June 23, 2023 02:11 PM UTC

Just Stop Talking, Kristi Burton Brown

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

As KDVR FOX 31’s Lanie Lee Cook reports, yesterday Gov. Jared Polis issued a disaster declaration covering four counties hit by severe storms on Wednesday:

Gov. Jared Polis issued the verbal declaration for Lincoln, Elbert, El Paso and Washington counties. Severe thunderstorm and flash flood warnings were in effect into Thursday night as weather systems moved across the state.

Thursday brought a second consecutive day of severe weather, adding to weeks of rain that have affected property all over the Front Range…

Shortly before Gov. Polis issued this declaration for the specific areas impacted by Wednesday’s severe weather late yesterday afternoon, a tornado passed directly through the southern Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch doing a considerable amount of fresh damage. The disaster declaration issued for Lincoln, Elbert, El Paso and Washington counties came after the damage in these areas was able to be assessed, a process that obviously takes a little bit of time. But local Republicans led by former Colorado GOP chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown saw what they thought was an opening, and jumped head-first into completely baseless allegations of political favoritism:

The accusation that conservative Douglas County was somehow being slighted by Gov. Jared Polis in a time of need quickly spread among area Republican elected officials:

Again, the disaster declaration issued yesterday was related to storm damage on Wednesday, and it’s necessary to assess the damage from yesterday’s tornado before the incident receives a disaster declaration of its own. As for the sinister allegation that Polis is playing politics with disaster relief, 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark had the conclusion you’ve probably already reached:

As far as faux outage goes, this example isn’t particularly sophisticated, but it might have the intended effect if people don’t know the covered counties are *more* conservative than DougCo and the disaster declaration was for the previous day’s damage. https://t.co/14yeHUuzS4

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) June 23, 2023

If Polis was out to make conservative counties suffer, obviously El Paso County would top the list! In fact any of the counties subject to yesterday’s disaster declaration would be. Fortunately for everyone, Ron DeSantis-style retaliation is not how Gov. Polis does business. The latest word is that pending the assessment of damage from the Highlands Ranch tornado, a disaster declaration may be issued for Douglas County as well. State emergency management officials actually tried to intervene with Kristi Burton Brown on Twitter last night, patiently explaining how the disaster relief process is…well, a process.

They needn’t have bothered, KBB didn’t want to hear it:

In the end, what we have here is Colorado emergency management officials including the governor doing the essential work of governing, versus ankle-biters who have nothing to offer but falsehoods and presumptions of bad faith. There’s no “working across the aisle” with endlessly quarrelsome people whose only goal is to turn every interaction into a wildly acrimonious face-off for political points.

Especially, as in this case, when they don’t know how anything works.