RUNAWAY TRAINCONGRESS SPURNED IT, STATE LAWMAKERS SCORN IT, BUT CAN ANYBODY PUT THE BRAKES ON LIGHT RAIL?

Anderson suggests RTD "needs to be a player" not only with the governor's blue-ribbon committee but with the Coalition for Mobility and Air Quality, a private trade group formed last year to study options for financing the state's transportation needs. Although the group's steering committee includes environmental and citizens' interests, its core membership is a who's who of engineering and contracting companies involved in building Colorado highways, DIA, light rail and other major public-works projects, including Carter Burgess, Centennial Engineering, O'Brien Kreitzberg and Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall (DMJM).

"We're looked at as suspect, as the conflict-of-interest guys," says Randy Harrison, CMAQ's executive director, who works for DMJM. "We understand that, but there is a serious problem here, and we've tried to reach out to support other groups and broaden our interests."

CMAQ has proposed raising up to $12 billion over the next twenty years in additional gas and sales taxes, tolls and other mechanisms to address expected shortfalls in transportation funding. The group has held roundtables across the state and is preparing polling data with an eye toward a possible ballot issue next fall. Both Anderson and Benker have worked closely with CMAQ, which has its own member on Romer's transportation committee.

Anderson acknowledges that RTD will ultimately have to "go to the people" for light-rail money. But that doesn't mean the agency will be brazen enough to make such a request directly. Several sources have suggested that if the legislature balks, the money might end up coming through a citizen's initiative led by a public-spirited group of interested parties such as CMAQ.

"We need to work with anybody and everybody," Anderson insists. And when it's time to float another tax increase for light rail, he says, it may be best for the proposal to come not from RTD but "from various presentations from the highway and transit side. Let people who are notable in the community carry the water."

end of part 1