- Welcome to the Aaron Harbor Show.

This is part one of a special two-part series featuring a historic assemblage of Colorado's leadership.

My guests are Governor Roy Romer, Governor Bill Ritter and Governor Jared Polis.

I want to start by thanking each of my guests for finding the day, we could all get together because for a while my team thought it would be impossible to herd cats as many cats as we've been herding.

So thank you each of you for joining me.

I appreciate your being here.

I want to start off just right away.

I mean, you each have long, 10 years in public service.

And I'd be interested-- Bill, I'm going to start with you in how do you think if it has it all.

How do you think governing has changed since you first entered public service?

- So I entered public service 31 years ago because of that man, I was appointed to the Denver district attorney's job by Governor Roy Romer.

My office was two blocks from the Capitol, so I spent a lot of time over the next 12 years as a witness in the capital meeting legislators, working with governors on policy and had really a bird's eye view of how work got done in that capital and in governor's offices.

And then I became governor in 2007 to 2011 and it felt to me over time like we have moved apart and our willingness to really tackle some hard problems.

Not everything.

There's still some common ground that we can find, but I felt even while I was governor when Barack Obama was elected in 08, took office in 09 and sometime kind of in that time frame.

It became increasingly difficult for both sides to work together on, like I said, on big problems, there were just fewer and fewer occasions where there was a search for common ground.

I think that's one thing.

And I think the second thing is there are people who feel increasingly left behind, that the folks in the state capital aren't working on the things that resonate with them as you know, the big issues in their life, their well-being and so it's kind of this dual thing, both the citizens who are being governed.

Who are the people who are-- you're responsible for your constituents don't feel as good about government and that just makes it harder.

And the people who are governing are increasingly finding it difficult to work across the aisle with each other.

- Jared, what's your take and experience?

And of course, I mean you were unlike either these other two gentlemen, you were in Congress and so Congress certainly gets a lot of attention.

- Well, thanks for doing this show, Aaron.

It's great to I get to see Bill and Roy around at different events.

But it's fun to be able to come together and have a more intellectual conver sation with you and I appreciate you convening us and doing that.

Being at the state level is a lot more nimble, a lot faster, a lot more going on.

I mean, Congress really enjoyed it for the 10 years that I serve, but it takes many, many years to move something a little bit the ship of state is very large here in Colorado we're much nimble and faster.

There's greater opportunities for bipartisanship.

It was very refreshing for me to be able to come home.

and focus on a lot of the issues that we face as a state.

- How about you, Roy?

In terms of, I mean, not only your experience in a number of offices as a state representative as a state senator, winning election as state treasurer and then winning election three times as governor and the last person to do that and to be able to do that due to term limits and then when you see things today.

What do you think?

Changes what changes have occurred that make governing different?

- One is media.

This changed and the multiple multiple forms of media have made a big difference.

The other is lack of trust.

We've lost the ability to trust each other.

We're more polarized.

When did I serve?

30-40 years ago.

It's a long time ago, but it was-- You had more instinct to trust each other, and we need to return to that.

I think a lot about what the solution is.

But I would talk about the media and trust.

- What are some solutions?

- I still like small communities.

I like the agree to which people have different points of view work together on common projects.

Small towns, churches, clubs.

Those things really, if you go to a country funeral, you get those values really on the table very quickly.

We trust each other in ways.

I don't see any of that in Congress.

We've lost it when we get at that level.

So that's my one observation.

- All right you mentioned the media, I'd be really interested in maybe selfishly on your take on the press.

Because certainly, you know, Governor Romer, when you were in office, you had people like, you know, Fred Brown and Carl Hilliard and John Sanko, who were kind of legends in-- well, mainly the newspaper arena.

You know, how has that changed?

- Well, let me speak to that.

When I was governor, I thought maybe 7 to 9% were outside rational communication.

You know, the NRA and a few other.

But not 30%.

Now when I see the Republican Party, 25% of them say we don't believe that Biden won the last election.

That's stupidity.

That's just plain stupidity.

It's a different culture.

And I worry about what has changed, but it has changed.

- What you would call the mainstream media, meaning they have the professional discipline of journalism, they do their job has been withering for years and decades, and so there's still a Capitol Hill press corps, but it's not like what Bill had.

And it's not like what Roy had fine men and women doing the reporting.

But as Roy indicated, they're kind of reaching a smaller and smaller audience.

You look at who watches the news and who gets newspapers.

So what's filling that void?

It's that void is being filled by folks who don't have the professional obligations of a journalist, and not only in portraying both sides but often portraying non side, namely a fictional reality with very little checks.

