Station:    KDMT, 1490 am

Show:       The Americhicks

Guests:    Neville, Tim

Link:        https://omny.fm/shows/wake-up-with-randy-corporon

Date:        June 21, 2018

Topics:     Pro

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CO-HOST KIM MUNSON: [00:00:08] In segments 3 and 4, we’re going to be talking with Colorado Senator Tim Neville. And Tim Neville is one of those guys that has gone down to the Capitol and really realized why he is there. And it’s the most difficult thing, because he is representing everyday hard working people that don’t have the time to go down and lobby at the Capitol to stop a lot of this — really — overreach of government. And I have seen him many times do some of the really difficult and courageous things to make sure that he is protecting everyday American people and Coloradoans that are driving up and down the road. And a lot of people don’t even realize it! But we owe him a debt of gratitude for that. So, Senator Neville, thank you so much for joining the Americhicks today.

TIM NEVILLE: [00:00:57] Well, hey, thank you, Kim and Jan. It is a pleasure to be here.

GUEST CO-HOST JAN COOK: [00:00:57] Can I just interject something very quickly? You were at the Wine and Tapas [event] last night in Jeffco. And I got — and I actually met your wife. I just want to say — I don’t know if she’s listening — she is delightful. Delightful!

TIM NEVILLE: [00:01:11] She — I tell you what — she is, uh, well, we’ve been married for a long time, going on forty years, now. You know, she’s definitely, you know, one of the solid rocks that allows me to do what I can do, too. And then, she is right there, and has always been very, very civically involved, and making a difference, you know, politically, too.

MUNSON: [00:01:34] Well, Senator Neville, it really is a team effort. And I know that she — she does a lot of hard work for that. So, good idea, there, to give a shout out to your wife. So, thank you so much. Senator Tim Neville, transportation in Colorado is a hot issue. In fact, there are those that have said that transportation has become the new “for the children” kind of issue. And I think that that’s true. I think that there has been an agenda to make it really difficult for people that want to have the freedom to have their own personal vehicles. And there is a lot of money involved. And there is probably going to be a couple of different items on the ballot. One will be the “Fix Our Damn Roads” [initiative], which is to fix our roads without raising taxes. And there’s probably going to be a proposal that would increase our state sales tax by 21 percent for a — quote/unquote — “transportation.” So, could you address your thoughts on transportation in Colorado right now?

TIM NEVILLE: [00:02:35] You bet. And I think it’s important to start with some big numbers, when we start taking a look at the budget. Because one of the things that Colorado voters are going to hear quite a bit this year is that we just don’t have enough money to do all the things that we need to do. And so I always remind people that, you know, in 2011 the 2011-2012 budget was about 19 billion dollars. And we’ve had some increase of course in population, but we haven’t doubled or even, you know, gone up, you know, 40 percent or whatever. But the budget has gone from 19 billion dollars — the state budget. This year’s budget is right at close to 30 billion dollars.

MUNSON: [00:03:12] Oooh!

TIM NEVILLE: [00:03:12] And a couple of other things, too. You know, when we talk about, you know, the needs — people talk about the needs of government. I kind of approach it a different way. I look at the needs of families, their own budgets, since they are the ones that are actually producing this income. And of course, businesses — to help businesses. And we’ve seen an increase in the health of families’ budgets and business budgets because of a number of things that have happened. We are out of the — you know — the quagmire of the Obama years, and we’re seeing changes at the federal level that have helped everybody in Colorado. But the biggest issue is, when you take a look at our budget, last year we had almost one point three billion dollars — that’s “billion,” with a ‘b’– and that was new income coming into Colorado. We just received the budget estimates yesterday for what we’re looking at, an increase over this year for next year. And it’s approximately slightly over a billion dollars in new income.

MUNSON: [883:18:01] Hmm!

TIM NEVILLE: [883:18:01] That’s before any tax increase. That’s just, you know, basically [inaudible] income.

MUNSON: [883:18:06] So, there’s more money!

TIM NEVILLE: [883:18:07] Always more money! There seems to always be more money. You know, we hear about budget cuts, and of course everybody I think understands and is savvy enough to know that, you know, if we say — if, you know — if you had a child and they had an allowance, and they were making a dollar, — you know, I don’t know, let’s say a $5 dollar per week allowance, and they said they wanted ten [dollars]. And you said, “Well, you know, you might deserve seven [dollars].” You know, that would be a three dollar cut in the hands of a –.

