October 15, 2009 08:32 PM UTC

Durango Loves It When Ritter Flies In

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• by: Colorado Pols

If you’ve never had the pleasure yourself, let us be the ones to tell you: it takes a long time to drive from Denver to Durango. It’s an absolutely beautiful drive that takes one through the wild, craggy heart of our majestic state, but it’s a seven-hour affair on a good day.

Fortunately, as the Durango Herald’s editorial board notes today, Gov. Bill Ritter’s got an airplane:

Gov. Bill Ritter has come under criticism for his use of state-owned aircraft – including in one instance taking his wife, daughter and the daughter’s friend on a trip to Jackson Hole. But if his political opponents want an issue to beat Ritter with they are going to have to come up with something better than this.

Not only is the governor’s spending on state planes reasonable, but those of us who do not live in Denver should encourage him to travel. Ritter is the governor of Colorado, not of the Front Range…

The aircraft in question are among five planes operated by the Colorado State Patrol. Three are for law enforcement use only, while the other two are available for authorized officials who then reimburse the CSP from their departments’ budgets.

The State Patrol charges $240 per day for a pilot and either $250 per hour for a twin-engined, six-seat Cessna 340 or $525 per hour for a twin-turboprop Beech King Air that seats eight. Assuming that at least one of those seats is occupied by a pilot, that can still pencil out fairly well…

More important than the economies of travel, however, is the convenience – and what that means for the state. Colorado is a beautiful state, but much of what accounts for that splendor also makes surface travel difficult. With a huge majority of the state’s population living within a few miles of I-25, Ritter could effectively govern and campaign without leaving the Front Range – or between Boulder and Colorado Springs, for that matter.

The governor’s ability to visit Southwest Colorado and the other three corners of the state without spending two days in a car means we get to see him, too. And, more to the point, he gets to see and hear from people in those parts of the state distant from Denver.

Really, suburban Denver peanut gallery, ante your credibility on this non-story as long as you want–our friends away from the interstate corridors know better.