- What's your take and also I mean, you know Jared mentioned some of the mainstream media, I mean I still get newspapers.

And I think I'm one of the few people who gets physical newspapers anymore.

I also get them online.

But I mean, I remember when there was competition between the Rocky and the Denver Post, and I could get a year subscription for $3, and now I'm paying almost $400 for physical delivery seven days a week of a newspaper, I mean, no one's going to do that except crazy people like me.

- And both governors have described it.

And the Rocky closed while I was governor and became merged with the Denver Post.

- That's the Rocky Mountain news for those who-- - But you know, again, being a being governor and having two papers and two editorial pages paying really close attention to what's going on inside the capital, there is a healthy competition.

But there's also some very thoughtful reporting and now I think the post which was the survivor has like 10% of the staff that it had when I was governor and you know that's 15 years ago, right.

And so this is not healthy right when you have like you said people without those same standards of excellence for journalists who were out there transmitting information and I have 4 kids that are adults, so 37 down to 30 and we talk about how they get their information because there's so many places where you can get information and it's just not true.

Right?

And so making decisions about your life or forming opinions is a lot harder to do now because of the vast amount of information that's just not accurate.

- Even here in my time as governor, for instance, you know, I'm sure that Roy and Bill remember this briefly in the editorial boards, right?

You do your budget, you brief editorial boards, maybe after session, brief editorial boards.

At the beginning of my tenure five years ago, there were a number of more editorial boards on are now and literally we call the papers and say we don't have it anymore.

So I mean it's, you know, Denver Post still does, but there's very few.

I mean, we're down to maybe three in the state and even when I started, there were probably six or seven that we would make sure we briefed, you know, after a major event.

- Extraordinary.

Well, I'm very disappointed.

None of you recommended that Everybody watch my show, but I'll accept that.

Let's in terms of information.

And Jared, I want to start with you.

You know, with the introduction in 2022 of ChatGPT, I mean, I've been astounded at the advance of artificial intelligence because of my work in an earlier life and high technology.

I have relationships with different people involved in AI and I am just amazed at what has happened and what I expect to happen, not just in the coming years, but in the coming months.

You know, what's your take on the impact of AI when it comes to public affairs, public service, goberning?

And Jared, and because of your high technology background, which is 100 times of mine, I'd like your take on AI.

- Well, I've replaced my entire com staff with AI, just kidding.

Connor, Shelby, you're still here.

You're still not obsolete yet, but I do use it to help write speeches.

I did a commencement in CU that was largely written by ChatGPT and so it's a useful tool like any other, and I don't think humans are obsolete yet, and I don't think they're gonna be obsolete in the near future, but certainly something interesting to think about.

- How do you think it's going to affect the political life in terms of Americans participation in politics.

- Well, it's a tool like any other tool.

I mean, so again I think different elected officials and from both a governing perspective and I mean we use it for customer service now for different things.

We're looking at all different different ways how we can do it to make you know unemployment insurance process quicker.

So just like companies do, this, airlines and others of course the state we try to be on the cutting edge of technology.

You know, one of the first states to have digital license, drivers licenses, so we have those as part of the My Colorado app and of course we want to make sure we all provide the very best consumer experience and customer experience for every way that people interface with the state and to the extent that we can do that by being on the cutting edge of AI, we certainly want to make sure we are.

- By the way, I love the my Colorado app.

I want to tell you.

- Because you are not the traditional demographic for it.

So I'm very glad that you use it as well.

Thank you.

- I'm not the traditional demographic for anything.

So Roy, what's your take on artificial intelligence?

And do you have concerns about how it will be used to misinform people as well?

- Well, it's interesting.

At age 95, I have not had a lot of exposure to this issue and I'm obviously a very avid newspaper, television news source reader now.

And I'm just learning about how to handle that personally and the main thing I think about these kind of communications we're having here today, you got to establish somebody who really wants to listen if they don't want to listen, you're not communicating.

And so you look for relationships first before you look for communication.

And if I can, if I meet a person who obviously differs with me politically, but if I can establish a contact with him in the world or her, then we have some degree of confidence that, hey, maybe we can then slip over into a more controversial area, but we need a world where we differ in a friendly way.

- So Bill you know in that vein, in terms of the idea of a world where we can differ in a friendly way, I mean one of my concerns about artificial intelligence is that it can be used to convince people of things that aren't true and kind of the secondary fact, I'd be interested in your take on, you know, from a public official's perspective is if the general public doesn't know what's true anymore.

What does that mean for our democracy?

