October 13, 2009 01:19 AM UTC

Penry's "Rebuttal" Raises New Questions

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• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday we discussed the Denver Post’s thorough deconstruction of pet claims by GOP gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry that Gov. Bill Ritter had engaged in a “hiring spree” since taking office. The Post’s analysis shows that the new employees hired by Ritter are a small fraction of what Penry has alleged, and that most of the “growth” in state employees he cites can be explained by voter-mandated increases in higher education funding–and legislation that Penry himself co-sponsored. All told, a very bad story for Penry, left looking like a clueless blowhard at best–or a brazen hypocrite, depending on how charitable you want to be about it.

If there’s one thing can say about Penry, though, it’s this: he goes down swinging, whether he’s right or (as in this case) laughably wrong. Penry is a guy who will argue a case way past the point where anyone else would have given up and conceded error, for good or ill.

More evidence for this can be found in today’s Penry campaign state-funded Senate Minority Office rebuttal to the Post’s story:

Leading voices in Colorado’s General Assembly are pushing back at Gov. Bill Ritter’s claim over the weekend that he bears little responsibility for dramatic growth in the state government’s bureaucracy. The lawmakers say the claim won’t wash with the public as unemployment hits near-record highs amid a crippling recession…

“The bureaucracy is not supposed to be on autopilot,” Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, said today. “He’s just adding insult to injury with his buck passing.”

“For most of his tenure, there’s supposedly been a hiring freeze in place,” Harvey said. “That he’s now quibbling over the specific numbers shows how badly he misses the point on the whole budget debate. To most people, a hiring freeze means no hiring at all.”

Assistant Senate GOP leader Greg Brophy said Ritter’s latest attempt to distance himself from the growth of the state’s bureaucracy is “salt in the wounds for the many Coloradans who have lost jobs in the private sector.”

Brophy also said it underscores the Ritter administration’s lack of focus and lack of leadership in the wake of successive economic forecasts that consistently point to plummeting revenue. The administration repeatedly has been caught off-guard by those forecasts, with its budgets often “out of balance before the ink is even dry,” Brophy said.

“The governor is spending too much time splitting hairs over which new employees he has hired and not enough time trying to balance the budget, which is the real challenge,” said Brophy, a corn farmer from Wray. “I get this picture of him hiding under his desk waiting for the next revenue forecast and praying that it will be better.”

First of all, this “rebuttal” completely ignores the facts as reported by the Post, like the nearly 1,000 new employees hired as a direct result of legislation Penry sponsored. It’s ridiculous on its face.

But more interesting to us than inane usual-suspect carping: why is the Senate Minority Office handling the response to a story that revolves around gubernatorial candidate Penry’s stump speech? This state-funded “nonpartisan” office, as you know, is currently the target of an open-records demand by watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch, who is investigating allegations that the office’s resources have already been misused by Penry’s campaign. Do you think it was a good idea to use this office to respond to this story? After all, Minority Leader Penry approves what his press office sends out, doesn’t he? Does anyone seriously believe it happened in a vacuum?

You might think that we’re veering into a frivolous tangent by focusing on Penry’s use of the state-funded Minority Office to rebut this story. But with a legislative session around the corner, and Minority Leader Penry stating he has no plans to resign his seat while he campaigns…how much of this electioneering back-and-forth on the state’s dime is in our future? And furthermore, why would Penry even take that risk? You can’t run for governor as a “fresh face” if you make it this easy to be attacked for being a politician who appears to use state resources for campaigning.