Zak Wood / Colorado Daily

State Senate candidate Cindy Carlisle, right, makes her opening statements during a public forum while her opponent, candidate Rollie Heath, left, watches on. The forum, moderated by State Representative Claire Levy, center, was held at the Boulder Senior Center at the East Boulder Community Center Thursday evening.

State Senate candidates Cindy Carlisle and Rollie Heath held a long-awaited debate Thursday, and discourse was mostly issues-based and civil – with one brief period of exception.

Heath and Carlisle, Democratic Party candidates for the Senate District (SD) 18 seat, faced off at the East Boulder Community Center, 5660 Sioux Dr., and perhaps 60 to 70 people attended. The Indian Peaks Group (IPG) of the Sierra Club hosted the event, so naturally many of the questions (and even the answers) focused on environmental topics.

Carlisle, a current member of the CU Board of Regents and a former Boulder City Council member, led off with opening statements. She said there is a clear choice in the SD-18 race, since she called herself an “ardent environmentalist” and a long-time elected official who has represented the people of the district.

She said the City Council she served on implemented stringent wetlands protection legislation, a transportation master plan that included planning for alternative modes, block water rates and new bus routes. As a regent, she said she has opposed CU-South Campus development, and said she was the first regent to endorse CU’s “Blueprint for a Green Campus” environmental outline.

Heath, a Boulder businessman and the Democratic Party’s 2002 gubernatorial nominee, also spoke of environmental, Democratic or progressive credentials during his opening statements. He said “every major environmental group in Colorado” endorsed him in 2002, and said Colorado should harness the power of its research universities and labs to collaborate on alternative energy solutions.

Heath also said that he was the founding chair of the Rocky Mountain Progressive Network – now known as Progress Now. He said the need for a progressive advocacy organization became apparent during the 2002 election, since the free-market Independence Institute was influential and the progressives had no organization to counter with.

The IPG asked each candidate four prepared questions, and one asked for the five bills that each candidate would introduce in their first Legislative session, if elected.

Heath said he would tackle fiscal issues, including the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), with one of them. He is a supporter of Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff’s current proposal to take TABOR refunds and devote them to a State Education Fund, for example.

He also said he’d work to increase incentives for homeowners who wish to install renewable energy hardware such as solar panels. His third proposal would be to provide preschool education for every four-year-old in the state, and his fourth would be to make health care coverage available to every person in the state under 18 years of age. His fifth bill would focus on funding basic safety and maintenance for the state’s transportation infrastructure.

Carlisle said she would propose a Colorado Environmental Protection Act, which would mandate environmental reviews for state and major local projects. Second, she would propose legislation protecting environmental whistleblowers against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP), which can be used by larger companies to intimidate citizens.

Her third proposal would allow in-state college tuition for qualifying undocumented students who graduated from Colorado high schools. Her fourth would be a Patient Safety Act, and her fifth would be a ban on the construction of new coal-fired power plants.

The only real fireworks during the debate happened when the candidates had the chance to ask each other one question.

Heath noted that he has started his own organizations and funded them, and asked Carlisle what she would do to fund some of the objectives that she’d like to accomplish.

Carlisle said that certain proposals, such as Romanoff’s Education Fund initiative, would return money to the state coffers. But she said there is a great deal of pent-up demand for departmental funding due to TABOR restraints, and said the state might need to look at raising taxes to fund proposals that could benefit health care or children’s needs.

She said Boulder taxes itself to fund programs, including transportation needs, Open Space and city services. She also said she would examine the state’s tax structure, with an eye on making sure profits also get invested back in communities.

Carlisle then noted Heath’s history as a businessman with ties to the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry (CACI) and the IMA Financial Group, an insurance company that she said provides pollution insurance. She asked Heath if he would put up a “Chinese Wall” between himself and the organizations, to have no communication with their lobbyists regarding legislation.

Heath said he is proud of his business past, and said he had no recent communications with CACI, except to tell the organization that he didn’t want its campaign support. He also said IMA is a “wonderful” financial firm that provided insurance for his business, and then spoke about an item from Carlisle’s past.

Heath said Carlisle, as a regent, recused herself from the recent Title IX case filed by former student Lisa Simpson against CU. Her husband, Baine Kerr, represented Simpson, and Heath said Carlisle took representation from the citizens of Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District (Carlisle’s district) out of the process by doing so. He also said a Carlisle campaign filing with the Secretary of State included income from Kerr Family Interests, which he said was related to the large oil company Kerr-McGee.

Carlisle later noted that the Kerr family that she married into is not tied to Kerr-McGee. After the debate, Heath and a supporter admitted that there was no family tie, but Heath said his point was that his past business associations should not have been relevant in this race, any more than a tie to Kerr-McGee would have been.

Carlisle said after the debate that she may have recused herself from the Title IX case, but supported broader issues for the 2nd CD, including women’s safety and athletic department reform.

But on other environmental issues, Heath said he supports forming a Colorado Water Action Committee to stave off potential future water shortages. He said he favors rapid action on mass transit, including the FasTracks initiative, and he favors fiscal reform so the state can invest in the green items that have a sizable price tag.

Carlisle said she could favor using open lands funding, including money from Great Outdoors Colorado, to fund non-game wildlife protection. She also said she’d favor implementing Bus Rapid Transit as a transit solution, possibly instead of rail, since the roadway infrastructure is largely in place.

FYI

For more information about Rollie Heath, visit the Web site www.rollieheath.com. For more about Cindy Carlisle, visit www.cindycarlisle.com. For more about voting in Boulder County, visit www.VoteBoulder.org.

Contact Richard Valenty about this story at (303) 443-6272 ext. 126, or valenty@coloradodaily.com.