April 28, 2012 04:00 PM UTC

Ray Scott, April 27, 2012 Town Hall Meeting

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• by: Konola

Last night Ray Scott hosted his first Town Hall meeting in Grand Junction. The days of the Irish Pub, as in public house, seem to be over. Now the public square has moved to the back room of Main Street Bagels, which is where Scott’s Town Hall was held.

The room was no more full than it is on Friday mornings, when a bunch of malcontents meet to munch on bagels, drink coffee, and cure the ills of the world. The people in the room were the leadership of Western Slope Conservative Alliance and the local GOP. I even got to put a face with a name that was recently in a dustup with members of GJResult Tea Party and me on the pages of the E-Edition of the Daily Sentinel.

Conspicuously absent were members of GJResult, with their trademark yellow hats and T-shirts. The room was packed with people wearing red. The candidate didn’t seem to have gotten the dress code message-he was wearing a blue shirt. Ray Scott once told me that he knew I was a liberal by the dangly beaded earrings I was wearing, so I know that the dress code is important to Republicans. I wore a traditional African garment, in blue, to the meeting. I’m sure my silent protest was missed by all in attendance.

Ray Scott is a friendly sort. He pulled a Bush, and sneaked up behind me to rub my shoulders. I confess it felt pretty good. I’ve been burning the candle on both ends, and had quite a bit of stress built up. He also made sure to announce to the crowd that I was his opponent’s campaign manager. I was amused by the hostile stares I received thereafter, although Scott wasn’t one of the hostiles.

I did overhear some interesting conversations. A man and woman sitting close by were talking about how they really didn’t care if gay marriage was approved. They couldn’t figure out how allowing two gay people to get married would impact their own solid marriages. The woman even mentioned that there were gay people in her life that she loved with her whole heart. Maybe they weren’t real Republicans, she wore green and he wore beige, although they seemed to know everyone in the room.

The content of the meeting wasn’t any less superficial than this blog has been so far. Scott began by explaining how his first year was all about figuring out the lay of the land. He did drop one bombshell that seemed to be as silent as my dashiki-when he went to Denver he had no plan, no program, no legislation to propose. That probably explains why most of us don’t know what he’s done for Mesa County. He didn’t go there to do anything other than take up space and clown around.

He highlighted three nowhere bills in his discussion. All three of them are bills that Scott is carrying either as favors to the oil and gas industry, who he vowed to fight for in a December 2012 Free Press article; or employers of Josh Penry (the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel and EIS Solutions.)

The first was HB12-1335, which was an amendment, with footnotes, to another bill, and which will go nowhere. Scott is concerned that a whole laundry list of budget line items will suffer because they received $56-million in federal mineral lease revenues that are the subject of an “ongoing Roan Plateau lawsuit seeking to cancel the federal mineral leases sold in August 2008.”  The footnote goes on to allege that the “royalty” money has been spent, but if the sale is struck down by the court, Colorado may need to reimburse the BLM.  (For the record, I am a director of Western Colorado Congress, which is a party to the lawsuit.)

Psst. Scott, there is no “royalty” money unless a lease is producing, although money has changed hands it is not “royalty” money, it is a lease purchase. They really are two different things, and as an “oil industry expert” you really should know the difference. Likewise, your aide who wrote the footnote should have gotten the terms straight. Scott did mention that he wrote this footnote as a message to Governor Frackenlooper, who does not like this amendment, which is going nowhere.

The second bill was HB 12-1329, which is the screw Paul Brown bill. It seeks to eliminate public trustees who are appointed by the governor, and roll their duties into the duties of the county treasurer. I’m guessing that Jay Seaton of the Daily Sentinel lobbied hard for this bill because he’s still smarting from Brown’s decision to move about $500,000 worth of advertising revenue to Palisade and Fruita newspapers. Josh Penry writes a weekly column for this publication.

The third bill was HB 12-1280, which has already been analyzed in previous blogs. Scott pointed out that nowhere in the bill does it mention Mesa County. True. He also mentioned that Cortez and Durango would like video lottery terminals in their cities-the original bill would have eliminated these two communities but protected the Ute’s casino with a requirement that no VLTs were authorized within 100 miles of an existing casino. Originally this bill authorized two VLT’s, now it authorizes three VLT’s-Grand Junction, Cortez and Durango?

Scott attempted to refute the allegation that this legislation would benefit one pari-mutuel licensee. He said there are more than one of them in the state. However, my analysis turns up only one that meets the definition in the legislation-Arapahoe Park. I’ve been told that EIS Solutions is lobbying for this bill.