COOK: [883:18:27] Politician!

TIM NEVILLE: [883:18:27] A politicain, exactly! So, you know, that’s — as opposed to a — you know, as opposed to a 40 percent increase, which it really is.

MUNSON: [883:18:32] Right. Right. So what about transportation? You know, this idea to increase the state sales tax by 21 percent — so it would go from 2.9% I think, to like 3.62%. That’s significant, because that is a tax on everyday items that people use, like toilet paper and and diapers — you know, things that regular, everyday Coloradoans need to make their lives better. And politicians and bureaucrats — collaborative cronyists, I call them — they want to raise these taxes. And I think it’s going to hurt people.

TIM NEVILLE: [883:19:05] Well, without a doubt. And, you know, the one of the things that — you know, Jan, you’ve got to remember — is that the state of Colorado already has approximately the highest combined sales tax between –. People — look, sometimes people make the mistake of looking at our state sales tax. They have to understand that you have to combine that with the averages of local taxes, too. You know, all the special districts and everything else, Colorado is a hodgepodge of taxation. And, uh, when you put all those combinations together, we’re already well above the middle of the pack when it comes to sales tax. This would put us closer to — you know, the proposal, I remember two years ago, we had a proposal — House Bill 1242, which actually died in the Finance Committee that I chair — it was a 1% sales tax increase, across the board. It would have put us actually above even New York State, into the top 10.

MUNSON: [883:19:51] Oh, wow!

TIM NEVILLE: [883:19:51] You know, and it’s — understand, you hit it on the nose. It is the — one of the most regressive taxes you can have, is a sales tax. It really hurts those people who have to use a higher percentage of their income to buy the everyday items that they need, and that their families need. So, it’s an extremely regressive tax.

MUNSON: [883:20:08] You know, interesting that House bill 1242, I went down and testified on that. And you were on that — in that committee. And I’m not sure I have the exact number on that, but I read that whole bill. And from what I could tell, there was at least 3.5 billion dollars that was basically unaccounted for — where that was going to go. It did not explain that. And then, one of the guys that was — really, I think — one of the driving forces behind that is a politician who also is an airline pilot. And interestingly enough, there was a carve out that airline fuel was not going to have to have the higher tax on that. And I was really shocked when I saw that. And you stood strong on that, Senator Neville. And if it wasn’t for you in this kind of razor thin majority that we’ve had in the Senate, that bill probably would have passed. And there would have been three and a half billion dollars that was just totally unaccountable for, of our hardworking dollars. And so thank you! And why do these majorities matter so much?

TIM NEVILLE: [883:21:09] Well, you know, first of all, Kim, the majority decides where the bills go. And even when we have bills — and you know, this was not a bill that, you know, everybody in our caucus was united on. But it was — it should have gone to the Finance Committee. You know, changes like that, especially with transportation, you know, that the proper routing. But, you know, if you’re not in the majority we’ve seen crazier things happen. We had a Senate bill 267 — if you remember — it actually went through committees, but it languished for weeks and then all of a sudden there was a deal at the very end of session, on a Thursday night. And then it was pushed through the Appropriations Committee on a Friday morning and to the floor, And that’s how we ended up with Senate Bill 267. So, majorities matter. And principled majorities matter even more. But if you don’t have the majority, you’re pretty much out of the game and you’re always just in a reactionary mode.

COOK: [883:21:53] You’re playing defense.

TIM NEVILLE: [883:21:53] Yeah, and you know, the thing is, if you’re playing defense, you know, occasionally you can score some points. But for the most part, it’s sort of like — it’s more like basketball. If you don’t have the ball, you can’t score. And so you’ve got to play defense, but you’ve got to play good offense, too. And we saw yesterday — uh, let’s see, two days ago — we saw what Governor Hickenlooper did on transportation, [by signing an executive order adopting California emissions standards]. It was another attack on people who, you know, who drive, basically by doing a mandate of California-style emission standards on Coloradans. And there’s a lot of difference between Colorado and California, and the vehicles we drive out here — you know, many more trucks, and those types of vehicles. And then trying to mandate, you know, the ‘zero emissions’ type of piece, when, you know, that the most –. Many people would tell you –the people in the auto industry, who just care about selling the vehicles that people want to buy. They’ll tell you [this] all the time — which makes a lot of sense — they’ll tell you that those are vehicles that people don’t want to buy, at this point. If they’re there, they’ll sell them. But to have government come in and basically mandate standards and force people into vehicles that may not possibly be best for them and their families or their business is really egregious.

