In his first few state of the state addresses, Colorado’s outgoing Gov. John Hickenlooper didn’t mention rural Colorado much. That changed over the years, and especially in his last annual address to the Legislature, when Hickenlooper used the word “rural” nearly 30 times.
Many of those mentions centered on Hickenlooper’s desire to bring jobs to corners of Colorado that were not seeing the same economic boom that’s carried the Front Range in recent years. The Hickenlooper administration tried myriad ways to meet that goal, from including rural perspectives in decision-making processes to providing incentives to businesses and financial assistance to local governments.
That’s according to Henry Sobanet, who was Hickenlooper’s budget chief for nearly eight years.
Read the rest of the story at Colorado Public Radio.
