubletree Hotel on Iliff in Aurora.   

Representative Garcia was honored for his commitment to ending the waiting list of persons with developmental disabilities requiring services and his work toward improving the quality of their lives.

"I am proud to have worked toward addressing the needs of people with developmental disabilities in Aurora and throughout Colorado," said Rep. Garcia.  "I am also really happy that the Civitan Club of Aurora will make a generous contribution in support of one of my favorite charities:  the Aurora Central High School Football Club."

In choosing him, The Civitan Club said that Representative Garcia's work exemplifies the commitment to helping the developmentally disabled that they look for when selecting a recipient.
______________________________________________________________________________

For more than ten years, the Civitan Club of Aurora has helped make the wishes of people with developmental disabilities and their families come true over the holidays and through other community-focused projects.  The Civitan Club, along with other local businesses and individuals, works with The Arc of Aurora to identify people with developmental disabilities and their families who need assistance making the November and December holiday season a reality for themselves and/or their families.  Annually, the Civitan Club of Aurora helps more than 50 individuals with developmental disabilities and their families with Thanksgiving, Hanukah and Christmas food and gifts.

Michael Garcia commits to helping the vulnerable

Would you be willing to spend an extra two and a half pennies on every $10 purchase to eliminate the waiting list for services for people with developmental disabilities? How about if you knew that over 8000 people may have to wait 15 years for services like child care, medical supplies and transportation? From today's Denver Post:

"There are people that are waiting 10 to 15 years to get services," said Rep. Michael Garcia, an Aurora Democrat who presented his sales-tax proposal to a legislative committee Wednesday. "We're going to have to have the moral courage to bring more money into the system."
[...]
"Nothing significant has been done to address the fact that there are thousands of people on the waiting list," said Marijo Rymer, executive director of the advocacy group Arc of Colorado. "We will stand up for those who cannot speak for themselves."

Read the entire article in the Denver Post.

--posted by Staff

Michael Garcia reports on Interim Committee on Long-term Care Services & Supports for Persons with Developmental Disabilities

I am chairing the Interim Committee on Long-term Care Services and Supports for Persons with Developmental Disabilities.  Interim committees are special legislative committees that meet to study issues during the summer and fall months when the legislature is not in session. 

There are approximately 8,000 individuals with developmental disabilities on a waiting list for essential long-term health care services in Colorado.  For adults, these services include "Comprehensive Services" for those who require 24-hour attention and care and "Supported Living Services" for those who can live independently with limited support.  For children and families, these services include programs that assist families with enhanced in-home supports for those children considered to be most in need, provide early intervention to infants and toddlers, or provide aid with costs beyond those normally experienced by other families 

It is important to recognize these individuals are not being underserved but are receiving NO services.  Astonishingly, the wait for services can be up to 10 years!!!

The interim committee is charged with the following:

• ways to create more transparency, reliability, efficiency, and accountability throughout the process of providing long-term health care services and supports for persons with developmental disabilities
• innovative options to meet the long-term health care needs of people with developmental disabilities
• recommendations to eliminate all waiting lists for long-term health care services and supports for persons with developmental disabilities with all deliberate speed
• recommendations for the creation of new funding for persons on the waiting list

The interim committee held its first meeting last week and heard very compelling testimony from both families who are currently receiving services and families who are not receiving services.  These families shared with the committee how these services or lack thereof has impacted their lives.

If you are interested in attending one of the Interim Committee hearings, here are the future meeting dates and topics:

July 31st:  Transparency, reliability, efficiency, & accountability
August 14th:  Innovative options to meet long term care needs
August 29th:  Recommendations to eliminate the waiting list and for new funding sources
September 21st:  Presentations and public comment on legislative proposals
October 10:  Final consideration and voting on legislation

All meetings will begin at 9 AM and most will be held in the Legislative Service Building, Room A (200 East 14th Avenue), which is across the street and just south of the State Capitol.  The meeting on September 21st will be held in House Committee Room 0112 in the State Capitol.

If you can't make it down to the State Capitol, you can still hear the Interim Committee hearings online.  Here is the link to listen in.

You can check out the committee's website for meeting agendas (which should be available about a week prior to each meeting) and for additional information.  The website can be found here.

I believe as a society we have a moral obligation to help the most vulnerable of our citizens.  I hope this Interim Committee will find solutions to help us better meet our obligation.

--Michael