COOK: [883:22:58] Essentially, government trying to drive behavior.

MUNSON: [883:23:00] That’s exactly right.

TIM NEVILLE: [883:23:01] They’re trying to drive behavior. But more than that — you know, Kim — they are trying –. It is cronyism. They are trying to reward certain groups that reward them when it comes to election time. And you know, that’s definitely something you see in Colorado on the left.

MUNSON: [883:23:13] Well, and I posted a couple of things to that point. And this was before this executive order. This was an executive order that Governor Hickenlooper basically put a law in place, via executive order, and that is really the job of the House of Representatives and the Senate to do that, here, in Colorado — not the governor. But this assault on everyday people, having their own personal vehicles, and being able to go where they want to when they want to, that is freedom! So, a couple of days ago, we talked about Elon Musk, which has been a real darling of the left. They hold him up as this fantastic businessman, because he’s a billionaire. But you know, Senator Neville, it’s really easy to become a billionaire. I think they said he was worth about $2 billion. But he started with 4.9 billion dollars of government subsidies, 4.9 billion dollars of our money!

TIM NEVILLE: [883:23:54] Sure. Elon Musk has some phenomenal ideas. And they’re very unique. They capture people’s attention. And then, you know, as long as he has other people’s money to burn, you know, it seems to work well. We have — we actually have — you know, people are looking and saying, “What is wrong with the Colorado Department Transportation?” They used to build roads. Now, they do everything else, such as actually paying for studies with Elon Musk of ideas like the Hyperloop. [It is a] very, very interesting idea. But when you start taking a look at the actual cost, then all of a sudden it gets very thin. And people don’t really want to talk about that. And instead, they want to talk about, “Oh! Look at the opportunity for high tech jobs that the hyperloop would bring!” But, you know, the question is: how many people can you really get from point A to Point B? And, uh — but, there is money to be made by a number of crony folks along the way.

MUNSON: [883:24:37] Mm-hmm. Well, those collaborative crony-ists, we need to keep them in check. Senator Neville, [we] certainly appreciate what you do down at the Statehouse. One other quick thing — talking about Governor Hickenlooper’s Executive Order which he’s mandating, these standards for cars. The other part of it is, — and I posted both this thing regarding Elon Musk, on the 4.9 billion dollars on Facebook as well as plug in something or rather, and it talks about the subsidies to buy electric vehicles. And basically, it’s rich people that get to buy these things because they can get up to $7500 knocked off their federal income tax commitment, and $5,000 here in Colorado. So, a total of $12,500 that they get to shave off of their income tax liability to buy an electric vehicle. And that must not be enough, because now Governor Hickenlooper has to sign an executive order mandating things! And this is the kind of stuff we have to get under control. So, let’s go to break when we come back. I’d like to talk to you about a couple of other issues. I think this this meeting of Governor Hickenlooper in Italy is kind of fascinating and I thought you had something that you wanted to say about that. So this is the Americhicks, Molly and Kim. Jan Cook is our guest Chick, here. We’re going to go to a break, and we’ll be back with Senator Tim Neville.

[883:25:42] [commercial break]

MUNSON: [883:25:43] So, we’re going to jump in, here. We have Senator Tim Neville. It is going way too quickly, Senator Neville. But one of the things–.

TIM NEVILLE: [883:25:48] It always does.

MUNSON: [883:25:48] It does! But, I don’t know if everybody has heard about this Bilderbeg thing. And the first time I heard about it, it was, like, [imitating mysterious music] “Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh!” But, it’s supposed to be this, really, you know, secret society and they invite leaders from all over the world to come in and talk about big ideas. And Governor Hickenlooper was on the guest list this year. And it was over in Italy — I love Italy! But some interesting things happened. So, what did you hear happened at this Bilderberg summit?