- Yeah, it's troubling and partly because the technology is very advanced, but the ethical considerations have not really been evolving at the same pace as the technology.

I think, as the governor alluded to-- or at least I understand and understood him to say this, if you're a big company and you're a modern company, you have to have an AI strategy.

You can't be without an artificial intelligence strategy and at the same time, we don't have that conversation about ethical considerations around it that has progressed in such a way that you can just trust anything that's that's out there.

And so start with the concept that you have this kind of political environment that's a little more difficult, maybe a lot more difficult than it was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago and understand that people are, you know, willing to utilize AI in a way that promotes their political candidacy or their political platform.

Even non candidates promoting a political platform using AI and misappropriating information, that's a dangerous place for a democracy to be.

- So, how do we get people to talk to each other, Jared?

- Well, I mean that's an example of what a legislative session is about.

Democrats, Republicans and our state legislature are talking to one another through the work that I know.

My fellow governors, also valued of Western Governors Association.

And I did a stint as chair of that and now chair of the National Governors Association, really getting folks together on both sides of the aisle to have these authentic and important conversations with some of our peers about how we can work together with the same kinds of issues we face, whether you're in Indiana or Florida or California or Colorado, I mean really we're facing a lot of the same pressures and a lot of the same challenges.

- So, Jared talk a little bit more about the NGA initiative.

I mean, you know what you're doing with Governor Cox, I think is really leading edge today and extraordinarily needed by the country and tell us a little bit more about that initiative and what you really hope to accomplish.

- So working with Governor Spencer Cox of Utah, our focus is disagree better, which means how can we, as a Society of course, as politicians, but even around people's dinner tables across the country disagree in a more constructive way.

It doesn't mean we don't disagree and this nation was built on profound disagreement.

You look at some of the debates that went into the formation of the Constitution as an example.

It there should be no stigma about disagreeing, but it's about how we can disagree while not denigrating or attacking the motives of somebody whom you happen to have a professional disagreement with.

They're not your enemy.

They have a different point of view.

And too often, in today's media age, it's seen as an enemy versus somebody that you simply need to have a discussion with to understand where they're coming from.

They understand where you're coming from.

Is there compromise possible?

Well, if not, make your arguments.

But we really should make sure that we have that civic place for healthy disagreement.

And I think that's what lacks too much in this age.

- So, Roy, I'd like your thoughts on that just so that you know, one of the projects that I'm involved in is called the American Civility Initiative.

And the idea is to actually have television programs where you have people who are normally not in agreement having like dinner together and talking about a topic.

And the goal is really simple.

It isn't to solve any particular problem, it's to show, hopefully millions of people that you can be with, someone you disagree with, but you can have conversations that are civil and are mutually respectful.

And so the idea is to demonstrate this.

To show this because there are a lot of efforts to promote civility and mutually respectful discourse, but we're not communicating those to the American people, so what makes our initiative different is our main goal is to show people is to show large numbers of people that you can disagree respectfully.

- I read a lot of books these days.

One book I really liked was David Brooks of the New York Times.

It's How to Know Another person and the essence of this book is when we are in conversation with another person, we structure the conversation.

So it comes back to us.

We really need to learn how to enable a person to tell us about them.

And I have been given that book out and I just think that we got to go back to some very common bonds that we share.

We go to church together, we go to schools together, we play basketball together.

These things make us at least relate to each other as human beings.

And if we get back to that and then we say, OK, and we also are in politics.

We can talk about that in a more rational, friendly way.

- Bill, you're, you know-- I thought you wanted to say something, so I want to give you an opportunity.

- Just in a historical context, I'm thinking of people who have been elected statewide in the state of Colorado going back to the 70s.

And if you look at how they treated the other side.

So Gary Hart, Bill Armstrong, Hank Brown, these are people, you know, Governor Roy Romer, Bill Owens, my immediate predecessor.

And just they always would say things like my friends on the other side of the aisle and they meant it.

They weren't being facetious or and they're just a lot of people.

We have a history in the state of having leadership that knows how to do that, and I think it may be one of the ways that Colorado is special, because it's breaking down in some other places a lot worse than it is in Colorado.

But we've had the advantage of having leadership on both sides of the aisle who knew how to treat other people in a civil discourse where they disagree.

- So one of the things that's happened in Colorado is we've definitely in terms of electing officials at the Statehouse, we've definitely moved in a manner where Democrats dominate in a way that they have not in recent, not recent years, recent decades where you have, of course a democratic governor, you have democratically controlled state Senate and you have an overwhelmingly Democratic house, a super majority, in fact in the House, how does that impact those kinds of discussions where if you're in the house where Democrats I think have what at least 40 seats.

