Colorado law restricts the growth of per capita tax revenues to population growth plus inflation. This has prevented the spending or accumulation of surpluses. Instead, there have tax cuts totaling almost $1 billion. To limit the collection of surpluses, Owens cut taxes on income, capital gains, interest, dividends and business property -- and opposed other governors' attempts to impose Internet taxation. And when his ``paycheck protection'' executive order ended the automatic deduction of union dues from state employees' checks, 70 percent of the members left the Colorado Association of Public Employees.
Regarding education, grades K through 12, his school-choice program is even more ambitious than those in Milwaukee, Cleveland and Florida. Parents are given what the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, calls the nation's best report card on every school's performance. Owens says schools are rated on ``more than 400 data points.'' If even a few schools in a district fail, struggling students from low-income families can apply for what will be, when the program is fully implemented, almost 20,000 tuition vouchers redeemable at public or private schools.
If a school fails to meet minimum standards three years in a row, the state replaces the school's management. And to give the new managers maximum latitude, the school becomes a charter school.
On a sparkling morning recently in the Mile High City, Owens stepped out onto the statehouse steps where workmen were moving a marker, the one that designates a particular step as precisely 5,280 feet above sea level. New data shows that the marker belongs a few steps lower. That means Denver is even a bit more elevated than has been thought. Time will tell if that is a metaphor for Owens' political career.