Viewpoint: Pace Blows Smoke on Ballot Issue 1A and 1B

Pueblo County ballot issue 1A and 1B, funding for a new jail, had a little smoke blown in its face late last week in Pueblo. Former county commissioner Sal Pace rode his horse into town and announced that any measure that would use the pure as the driven snow marijuana money to fund incarceration of suspected law breakers had no place in Pueblo County.

I have to admit that when Pace’s final day as County Commissioner came, I did a little happy dance. I haven’t purchased any legal marijuana from any of the purveyors of such substances but it would not surprise me at all to find a small likeness of Pace on each and every joint, each and every edible and maybe even on each and every green cross. Pace is pots best friend.

Now Pace is sounding like black reparations proponents in that he is saying that because pot law breakers of years gone by (when the laws were different) were punished, we shouldn’t use marijuana money to punish law breakers now. We must pay for the sins of our fathers 1?!?

Along the way, Pace took potshots at current County Commissioner Garrison Ortiz, throwing words like deceitful around and accusing Ortiz reducing the pot scholarship fund to help pay for the jail.

Pace then accused Ortiz of driving off the most senior staff in the County Commissioner office under his leadership. Then he inferred that Ortiz might even be involved in financial malfeasance.

For me approval of 1A and 1B boils down to several important issues. To begin with I am not all that concerned about space for the prisoners. I am concerned about the safety of the over 200 employees (throw in families and you are probably talking 1000 people) who work in the facility.

The tighter the space (700 prisoners in a space built for 500) the more the stress increases, the more possibility of verbal and physical altercations become and the higher the possibility becomes that employees get harmed.

The second reason I am ready to spend the money on the new jail is financial. There are a lot of lawyers out there who need a new Mercedes and the overpopulation in the jail makes the county candidates for eventual civil suits or government intervention and a forced change to make the facility meet legal housing requirements. I’d rather keep the state and federal government out of it as much as possible and trust local people who know the situation because they work in it, in control.

I also find the Pace attacks on Ortiz interesting. I don’t know if Garrison Ortiz is a good County Commissioner or not. I do know that he has come to Colorado City and Rye and talked to members of our community more than all the other County Commissioners put together. I don’t recall Mr. Pace coming out here at all during his tenure.

I probably could not sum it up any better than did Pueblo County Sheriff Kirk Taylor. “I deal in facts the way they are and not the way others perceive or wish that they would be. The facts are apparent that we need a new jail. I don’t think that is even in question.”

Taylor continued, “And to suggest that we don’t need a new jail and attempt to compare that to not supporting children is nothing more than political theatre put forth by some very good actors.”

Taylor revealed that those “local actors” have never even toured the jail. 

That’s not much of a surprise to me.Viewpoint