TIM NEVILLE: [883:26:12] Well, you know, I’ll tell you, the first thing I found out is, you know, we had the governor do some vetoes of bills. And it was kind of interesting, we didn’t get a lot of ‘heads up’. And some of these bills were frustrating, because the passed with very large bipartisan support. And you know, some of them just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. There was a bill that he vetoed that required — it would have transitioned counties from having to to publish in newspapers, you know, a lot of the information about salaries and everything else. And the governor said basically, “Well, this is a question of transparency.” But the bill actually was designed to allow all the counties to move to a digital focus, where they could put that online. And it was interesting, the governor said, “Well, everybody doesn’t have computers, yet. So, you know, we need to use the newspapers.” But again, it was a crony bill because, you know, [inaudible] was actually pushing for this. Well, of course!

MUNSON: [883:26:52] Because, don’t they buy that from newspapers, to publish that information?

TIM NEVILLE: [883:26:55] That is correct. And it just costs more taxpayer money for something that you look at and say, I don’t — I didn’t know very many people, except for those people who would, you know, gotten — you know, who had been captured — their ear was captured by these newspapers, and it was going even phase it out in a year. But it’s just frustrating. Another bill that I think is important for the state of Colorado — no matter how people feel about, you know, legal marijuana in Colorado, it’s here. It’s part of our state constitution, whether that was a good idea or not. I probably don’t think it was a good idea to put it in the Constitution. But the bottom line: the people have spoken. And we had a bill this year that focused on if you’re going to have these entities such as — no different from alcohol, or gaming, or whatever else– treat them as business entities, so that they can be successful. They pay their taxes. They are operated as a business. And one of the key things here, is — and of course, you know, the industry provides a lot of jobs out there. So, but [the intent was] creating the transparency and ownership of publicly traded companies. Everybody has the opportunity — legal businesses have the opportunity — to bring in capital. And it’s really important that you — it’s a better situation when you know exactly who has every dollar invested in businesses. And it made a lot of sense. And it was something that a number of folks, including me, worked on for several years to get to the point where we had a model that worked, that was actually accepted by the Marijuana Enforcement Division, which was — you know, which actually moves to a neutral standpoint on. But ‘neutral’ is huge! And then, at the last moment, the governor flies out of town — vetoes the bill and flies out of town, and says –. You know, he’s over in Milan. And people say, “Well, what is he working on?” And the word — originally the word came back to sources that, “Oh, well, he’s working on job opportunities for businesses coming to Colorado.” Well, I’m sorry. He just damaged the opportunity for, you know, a lot of these investment jobs in Colorado.

MUNSON: [883:28:27] Wow.

TIM NEVILLE: [883:28:28] And then he’s turning around and — so, he’s going to another crony group that, you know,– and trying to buy favor there. He’s — everything he’s doing seems to be prepared for some kind of run for something, and I’m not sure –.

COOK: [883:28:40] It’s the global blessing!

MUNSON: [883:28:41] Well, some people are saying, possibly, that he might, you know, throw throw his hat in the ring for president, this next election cycle. Senator Neville, we are just about out of time. And so we’re going to have to have you back, because there’s lots of other questions we’d like to ask you. Jan, you had something you wanted to mention?

COOK: [883:29:01] Real quick. You have a Republican Senate Volunteer Office. Could you real quick give us some information about that?

TIM NEVILLE: [883:29:07] Oh, yeah. You bet! We actually have an office located down on Shaefer Parkway that we’re working [from]. We have several important races, particularly in Jefferson County — my area overlaps Jefferson, most of Jefferson–it’s mostly Jefferson, but it also has all of Gilpin County. And I’m the only Republican that represents a piece of Denver County and even Boulder County. So, but we have three very important races in Jefferson County for the state Senate. And we’re focusing on, you know, trying to combine some resources and offer people the opportunity to volunteer.

COOK: [883:29:40] And I’ll just give it — they can go to ‘nevilleforcolorado.com’ [spells out the URL]. Thank you so much, Senator Neville.

TIM NEVILLE: [883:29:42] You bet.

MUNSON: [883:29:43] You have a great day.

TIM NEVILLE: [883:29:43] My pleasure. Thank you for having me. You, too. Bye-bye, now.