On its face, “governing by retribution” should be easily dismissed as bad policy, period.  Yet payback governing seems to be what Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper recently put forward, though hardly anyone in the MSM seemed to have noticed.

Denver’s “accident response fee” was one of those policy proposals that teflon Mayor Hickenlooper probably could have ridden out…prior to January 12, that is.  The idea is simple:  any Denver non-resident who has an at-fault accident on a state highway in Denver’s jurisdiction would be billed for the cost of sending emergency responders to the accident site.  But now that Hickenlooper bears the additional title of gubernatorial candidate, all mayoral decisions now come through a different filter than they did last year.

Once the issue of an accident response fee resurfaced in the Denver Daily News (admittedly by my own reporting), two Denver TV stations were quick to give the story a reprise.  In this KMGH story by reporter Russell Haythorn, we’re obviously not given the full raws of the interview with Hickenlooper, but what portions we are shown, the Mayor defends the idea:

Haythorn: Some argue that they already pay taxes in part for emergency services.

“People in Denver do. Yeah, and they don’t get charged this. So if you live in Denver and you have an accident here, you’re not charged this. It’s for people from outside the city who are driving through,” said Hickenlooper.

So far so good. Or what I mean to say is, that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.  But of course, very soon, John’s going to be needing a lot of votes of those people “outside of the city who are driving through.”

In a follow-up article by the DDN, Hickenlooper’s office again defended the idea, this time through spokesman Eric Brown, and this time a little more forcefully. “We support it. This ordinance follows through on part of the 2010 budget presented to and approved by City Council last year,” Brown told the Denver Daily News.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to Mike Rosen’s studio.  All of a sudden, the Mayor offered a rationale that hadn’t been heard before.  If other fire jurisdictions hadn’t started charging accident fees, then Denver would never have needed consider the proposal.  Two wrongs make a right. Governing by retribution.

Click here for the KOA audio for the following quote.

“…and it came as a response, several other suburban neighborhoods, fire districts, were charging, and it’s just the cost of what it, what it actually costs to have firefighters and a truck, first responders go out to the scene of an accident, when there has been someone negligent.  And certainly there are times when someone has a flat tire, it’s not their fault, you know that there’s an accident.  But in places where…I mean, the vast, vast majority of these accidents are people following too closely, switching lanes recklessly, they cause the accident, and yet all of the taxpayers, and not just in this case just Denver, but all of us are subsidizing that bad behavior.  This was a way to try and rectify it, you know, that seems to have caught a lot of people’s attention.  You know we don’t, I don’t think we’re terribly wed to it one way or the other.  I think if the other suburban neighbor– communities would, I mean if we all agreed lets none of us charge this and we’ll all take care of those accidents that happen in our communities with whoever the residents are, there’s no problem there.”

When the Mayor says it “caught people’s attention,” I’d first of all direct you back to the Ch 7 story.  Read the quotes by those who commute into Denver, and tourists.  Then go to the comments section of the story.  Or, when the Mayor says the proposal “caught people’s attention,” perhaps he meant Denver Post columnist Vince Carroll, who editorialized against the accident response fee not once, but twice.  So it really wasn’t Mayor Hickenlooper saying that, it was candidate Hickenlooper.

Simple commentary from the Mayor, but twisted the deeper you look.  He justifies the fees.  There’s a problem, negligent driving, that government can help solve by passing on the costs of responding. Never mind there are already seemingly a dozen disincentives to negligent driving, such as the citation, the tow-truck costs, any medical costs for you and the other persons involved, potential court costs, points on your drivers license, insurance premium increases, etc.

But again, the thrust of the Mayor’s comments seem to be (although the pain of the statement is lessened by splitting it up), once these OTHER jurisdictions started charging, we HAD NO CHOICE but to defend Denver’s honor!  I can imagine Mayor Hickenlooper, whispering bitterly like Johnny Rambo, “They drew first blood…they drew first blood.”

Let’s examine that.  Who are these other suburban neighborhoods waiting with baited breath for a Denverite to cross into their jurisdiction so that they may pick their pocket?  There are only three known districts in Colorado that charge accident response fees.  For two of those districts, South Adams Fire and Foothills Fire districts, the combined revenue for those two districts in 2009 was barely over $55,000.  Denver’s proposal estimates they will collect $1.1 million.  That’s a fair fight, right?  Not to mention, the $55,000 can’t be only Denver residents.  Surely there are some Greeley residents, Colorado Springs residents, and Elbert County residents caught in those webs as well.  In another 850 KOA clip from the Rosen show, the Mayor says, “You know the firefighters, they’re going to be fairly judicious about this, they were really just trying to make sure it was a level playing field.”  Well, again, I’m missing the revenues for one of the three districts that charge accident response fees, but it still looks like Denver was trying to “level the playing field” by instituting a fee that would raise 3-4 times what all the other jurisdictions were charging combined.

A summary: “We support it,” the Mayor’s office said unequivocally.  And even though John Hickenlooper sees a horrible economic injustice of the fact that good drivers subsidize the accident response costs for bad drivers, and even though he needed to right the injustice of other kids in the sandbox not playing fair (never mind the fact THOSE districts may have been concerned about the injustice of good drivers subsidizing the bad), the Mayor still says, “I don’t think we’re terribly wedded to it one way or the other.”

If only those other nasty fire districts would drop their tax (i.e. provide leadership), then Denver would drop theirs, although it looks like Denver’s going to drop the fee anyway, because the Mayor loves to defend this idea but isn’t wedded to it.  And while it’s terribly unjust that Denver’s bad drivers are being hit with this fee in other jurisdictions and there’s no need to modify the behavior of bad Denver drivers when they’re out of town, there seems to be no concern from the Mayor that if Denver passes their fee, hundreds of people who aren’t from the fee-charging districts will be snared in Denver’s net.  Someone from Alamosa never had skin in the game, but now Denver is making them pay for the sins of South Adams Fire.  Take that!  Or if the other jurisdictions DON’T rescind their fees, then we can rest assured new districts will want to retaliate against Denver, the 800 pound gorilla.  Which of course would mean now Denverites can expect to soon be charged in several dozen more districts for their bad driving behavior, where previously it was only in three fire districts.   Denver will have helped to continue a taxing war of retribution which Hickenlooper says the tax is justified, but Hickenlooper says should be banned.  So all John Hickenlooper can hope and pray for is the state legislature to pass a law to outlaw these fees altogether:  Please impose discipline on him, because he doesn’t have the political discipline to be the first to say these fees are simply wrong, to take a stand, to stop the flow of dominoes falling.  By the way, if he were governor, he would sign such a bill to ban these fees.

Leadership never looked so…confused?  He wants to have his tax and ban it too?

What would absolutely be untenable, however, is for the Mayor to say this was a simple money grab.  Unfortunately for the Mayor, however, one of his fire captains essentially said as much several weeks earlier on 850 KOA’s “The Ride Home.”  Click here to listen to Fire Chief Greg Champlain on KOA.  At 2:18, “The reality of the situation is, the city’s $80 million short, uhh on projected revenues for next year, and desperate times require desperate mesures, so we’re just looking for revenue wherever we can find it.”  At 2:54, “It’s not necessarily you know, the best way to fund a fire department, but we’re really looking for revenue every place we can find it.”

No hint of district-against-district retribution from the fire chief.  No hint of modifying bad driving behavior.  Perhaps because neither was ever a part of the plan.  And perhaps because Chief Champlain isn’t running for Governor.