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Meet your candidate: Mark Sievers

Contributed by: Mark Sievers on 7/3/2008

Mark Sievers is a candidate for the State House District 45 seat, which is being vacated by State Rep. Victor Mitchell, R-Castle Pines Village. He's running against Carole Murray in the Republican primary, which will be held Aug. 12. YourHub.com asked him to respond to a questionnaire about his interests and local issues.

Mark Sievers

Age: 54

My family: Wife, Jill Sievers

Education: BA (Economics, University of Colorado, Boulder & Colorado Springs), MA, ABD (Economics, University of California, Davis), JD (University of Utah).

I am the only candidate in this race who is an economist and a lawyer. I have work experience in law enforcement, education and health care. I have expertise in business formation (at all levels - from the largest corporations to the smallest businesses), business law and water law.

What I do: Semi-retired corporate executive, owner/operator of a rural, solo-practice law firm with wife, Jill. Our law practice is limited to business formation, contracts, real estate, probate, administrative law. We do not do criminal law, litigation, bankruptcy, domestic relations, or contingency fee work.

I have had a variety of life and work experiences, including:

-- Police Officer, City of Colorado Springs
-- University Instructor, Utah State University, University of Utah, University of California
-- Senior Executive, Sprint, SBC, GTE, and Verizon. I was part of the senior executive team that created Verizon, then the world's largest merger at $56 billion, operations in 21 countries and involving 250,000 employees.
-- Lawyer, legal counsel to both very large and small firms

My favorite place in town to hang out: My patio at sunset, watching the sun fall behind the Sangre De Cristo range.

What I like most about living here: I am a Colorado native, but have lived throughout the country (on both coasts and states in the heartland) and traveled throughout the world. There is no place like Colorado, especially the high country.

My interests and hobbies: History, genealogy, woodworking

My favorite thing to cook: Jambalaya

People who inspired me (and how):

-- Thomas Jefferson for his commitment to limited government and individual self-reliance.

-- Ralph Carr, the last governor from Teller County. Governor Carr was a lawyer from Cripple Creek who was the only Governor to oppose the unconstitutional taking of property and internment of Japanese American citizens during World War II. He was a politician who defended the Constitution when it was politically unpopular to do so.

-- Colorado Springs Police Sergeant Jerry Busemeyer, who encouraged me to stretch, to go to graduate school and do more with my life.

How I have contributed to the community: My wife and I believe in giving back to one's community.

-- We regularly provide pro-bono legal services.
-- Jill is President of Habitat for Humanity in Teller County and I provide volunteer legal services (and poor carpentry services) to Habitat. Habitat is currently restoring/rebuilding 4 Victorian era houses in Cripple Creek.
-- I was the chairman of the Teller County Republicans.
-- I am a Trustee on the operating board for the Pikes Peak Regional Hospital, a full service, rural hospital (built entirely without public funds) that opened in October 2007. The hospital complex includes a hospital, a medical office building and an assisted living center. The web site for the hospital is: www.pprmc.org
-- I am the vice-chairman of SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) Chapter 206 that advises start up and small businesses throughout the Pikes Peak region and presents workshops focused on small business issues. The Chapter advises more than 500 businesses annually. The web site for the Chapter is www.coloradospringsscore.org
-- I am a graduate of the Leadership Program of the Rockies. www.leadershipprogram.org

Why I am running: I believe that our country is fundamentally a self-governing republic, which means that it relies on it citizens - like me - to periodically come forward and devote part of their lives to elected public service. I believe I am at that point in my life where I have the education, personal resources and broad life experiences to make a significant contribution. Our founding fathers did not intend for our country to be run by lobbyists, a Mandarin class of professional bureaucrats or career partisan politicians. I have no aspirations of a political career, but view this simply as my contribution towards making our government work.

The biggest issues facing State House District 45 now:

1. $4 (and rising) Gasoline. The rising price of gasoline disproportionately affects House District 45. House District 45 is composed of many long-distance commuters and suburban residents who drive more than 30 miles, one-way to and from work, school and shopping, and rural residents who heat with propane, the price of which follows gasoline prices. The rising price of gasoline also affects all aspects of construction costs and tourism which adversely affects economic activity in House District 45.

Canada is the largest exporter of oil to the United States. Canada produces its oil from the Alberta tar sands. The same process of extracting oil from tar sands is generally used to extract oil from oil shale. Thus, extracting oil from Colorado's oil shale is both technologically and economically feasible.

About 70-80% of Colorado's oil shale is on federal lands, which require that a comprehensive environmental impact analysis be performed before development can proceed. Such an analysis was started in 2005 by the Department of Interior, is now a year behind schedule, and the completion date is unknown. Completion of such environment analyses is notorious for being slow and becoming bogged down in political and legal proceedings. Ensuring that the oil shale environmental analysis be timely completed should be a legislative priority. The legislature should also focus on identifying and removing government barriers to development.

