Speaker 1: If you are in HD twenty five, that is House
Speaker 1: District twenty five, and you've not voted yet, perhaps you
Speaker 1: will want to vote for my next guest, George.
Speaker 2: Mama, he wants your vote. George, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks many thanks for having me. Well.
Speaker 1: First of all, give my audience a little bit of
Speaker 1: info about where HD twenty five is, just in case
Speaker 1: they don't know their house district understood.
Speaker 3: HD twenty five runs from I seventy south Deckers and
Speaker 3: from a roughly pine junction east to Wadsworth. It jig
Speaker 3: jogs around down in the air Ken Carroll a little
Speaker 3: bit up the bold with a little finger as a
Speaker 3: result of the redistrict team. But and then he goes
Speaker 3: right back down the deckers from there.
Speaker 1: So when's we're really looking at West jeff Coo area,
Speaker 1: right Western jeff.
Speaker 2: Co Yes, Now, okay, George, Why in the world.
Speaker 1: Would you want to go into the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: where Republicans are so outnumbered?
Speaker 2: What inspired you to run?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm running the state representative because of the current
Speaker 3: representative doesn't represent all the people in my district. I
Speaker 3: grew up here, so I'm very big on making sure
Speaker 3: that the people here get a voice, and we haven't
Speaker 3: really had that up here. The current representative is align
Speaker 3: yourself with the far left. She's been an activist and
Speaker 3: a majority of her decisions are not really in the
Speaker 3: interest of the constituents.
Speaker 2: Up here in what respect. Give me some examples.
Speaker 3: Well, the crime and economy are the biggest ones that
Speaker 3: constituents are calling me about. Followed why they want some
Speaker 3: choice for the schooling. You know, they're complaining about the
Speaker 3: fact that the school district is thinking they've got really
Speaker 3: good scores of c's and d's they're academics, which the
Speaker 3: parents say, if I can't get my kids educated the
Speaker 3: way I want, I want to be able to take
Speaker 3: them somewhere else. I get it. The other big one
Speaker 3: right now is can't get insurance in the mountains for
Speaker 3: their homes because of the fire problem. And the roads
Speaker 3: are terrible, and we've got a governor who's decided to
Speaker 3: get sixty back powered buses but not maintain our existing
Speaker 3: roads or do anything to further our infrastructure. So the
Speaker 3: folks in the mountains are calling me, going, how am
Speaker 3: I going to get out of the hills if we're
Speaker 3: not going to maintain the existing roads, Well, you're preaching
Speaker 3: to acquire on all those things.
Speaker 1: I mean that those are things that I am extremely
Speaker 1: concerned about.
Speaker 2: I'd like to kind of touch on that.
Speaker 1: Homeowner's insurance situation because I think we are perilously close
Speaker 1: to having a home insurance crisis along the lines that
Speaker 1: they have in Florida.
Speaker 2: I'd love to know what ideas you have or.
Speaker 1: Avenues you would pursue to manage homeowners insurance as we've
Speaker 1: had some really bad natural disasters here over the last
Speaker 1: few years.
Speaker 3: Well, you're right many and one of the things I've
Speaker 3: been making phone calls myself. I've met with the insurance folks,
Speaker 3: both in the hills and out here on the flat,
Speaker 3: and one of the biggest things is we have a
Speaker 3: third party group that determines whether or not you get
Speaker 3: insurance in the fire, and it's based on whether you've
Speaker 3: got mitigation done and a big one is whether the
Speaker 3: county's done their part in the mitigation. So the third
Speaker 3: party group flies drones around and determines whether you do
Speaker 3: or don't get in the insurance. Interestingly, with a number
Speaker 3: of these insurance folks I met with, they showed me
Speaker 3: pictures of a house that's in the forest. You can
Speaker 3: barely see it. They got insurance. The guy out on
Speaker 3: the flat that has nothing around his own didn't get insurance.
Speaker 3: So there's a paragon problem there with how it's determined,
Speaker 3: and so we've got to work together to do with that.
Speaker 3: The other thing I'm finding is the insurance companies are
Speaker 3: flat walking out of Colorado. Yeah, and that's even a
Speaker 3: bigger problem. I had a family call me this past week.
Speaker 3: They're an older couple. One they're having enough problems paying
Speaker 3: their taxes, property taxes, but the house is paid off,
Speaker 3: and they they're not going to carry insurance at all
Speaker 3: because they can't afford it because they were denied four
Speaker 3: times with insurance.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that stinks. I mean, that really stinks big time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awful. Okay, So that is not very heartening.
Speaker 1: And I do think, George, that this is a serious problem.
Speaker 1: What are some of the other issues that you've heard
Speaker 1: as you've walked around the district that people are concerned
Speaker 1: about in Colorado right now?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Anny, I'm calling the criminal problem or
Speaker 3: crime problem with the economy, and the easiest way to
Speaker 3: relate it is the folks down here near my home.
