May 03, 2020 03:58 PM UTC

The Gazette Editorial Board Breaks Out the Crayons (Again)

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• by: Colorado Pols

We’ve occasionally taken time in this space to discuss the completely absurd editorial board of The Colorado Springs Gazette, which is basically the newspaper version of your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving. In fact, we wrote about the Gazette editorial board just a few weeks ago after it vomited out an opinion titled: “Should we save all lives in Colorado regardless of expense?”

The Gazette long ago stopped even pretending to hide its political biases and interests. The newspaper has also generally given up on fact-based arguments in support of its perplexing opinions; we went so far as to call a certain 2018 editorial “the dumbest thing you will read this year” (we were not wrong). On Election Day in 2018, when it was clear that Democrats were well on their way to an historic trouncing of Republicans up and down the ballot, the Gazette published a charming editorial preemptively trashing “ill-informed decisions” by Colorado voters.

So it is that the Gazette published another gem on Friday — a thinly-veiled editorial about economic recovery funds that was primarily just an excuse to take a shot at former Gov. John Hickenlooper in advance of his likely General Election campaign for U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Cory Gardner. The gist of Friday’s editorial is that “the media and watchdogs among the general public” really need to keep their eyes on federal and state recovery funds or else Hickenlooper will steal it all, or something:

This is not the first time federal funds have flowed into states to help with recovery from an economic crisis. Back in 2003, Colorado received $157 million from the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. The state government was authorized to use the money only for costs to “provide essential government services to cover the costs” of federal mandates associated with the 9/11 attacks on the country by terrorists in 2001.

At first, state government used the money for job training, upgrades to public transportation security, law enforcement, and other costs reasonably associated with recovering from and avoiding another attack. Later, the federal government slightly relaxed standards and liberated states to use leftover funds for essential states services.

Seven years after Colorado received the recovery funds, former Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper took office as governor. He began using the remaining funds, which amounted to about $10 million, to pay for an array of expenses that have no apparent nexus to essential government services.

The Gazette editorial board is attempting once again to bring up Hickenlooper’s relation to a mythical “post-9/11 recovery fund” that most everyone else just remembers as the 2003 Bush Tax Cuts (for more, check out this in-depth story written by Erik Maulbetsch of The Colorado Times-Recorder about how this entire narrative has been reimagined as a hit piece against Hickenlooper). The short version here is that the Gazette is again pushing a dubious ethics complaint claiming that Hickenlooper misspent federal/state funds for personal or political reasons.