For example, those barriers might include: (1) a change in Colorado mining laws to permit leasing may be required; (2) renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact to ensure adequate water supplies; (3) ensuring that the government permitting processes do not inhibit the deployment of adequate electric power generation and transmission facilities.

2. Health Care/Insurance Costs. In 2008, Coloradans will spend about $30 billion on health care, and escalating health insurance costs have been identified as one of the most important problems by Colorado citizens and political leaders. Ever increasing health insurance premiums make health care unaffordable to many.

Indigent care for which no payment is made, but which is mandated, accounts for about 8% of Colorado hospital costs. Medicaid programs only reimburse about 65% of hospital costs. Medicare programs only pay about 75% of hospital costs. These uncovered costs don't disappear just because they are not paid. They are shifted, like a hidden tax, to private payers. In Colorado, according to the 208 Commission report, private insurers pay 131% of the cost of hospital care. Said differently, nearly one third of Colorado health insurance premiums is a tax that's used to pay for the health care costs not covered by socialized government health care programs.

Medicare and Medicaid also require that doctors accept the below cost reimbursement rates. For example, if Medicaid only pays 35 cents of the costs of $1 of medical services, a doctor who accepts Medicaid cannot bill the patient for the "missing" 65 cents not reimbursed by Medicaid. For that reason, many doctors decline to accept Medicaid and Medicare, making it harder for patients served by these programs to find physicians.

What's the government solution to this health care crisis? One proposal is to require that every business provide health insurance and that everyone purchase health insurance and expand the number of persons eligible for Medicaid. For those individuals and businesses with private health insurance, they will experience both a tax increase (about $1.2 billion under the 208 Commission proposal) AND a health insurance premium increase, making health insurance even more unaffordable. The government solution may make the health care problem worse.

State Medicaid programs should pay their costs, which will reduce the costs that are shifted to private insurance.

Individuals who choose not to have health insurance -- and pay cash for their health care -- should have the freedom to make that choice and not be required to buy insurance. But, state programs (e.g., Medicaid) should not be available to bail out those individuals who make that personal choice.

Private insurance should be allowed to include subscribers in states other than Colorado in their insurance pools. For example, Humana should be allowed to pool subscribers from Kansas, Wyoming and Colorado.

3. Education Reform. Education is arguably the most important issue facing House District 45 and Colorado for at least four reasons:
-- Opportunity. Lack of education dooms children to a life of poverty and limits their lifetime opportunities. When individuals lack education and the means to support themselves, they are more likely to be consumers of the state-provided social services, which burdens everyone, even those who live in school districts that perform well.
-- Taxes. Education funding is the largest single consumer of government resources (and growing), drives property taxes, and squeezes out other worthy government projects and initiatives.
-- Economic Development. An educated workforce will attract businesses to Colorado and keeps Colorado and the United States competitive in a global marketplace.
-- Freedom of Choice. Parents who use the public school system, by and large, have no choice about where to send their children to school, no choice about what their children are taught or exposed to in public schools, and no choice about paying for or the level of support they provide to the public school system.
More than a third of the state budget is dedicated to education, but academic achievement continues to decline. Colorado's high-school graduation rate is an abysmal 75% and about half of 10th graders perform below grade level in math and science.

The best schools in Colorado are often mediocre when compared with other countries. An OECD economic study, released in December 2007, comparing US schools with 29 industrialized nations found that US schools are 15th in reading, 18th in science and 24th in math and problem solving.

The failure of public primary education is further illustrated by the remedial programs adopted by Colorado colleges and universities. Among students who apply to and attend Colorado colleges and universities, about 30% of students are found to need remedial training in at least one basic discipline -- math, reading or writing. Among students who attend community colleges, 55% are assigned to remedial programs; among students who attend four-year universities, 20% are assigned to remedial programs.

Providing more money to public schools is not the answer. There must be systematic change that introduces competition for public schools and accountability.

4. Forest Health/Wildfire. Much of House District 45 is forested, and a significant portion of House District 45 was involved in the state's largest forest fire, the Hayman Fire. In a natural environment, fire is a normal part of forest health. Frequent, low intensity fires would burn undergrowth and low branches on trees, leaving large health trees with space between them.

However, as man moved into the forests, fires were extinguished, and forests have become overgrown. This results in overly dense forests that suffer from trees stressed by competition for nutrients, light and water, and forest fires that can become very high intensity fires, such as the Hayman fire. Stressed trees become more susceptible to beetle kill as the spacing in a normal forest that would slow the progression of such insects disappears.

