IP-22-88 (October 1988)
Author: Gale Norton, Dick Gale, and John Andrews

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Leadership, said Harry Truman, is the art of getting other people to run with your idea as if it were their own. One of this year;s best examples came from the Colorado General Assembly.

Prompted by House majority leader Chris Paulson. along with Speaker Bev Bledsoe and their Senate counterparts, the legislature has enlisted fifty statewide leaders from business, professions, an civic groups in a six-month study project called vision Colorado. (See Page 10 for names and affiliations.)

Why are these busy people being asked to do all this work when so many similar reports are already gathering dust? What is likely to be the impact?

In public policy terms, legislators probably felt the project is worth doing because all of those other studies are the product of other years and the property of other group of leaders. A fresh set of recommendations, with a strong sense of ownership by several dozen of the state’s most powerful figures today, could be a useful launch pad for actions which the legislature hopes to take next January — or a line of defense against unwelcome proposals from the Governor.