Maybe more out of 65, Republicans become a footnote and in fact, what you start to see are maybe different camps within that large democratic contingent.

- Well, look across our state, the majority of elected officials are Republican and you know, county Commissioners, City Council, so this is still a state where if you look at all the elected officials together, there's many more public and Democrats, plenty of more unaffiliated not as it used to be and again the plurality of voters in our state, and it's only a matter of time until it's a majority are unaffiliated voters.

So they're not Democrats or not Republicans.

Recently, they've been sending Democrats to Denver just because many of the unaffiliated voters don't feel comfortable voting for somebody associated with, for instance, Donald Trump or the politics of today's Republican Party.

But doesn't mean they're Democrats.

So you know, again, they'll always evaluate and look at candidates and give candidates a shot.

And I think it's a healthy thing that we're soon going to reach a majority of our state that's unaffiliated, and they'll choose between the best candidates regardless of their party.

- Our division is not just political, we need to look at the rural urban fractures.

A lot of the people in urban society don't understand the rural mindset and they have and have not division is also there.

So we need to look at the things that divide us and say, no, we can communicate across these bonds and we need to continue identify the things that we have that bring us together.

Again, you go to a rural funeral and you see many of those values.

- You know, when it comes to communication and commonality, all of you in various roles have been tremendous supporters of K through 12 or pre-K through 12 education and in many ways have just had an extraordinary impact on the state.

It's the same time when you think of how important education is, and especially civics education, to be a participating citizen, to be an informed voter when you become an adult.

Yet it seems our school systems have really failed our kids.

Despite the efforts, all three of you have made.

What do we need?

And Bill, I'll start with you.

What do we need?

If you accept that premise that we are failing our kids, what do we need to do to get education, especially public education, back on track?

- So I've got a really large family and I have a few school teachers in my family.

The one thing we don't need is more committed teachers.

The people in my family who are school teachers, public school teachers, are absolutely committed to their students.

There's a big debate about funding, but the funding is always tied up with other kinds of issues like this tabor a good thing?

Or is it a bad thing?

And what are the other things that you choose instead of public education?

I think we should have done a better job and investing in education, including in teacher pay as a part of that.

That's not the only answer.

The second thing is to find ways for families to be involved in their kids education so that culturally it's not just left to a public school system that you can denigrate.

- So Jared, I mean, you've been involved in education, I mean, not just the state board, you've created charter schools, you've put your money where your mouth is, in terms of how you've supported schools, innovation in public education and kids individually as well.

What do you think we need to do to achieve the kind of goals I articulate?

- Well, you know, this year we will be fully funding our public schools, eliminating the so-called budget stabilization factor.

So we will be achieving the constitutional levels of funding that voters wanted for our schools, and that's an increase of, you know, over $20,000 for a classroom of, you know, 20 some kids.

So it's a big deal.

So classroom will have 10s of thousands of dollars of additional funding.

Which means teacher pay smaller class size.

More enrichment programs like the arts.

All of those things.

These are locally controlled in our state and that's something we all both suffer with and enjoy at the state level.

We don't run the schools, they're run by local elected officials.

I think overall it's a good system.

We added preschool and kindergarten, which is a key part of what I wanted to get done.

We had half day kindergarten, now full free, full day, and now every child, every four year old gets free preschool.

Whether it's a community provider or a school district, so these are the areas that we've been focused on.

We also saw a significant decrease in math achievement, not just in Colorado nationally.

So we now are doing funding after school math, focus on improving math achievement for kids, it's so important in today's world and we're looking to do additional work around science achievement as well.

- All right.

I only have 30 seconds left.

Last word.

- Just very quickly, two areas we need to look at, we need to go back and look at measurement.

Measurement is important, but we need to use it in the right way, not use it for punishment.

Secondly, higher education is we need to look at the efficiency we were too expensive here and we've lost the ability to be efficient and we need to revisit those two issues.

- All right.

Well, I want to thank my guests.

Roy Romer, Bill Ritter and Jared Polis for joining me today.

I'm sure all of us here at the studio and everyone watching learned a lot.

And also appreciated the special time each of them gave us.

Remember this is part one of a special two-part series, so be sure to watch Part 2 online as well as live and encourage everyone to watch both shows.

You can do that by going to the Aaron Harbor Show page on pbs12.org.

Thanks again for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- Hi, I'm Aaron Harbor, host of the Aaron Harbor Show.

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