The Senate's new Republican leader called on his colleagues today to move fast in adopting a plan touted by Republicans to leverage state government assets so they can shore up the state's ailing transportation network.

Senate GOP chief Josh Penry, of Grand Junction, in remarks to senators on the 67th General Assembly's opening day, also called on peers in both parties to undertake a thorough review of "onerous and overreaching" new regulations on energy exploration that he said will kill jobs and undercut production.

In his first address to the Senate as Republican caucus chief, Penry urged lawmakers to put partisan differences aside and focus their efforts on fixing the state's roads and bridges.  Penry said transportation funding should be the legislature's "first order of business." 

A day earlier, Penry had joined House GOP leader Mike May, of Parker, in announcing a proposal to fund Colorado's critical transportation infrastructure needs without new taxes or onerous fees.  The plan would make use of existing equity in government assests, such as buildings, to borrow the much-needed cash to repair and maintain Colorado's roads and bridges.  Penry and May pointed to many other state and local governments who used the same to fund large capital construction projects.

"Under the arcane rules of our budget, our roads and bridges receive the last dollar of General Fund when times are good, and they are the first funding victim when times turn bad," Penry said. "Let’s not use a bad economy as an excuse for continuing to treat our roads and bridges as a second-class budget priority."

In an effort to jump-start long-idled transportation funding amid plummeting state revenue, Republican legislative leaders today proposed leveraging the state's considerable assets to fund backlogged upgrades to Colorado's highways. The plan's advocates say it could be used immediately to address the most pressing repairs to roads and bridges--amounting to an estimated $500 million--but also could be used to raise even more revenue to expand the state's bottlenecked transportation grid.

Senate GOP leader Josh Penry, of Grand Junction, and House Republican chief Mike May, of Parker, called the plan the only viable and "realistic" approach to funding urgent transportation needs, given a recession in which voters rejected assorted tax proposals last November and are unlikely to support a tax hike for transportation now.

"Conventional funding sources for transportation have dried up as state revenue has taken a nosedive," Penry said in remarks before a media briefing on the proposal. "Yet we cannot afford to wait. We have to try a different approach--one that's innovative, realistic and gets the job started immediately."