More trouble for Gaylord Rockies hotel subsidies
“Colorado Treasurer Walker Stapleton on Monday asked the Legislative Audit Committee to examine whether the state should continue to offer subsidies to Gaylord Rockies project, citing last week’s decision by an Adams County District Court judge that threw out the results of an election that allowed Aurora to offer some $300 million in subsidies for the same project.
Stapleton, who entered only last month into the controversy over public funding of the hotel/conference center that has been raging for more than three years, asked the chairwoman and vice chairman of the committee to review the $81.4 million in tax-increment financing that the Colorado Economic Development Commission awarded to the project in May 2012. Though he did not suggest a specific remedy that the eight-member committee should examine, he said the recent court decision “puts into question the overall viability of the state subsidy.”
“The language of the judge’s order, along with numerous media investigations of this hotel project, demonstrates the urgent need for the entire Gaylord subsidy process to be reviewed,” Stapleton wrote to Sen. Lucia Guzman, D-Denver, and Rep. Dan Nordberg, R-Colorado Springs. “I and my office are prepared to support your review of this matter in any way that would be helpful to you.””
Sealover, Ed. Denver Business Journal 3 March 2015.