Thinning operations are very expensive, and jurisdictionally complex as they must often require coordination between federal agencies (US Forest Service and BLM), state agencies, and private landowners.

Private landowners should be given substantial tax credits for undertaking thinning on their property. Another Hayman fire is far more expensive than the tax credits that would like be awarded in such a program.

Where lack of manpower is an issue, Colorado state National Guard troops should be made available to assist with thinning operations with priority given to thinning in high fire danger areas as identified in county fire mitigation plans.

5. Economic Development - Water. House District 45 occupies two water drainage basins - Teller County is largely in the Arkansas River Basin and Douglas County is in the South Platte River Basin.

Effectively, there are no interbasin transfers between these basins. Water issues in Colorado will include the following:
-- Federal Reserved Rights. With a change in federal laws, federal reserved water rights in Colorado could be made available for transfer to meet demands from a growing population.
-- Water Rights Transfers. Water laws - developed from 19th century mining customs -- make it hard to transfer water rights from relatively low-valued senior rights to more highly-valued uses.
-- Development Density. Low density development often results in many individual wells or small water districts that lack the economies of scale necessary to finance water projects.
-- Unconventional Storage Projects. Gravel pits can be used for water storage in lieu of using public funds for building expensive reservoirs.
-- Rainwater Capture/Greywater Use. Water laws restrict the ability to capture runoff in cisterns. Greywater can be used for urban/suburban landscape irrigation and reduce the growth in demand for new water resources. Use of greywater may require changes in water quality rules and laws.
-- Conservation Incentives. In Colorado, studies indicate that a 10% increase in the price of municipal water causes a 4-7% decrease in the volume of water demanded by users.
-- Saved Waters Dedicated to Public Uses. States such as Oregon and Washington dedicate a portion (e.g., 25%) of conserved water to public uses, such as fish and wildlife protection.

6. Economic Development - Gaming Taxes. One of the largest industries in House District 45 are the casinos in Cripple Creek, employing about 2,700 people. Attracting investment to that industry in Colorado (and away from competing states) is affected by gaming taxes. Colorado's gaming tax rates on profitable casinos (generally above $10 million in revenues) are between 2 and 3 times higher than the rate applicable in competing jurisdictions (NV, SD, MS, NJ), which discourages investment in Colorado.

For example, Mississippi, which is not a national resort destination and has a population that about 2 million people smaller than Colorado has 27 casinos that generate about $2.6 billion in revenues, $300 million in state gaming taxes and employ more than 26,000 persons. By comparison, Colorado is a tourist destination and has much larger population than Mississippi, but has a much poorer casino industry. Colorado has 46 casinos that generate about $780 million in revenues, $108 million in gaming taxes and employs about 7,800 people.

For a casino with more than $10 million in revenues, the marginal tax rate in Mississippi is 8% whereas in Colorado, the marginal state tax rate is between 16 and 20%. Simply put, casino corporations - like Harrahs, MGM/Mirage, etc - choose not to invest in Colorado because Colorado's tax rates are grossly higher than in competing jurisdictions. Reducing gaming taxes to a competitive level will promote investment and economic development in the gaming industry in House District 45.

7. Economic Development - Procurement Technical Advisory Center (PTAC). House District 45 borders some of the nation's largest military installations - the Air Force Academy, Schriver Air Force Base, Peterson Air Field, Fort Carson. However, for small to medium sized businesses, government regulations and red tape making doing business with Defense Agencies unrealistic. PTACs are entities that facilitate small business contracting with federal government agencies, especially defense agencies. PTACs often reside within a state economic development department or similar agency. Colorado is one of the only states without a PTAC. In 2005, 250 PTACs nationwide facilitated more than $14 billion in private sector contracts with government agencies, focusing on Defense agencies. Creating a Colorado PTAC will facilitate economic development among small businesses in House District 45.

8. Economic Development - Litigation Reform. The objective of litigation reform should be reduce the number of disputes that must come to court for resolution. Two changes should be considered. First, as a prerequisite to filing a complaint, parties should be required to make a good faith effort to settle their dispute via mediation. Mediation is usually required after a complaint and answer has been filed, so this reform would simply move mediation to the beginning of any lawsuit.

Second, most business litigation involve breach of contract claims. Well drafted business contracts usually contain mediation and/or arbitration clauses that require disputes be resolved without resort to litigation and outside the court system. If a contract does not have such a clause, or if a written contract was not prepared by the parties, contract disputes must be resolved via litigation. Colorado law should be changed to presume that, absent contract provisions to the contrary, any business contract envisions mediation and arbitration as the dispute resolution provision.

Read more about Sievers at his Web site by clicking here.


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