Speaker 3: At the Safeway store are concerned about the fact that
Speaker 3: they're not allowed to pursue the guy who walks in
Speaker 3: and walks off with a grocery cart full of groceries, right,
Speaker 3: So then they call law enforcement. Law enforcement says, well,
Speaker 3: that's been dumbed down by the legislature to a misdemeanor crime.
Speaker 3: It's no longer a felony, so we can make a
Speaker 3: death report. The clerk then says, well, I don't have
Speaker 3: the time for that, so the report goes unreported. The
Speaker 3: district attorney then says, well, crime's down, but it really
Speaker 3: isn't down, it just hasn't been reported. And to go
Speaker 3: along with the same thing, the legislature took qualified immunity
Speaker 3: for law enforcement. Right, so law enforcement officers no longer
Speaker 3: do proactive police work. They wait for a call to
Speaker 3: come in.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: So the complaint from my constituency is I never see
Speaker 3: a police part and I get it having been a
Speaker 3: cop for forty five years. This is going to be
Speaker 3: the biggest problem for law enforcement in the state of
Speaker 3: Colorado in the future, because if we're not going to
Speaker 3: do proactive work, we're not going to solve the crime problem.
Speaker 3: Thus the cost of living goes up because the corporate
Speaker 3: folks raise the prices because they're not getting reimbursed for
Speaker 3: the folks and there's no consequences for the person who
Speaker 3: commissed the crime.
Speaker 2: You know that. I just went to a.
Speaker 1: Public safety forum in Douglas County, and Douglas County is
Speaker 1: in a much better situation because they don't.
Speaker 2: Have staff issues. The citizens love them.
Speaker 1: Nobody in Douglas County is talking about defund the police.
Speaker 1: What could you do at the state level to help
Speaker 1: restore the respect and dignity of that job and to
Speaker 1: make it an attractive profession for people who want to
Speaker 1: serve Again.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the biggest things I lobby down there
Speaker 3: in two seventeen was built, so to speak, by my
Speaker 3: opponent being one of those folks. When they took qualified
Speaker 3: immunity away, a number of things happened. The folks that
Speaker 3: did good law enforcement blessed, and now we can't get
Speaker 3: officers to apply for the job. So what ends up
Speaker 3: happening is we lowered the standard. When you lower the standard,
Speaker 3: you get a bigger problem because those folks are going
Speaker 3: to be more inclined to cause a problem down the
Speaker 3: road or have a problem, which now we end up
Speaker 3: paying out that and so the public then sees, oh,
Speaker 3: the cops really are bad when they weren't bad to
Speaker 3: start with, right, thing on stuff that happened outside of Colorado.
Speaker 2: So what do we do to fix that?
Speaker 3: Well, we've got to get qualified immunity number one install back. Now,
Speaker 3: if we're to play the qualified immunity game, then should
Speaker 3: we take qualified immunity from the judges and the district
Speaker 3: attorneys and nurses and anybody else that could cause the problem? Right,
Speaker 3: it's just not right. And you're putting these folks on
Speaker 3: the front line making and they have to make a
Speaker 3: decision to do something right away, and then you're going
Speaker 3: to punish them for whatever the decision is. So until
Speaker 3: we can back that off a little bit and boost
Speaker 3: the crime level back up, you know, get it to
Speaker 3: where we had it, so there's consequences for the crime,
Speaker 3: we're not going to solve this.
Speaker 2: I agree. I agree wholeheartedly, George.
Speaker 1: I know it's the last day, but I'm reminding people
Speaker 1: it's not too late to vote. If you're in HD
Speaker 1: twenty five, you could give George your vote.
Speaker 2: George, why should people vote for you? Make your pitch.
Speaker 3: Well right now. Many. My whole deal is to be
Speaker 3: the voice of this community. I've been there voice for
Speaker 3: forty five years. My whole career in law enforcement was
Speaker 3: in Jefferson County, and I built the juvenile Assessment Center
Speaker 3: that took people who didn't ever want to talk together.
Speaker 3: We came together, built the Juvenile Assessment Center, became a
Speaker 3: federal model. We dealt with our juvenile issues in a
Speaker 3: positive way, and we had positive results. We became the
Speaker 3: federal model for assessment centers across the country. I want
Speaker 3: to bring that back to my constituents in twenty five
Speaker 3: and make sure that they can feel that they can
Speaker 3: pick up the phone and call me. Interestingly enough, the
Speaker 3: phone number that I have is the same phone number
Speaker 3: I started as a policeman with and talk to any
Speaker 3: of those cops. You can still pick up my phone
Speaker 3: and I still answer it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, George, Mama, I appreciate your time. Best of luck
Speaker 1: to you Tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have some good news, because
Speaker 1: if we don't do something about these super majorities the
Speaker 1: Democrats have in the House and the Senate, the state
Speaker 1: is just going to keep having issues that are all
Speaker 1: related to policies that have been passed by that same legislature.
Speaker 2: George, Mama, thanks for your time today, thanks for having
Speaker 2: all right, have a great day.