Denver Business Journal - Congressional Candidates Clash on Transportation, Workforce Development

News Article

By Ed Sealover

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Golden and Republican challenger George Athanasopoulos offered dramatically different visions of how they would deal with issues ranging from workforce development, to transportation funding, to affordable housing Friday.

The two faced off at a debate sponsored by the Metro North Chamber of Commerce and Denver Regional Council of Governments.

Their clashes on the role of government in business affairs were a stark difference from the largely genial and much smaller disagreements between Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Polis of Boulder and his Republican challenger, Nicholas Morse, on similar topics. Republican U.S. Senate nominee Darryl Glenn and U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman of Aurora also spoke at the breakfast event in Westminster, though their opponents -- Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and Democratic state Sen. Morgan Carroll -- declined to participate.

Athanasopoulos, a recently discharged Army veteran who is facing a serious uphill battle against 10-year incumbent Perlmutter in the 7th Congressional District, repeatedly made the case that government should stay out of the affairs of companies or, at the very most, turn over any funds going to areas like workforce training programs to the states to disburse.

But he said he would prefer that the federal government not be involved at all in choosing which professional tracks should get additional attention in the education system. He also said that the government should not be funding things like the Regional Transportation District's light-rail project that help only small percentages of the population and that its only role in helping to create more affordable housing should be rolling back regulations that drive up building costs.

"It's not the federal government's responsibility to tell us how to educate people in Colorado," Athanasopoulos told the crowd at the Denver Marriott Westminster. "When it comes to students, the empowerment of the students should be allowed. The government is spending absurd amounts of money to create particular skills."

Perlmutter disagreed, saying that he would like to help local community colleges get grants so that they can prepare workers for changes in the new technology-driven landscape. He also said he supports federal funding both for highway and transit projects. And he would like the federal government to offer more grants for local governments and for housing authorities to help seniors and low-income people especially be able to afford housing.

"I think we're in this together, and I think our philosophies are very different," Perlmutter said of Athanasopoulos.

Polis, an eight-year congressman, and Morse, a Fort Collins marketing executive, actually agreed on a number of details about federal business legislation in their race to represent the 2nd Congressional District. Both said they want to get more funding for the expansions of Interstate 25 and 70, that the federal government has a limited role regarding affordable housing and that the private sector should play a bigger role in boosting America's cybersecurity defenses.

Morse did criticize as being overly broad a bill that Polis has sponsored that would remove the exemption for fracking operations from clean-air standards, saying it would impact agricultural operations as well.

"Our district is pretty energy-abundant," Morse said, noting his support for an all-of-the-above energy policy that clashes with Polis' attempts to rein in oil and gas drilling in a number of ways. "The problem I've had is with his methodology and approach to turn off high-quality sources ... faster than we're turning on new ones."

And Polis expounded on how the federal government should make more allowances for technological advances in transportation, such as driver-less cars and electric vehicles. But in doing so, it will have to look for new ways of funding roads beyond the gas tax, whose revenues will fall as fewer gas-burning cars and more fuel-efficient cars take the road.