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